US Catholic parishes growing in size and diversity

Has anyone taken into account the hundreds/thousands of small parish churches that have been closed to create these larger churches? Is the mega church the answer? Ask those who have lost their community parish!

I wonder how much of the growth in the size of parishes is the result of the closing of parishes in the areas of growth rather than a growth in the number of Catholics per se. Most studies that I have read, suggest that all denominations are experiencing a decline in numbers. Much growth in the Roman denomination, and perhaps in other denominations, is contributed to by the large number of Hispanics coming into the U.S.--culturally a large portion of the Hispanics are cultural members of the Roman Church.

Question: Is there a smaller number of parishes now, with so many being closed? And are these numbers the result of people coming from other parishes when they amalgamate?

Interesting reports. BXVI and bishops should be worrying. Instead, they just tell people to pray for vocations, as if God hadn't noticed the shrinking numbers. Married men, married priests, and women are waiting for their calls!

No! No! No! It's not possible! NCR has always told us that the Church is dying and the bishops are killing it. Now we hear that the Church is growing, that it's actually a complex phenomenon with innumerable layers of reality that ebb and flow in response to the times! No! NCR wouldn't lie to us when they claim that The Hierarchy is killing the Church (although there seem to be a lot of omniscient bloggers who can't spell "hierarchy....") Can it be that NCR simply spouts simplistic slogans designed to make dullards drool?

I wonder whether these statistics result in part from movement from cities to suburbs and from Rustbelt to Sunbelt. People in many cities were able to walk to church. In many suburbs (except the diocese of Camden, for one), churches were established further apart, with more households and larger parking lots.

At the rate things are going with a diminishing number of priests, the average will have 10,000 souls and then what?

I think the diversity is great. That should break the eurocentric eccentricity of an alleged universal church.

The study data does not tell us how many parishes have closed or been merged to increase the census. It would seem this essential data for understanding churh trends has bee. overlooked

I'm a member of a relatively large parish. It became a large parish over the last ten years when three parishes were merged into a single parish, a net loss of two parishes. So, yes the parish size has increased, but the number of parishes has decreased. I've seen another thing happening in all too many parishes - retiring pastors are being replaced by more conservative pastors. Guidance from Rome and many diocesan bishops, is causing an apparent retreat to pre-Vatican II liturgies and regulations. I know for a fact that this is resulting in an exodus from the Catholic Church. It's getting more and more clear to me that a split is going to have to happen if progressive Catholics are going to be able to continue being Catholics. In the non-urban area where I live, there are few other options that Catholics have.

Parishes are shrinking and NOT growing: Rome and American bishops have closed so many. What we need is an American Catholic Church divorced from Benny!

Were the members of the parishes which have been shut down counted in some way? If not, the members left would have to go to other parishes and thereby increase the members of the parishes left. They would not therefore be new members. Enough of them could easily skew the intention of your statistics. joyce latimer

Of course the parishes are growing. It is a natural progression of the church closures. Several hundred parishes have been shut down across the nation in recent time. Those parishes which remain open are getting those people, who have remained faithful, and need an alternative place of worship.

All this information showing the need, and the Catholic Church will continue to ignore the call of married clergy and women to the priesthood

This conclusion and headline cannot be a surprise to anyone who is already aware of the falling number of priests and the growing number of Catholics in the USA. Parishes have to get bigger on average.

Immigration is ---the ---- factor. The second, third and fourth generations are those walking out of the church today for very valid reasons and that will occur as second, third and fourth generations from the immigrants also wake up and see the church for what it is.

AT LAST, A BIT OF REALITY from CARA about the priest shortage. Bishops are closing churches --- they all admit it --- because of few priests. So, we get bigger and bigger parishes where there is a bureaucracy, anonymity, and it is more costly to run the place. Then, where there is a boring, uninspiring pastor, Catholicism is all over for many Catholics, particularly the young.

Big deal. If a parish has more than 200 families, it is not a community of friends, it is just a statistic. What is the purpose of such huge parishes? More money?

CARA says the average parish size is 1167 families, while the bar graph says only 33% of the parishes have 1200 or more families. According to the bar graph, 52% of the parishes are spread between 201 to 1200 families. I would be curious to know what the mean (the middle point in the continuum) of the families/parish is. It seems to me, that there must be some megaparishes in the 33% above 1200 families that are skewing the average up quite a bit. I can see where some might be cathedral parishes, but others are likely huge megaparishes resulting from mergers. Nameless faces praying together that a single pastor can not possibly get to know, never mind minister to.

BTW, my parish is in the bottom 15% that are <200 families. We have about 40 registered families but have the 2nd largest endowment in the Baker Diocese and by far and away the largest endowment per family in all of Oregon. Yes, the smaller parishes do by and large give more support per family, as long as the priest is attentive to their needs.

Random thoughts on this ...
This article feels misleading until you realize that the increase is partly due to the closing and subsequent merging of parishes. Plus population growth, and the increase of Hispanic members. John Allen reported in his book on the future of the church that the growth of the Catholic Church is in the southern hemispheres, notably South and Central America and Africa. He said the pope does not wake up each day thinking about the United States.

Isn't it obvious? Fewer priests, combined parishes, closing of smaller parishes. And how personal will the pastoral care be in megachurches?

The headline was a bit misleading and perhaps purposely optimistic in tone. I did read the whole article and did find that the most probable reason is the closing and merging of smaller parishes into the larger entities. As the statistics show our church will sooner than later have to face the fact that if we will remain a people of the Eucharist, something has to change. Perhaps the man-made laws...one priest for 10,000? one priest for 20,000? It's an abuse of the sacraments - both ordination and Eucharist.

My Chicago parish has grown to 4021 registered households according to the 2010 report, and this is not due to a combination of parishes. The pastor and the associate pastor are assisted by a resident priest who studies here, and two priests who help out on weekends. We consider ourselves fortunate to even have an associate pastor!

The thread reveals a public well aware of poor statistics. One respondent fingered the business approach perfectly. Reduce costs [close parishes],
increase the Take. Its still about money. The falsity is that a Parish
has to have a priest. Why not have all parishes run by the Faithful? Let
the Priests visit them for Eucharistic Celebrations if that is what the parish
needs. Sooner or later catholic communities are going to realize that they
have the coolective power to consecrate the bread and wine through Jesus
guarantee of his real presence when they are gathered together, and also
through their membership in His Priesthood. Time to wake up and get on with
life. This is the theological view which can bybass the failed hierarchical
system we need to consign to history. There is nothing radical here it is simply a return to our Faith.
TomC

One sad consequence of the closure of old church and construction of mega-churches is the dumbing down of Catholic architecture. We used to build beautiful churches, big or small. The remaining old big churches -- cathedrals, in most cases -- are safe. The smaller old neighborhood churches, however, are very much at risk. The are being replaced functionally by big barn-like churches that lack totally the elegance of the old neighborhood buildings. And those old buildings are being torn down or made into taverns or flea markets. It just doesn't seem like a good trade-off to me.

"The median annual parish offering per household in 2010 was $468, but those in smaller parishes gave much more on average than those in the largest parishes."

This one statistic should send chills through the bishops. If bigger parishes equals FEWER $$$ then something MUST be done!

Let's see if we start praying for more donations.

If three parishes with 700 families each are combined into a single parish with 1200 families, what happened to the missing 900 families? I'm afraid no bishop is willing to consider that question!

Larger parishes are not neccesarily a good thing. I live in the suburbs north of Atlanta where the local parishes are often 3,000-4,000 parishoners, with maybe 2 or 3 priests. How does a priest have a relationship with 3,000 people? That's a mega church, not a Catholic parish.

I took my son to our parish church for two years, we sat in the same place during the 11am Sunday mass and never seemed to see the same people from one Sunday to the next. Because he is a special needs child, and I'm a special education teacher, I was asked to form a special needs religious ed class when I wanted to enroll him. I spent a year working with him and two other boys, and we never connected with anyone else in the religious ed program.

I now take my son to the local Episcopal Parish. From my son's point of view its the same thing as attending Mass at the Catholic Church. But now, since the parish has only 300 members, we actually know people. We have relationships with other parishoners and with the Episcopal priest. My son is actually learning that being a believer in Jesus Christ is also largly about being a member of a community. At the mass Masses we attended we were just one of the many in the 20 minute distribution of the Eucharist. Now we are a part of a worshipping community.

I'm sad that I had to take my son to an Episcopal parish to teach him about how to be a Catholic. The lack of priests means we build mega churches now and not community parishes. It's great that the Church is growing--it's just unfortunate that the priesthood is shrinking so the experience of being Catholic for these new members is going to be more like protestant mega worship than the community experience of living out the faith.

Maslow -- humanistic psychology -- basically gutted U.S. Catholicism in the 1960s -- it was Bernard Haring's "fundamental option" -- Adrian van Kaam's (a friend of Maslow's)-- "formative spirituality" -- all sunsets, beaches and seashells -- the brains/force behind the LCWR's "loyal dissent".

http://www.culturewars.com/CultureWars/1999/rogers.html

A hallowed out shell of Catholicism.

Today's Catholics have been catechized in the "lived experience" and "wholeness" religion -- it's all feminism, gay marriage and other assorted causes of the urban liberal bourgeois class.

Little wonder the churches are closing and amalgamating, that there was a mass exodus from the priesthood/religious life in the Vatican II "renewal" period of the late 1960s/1970s.

The Hispanic population is the future of the Catholic Church in this country -- how much they have been assimilated into the humanisitic psychology/"fundamental option"/"formative spirituality" culture will determine whether the church goes the way of the dying mainline Protestant churches.

BTW, they're not figuring in the number of people who leave Catholicism, which is huge.