Archdiocese Moves to Close Parishes

All Saints Church by Renwick – on the hit list? Photo: Craig Warga for The Wall Street Journal

From the Wall Street Journal:

SOURCE

“Attendance, Priest Shortages Are Cited”

The WSJ addresses “Making All Things New” in an article with number of surprising – and not-so-surprsing- omissions and inaccuracies. There is no mention, for example, of the role of real estate speculation in the plan – which currently seems to focus heavily on Manhattan. Even though quite a few offers and deals have been disclosed in the press over the last year involving closed or to be closed churches. And the impression is conveyed that the drastically declining mass attendance it due to people (physically)”moving on” rather than focusing on the crisis of religious practice found everywhere. The shortage of priests is acknowledged but seemingly accepted as a fact of nature – and not linked to the decline of attendance referenced above. Yet there are new tidbits of information on what is going on. A “church spokesman” said there is “no need” for ethnic parishes – I have never heard that stated as baldly before. Although the reasons given are not for me immediately understandable: “people travel widely to attend church, and communities largely mix inside the church.”

By the way, an Archdiocesan spokesman is quoted as stating that the Archdiocese ordains 8-10 men a year. Now, from Catholic New York and other press reports I find the following number of men ordained in the last 5 years for the archdiocese:

2009: 3
2010: 7
2011: 4
2012: 1
2013: 6 (including 1 from the North American College).
2014: 5 or 6 are expected, depending on the (official) source

In many of these years The Friars of the Renewal ordained as many graduates from Dunwoodie (the Archdiocesan seminary) as did the Archdiocese itself.

Compared to 30-40 a year in the 1960’s – says the Archdiocesan source.