NY Archdiocese 112 Parishes Will Be Merged to Create 55 New Parishes

WHY? If one can be saved in any religion, why bother with the “burden” of the One True Religion’s demands? Why bother going to Mass or Confession? Protestants can be saved without these sacraments. For that matter, so can Jews, Moslems, Buddhists, Hindus, even atheists who are sincere in their atheism. Does going to Mass just make me “feel good”? Good for me, but my Protestant friend doesn’t need it. He loves Jesus too, and he feels quite good about that. And he reads the Bible more than I do — “Praise the Lord, Amen!” So, we have a new liturgy,  more and more boring and banal, that reflects this desacralization. Well, I am preaching to the choir here. We all know this. Been through it since the 60s. The “experiment” has failed and continues to fail, as anyone can see whose eyes are open. But the hierarchs march on, oblivious. Just close another school, another church. Demographics? Why? Could it be because Catholics have been contracepting themselves into the sterile oblivion of a demographic wasteland? No Catholic children playing in the city streets or in the suburbs of America! They are not there. Others are there, but, Catholic children are becoming a minority. In Europe it is even worse. The children in Catholic parishes are lonely, just a few friends. Few bother with sports because one has to be good enough to “make the team.” And outside of that there is hardly any intramural neighborhood sports for “teenage” boys. Not in walking distance. When I was in my teens, I would just walk out the door, up the street, or down the street, and there was sports. Hoops were everywhere. If nothing else, there was stick ball, which only took four. Curb ball if we had to stay at home. I don’t know if anyone reading this would know what curb ball was.  It was natural. No supervision necessary; it just happened, because there were so many of us.  No, social life comes only with strangers on the internet. It’s easy and completely impersonal. No doctrine, no morals, and ergo, no children — just the two that we can afford. We can give them so much more attention than we could if we had to raise any more than that. We are becoming in the Christian West like China where children have no brothers and sisters, no aunts and uncles. Mommy and Daddy’s parents were not allowed to have more than one child. But the Catholics in the West do this voluntarily.

Father George Rutler, who takes care of two parishes in NYC, one of which offers the traditional Latin Mass daily, has a personal perspective on these closings. His critical comments are based on his own pastoral experience and concerns.

NYTimes: The reorganization announced on Sunday has been long in coming, reflecting demographic trends that have plagued Roman Catholic dioceses across much of the nation for decades. The number of priests has fallen each year, as retirements outpace ordinations. And attendance has been declining; as of 2013, only about 12 percent of the New York archdiocese’s 2.8 million Catholics regularly attended Sunday Mass, according to the archdiocese. Full report is here.