Long Decline In Attendance Led To Catholic Church Mergers

[trotsky]

http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-catholic-church-shifting-population-20170511-story.html

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Educated by nuns in rural Maine, Pat Flynn has been a devout Catholic for most of her 77 years.

"I love my religion," Flynn said as she arrived for Sunday Mass at St. Rose, a red-brick church with a white steeple on a quiet side street.

Flynn and her husband, Peter, continue to attend church regularly, but their children, who were raised Catholic, do not. "They go when they have to go, on the holidays, but they hardly go anymore," she said, noting that just one of her four grandchildren has been baptized. "I think we're pretty representative of most families."

The Flynn family's experience is playing out in parishes across the Northeast as the Roman Catholic Church responds to a new reality that's been building for decades: increasingly, the pews are empty.
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[OnDoutside]

1. They've only themselves to blame. it's as bad here in Ireland,

Many priests are well over 60, and are looking after a number of parishes especially country areas. With all the child abuse, Magdalene Laundries and other scandals, not to mention the cover-up, that is still going on today, people lost faith. The best thing they could do, apart from truly repenting, is bring in married priests for the parishes.

[TreasonousBastard]

2. That's true of most churches...

Explanations vary, but my guess is that more people looking for a spiritual experience are looking for it without the dogma and mythology.

It's slowly sinking in that the gods of our ancestors just doesn't fit in with the infinite universe we are exploring.

[greymattermom]

3. Also spiritual experiences

sometimes happen at times that aren't Sunday morning.

[TreasonousBastard]

5. True enough. Unitarian Universalists have been trying Soulful Sundown...

as a way to entice younger people into the church at other times.

[trotsky]

4. Not necessarily.

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Lachance left Catholicism for another church, but *increasing numbers of Americans are abandoning religion altogether.* "This is a tough period for organized religion," Walsh said. "The Catholic Church has to wrestle with general change in the culture, including the sense that religion is a matter of personal choice, not family identity."

The increased secularization of American society has hit many religious groups hard — causing sharp drops in church attendance among mainline Protestant churches, the closing of synagogues and a steady rise in the number of "nones," people who do not identify with any religion.
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[TreasonousBastard]

6. That's essentially what I said. Religion in general is becoming irrelevant...

but there is that gray area of spiritual experience that some people are still looking for. In the 19th Century there was a huge revival of spiritualism that filled that gap for a while.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/spiritualism/history/history.shtml

Spiritualism was popular, not just because it could entertain and provide comfort to the believer, but also because it seemed to combine the empirical methods and discoveries of science (such as the invisible force of electricity) with the religious idea of the afterlife.

[trotsky]

8. This post makes the distinction that your other one did not.

Thank you. "*some* people are still looking for" spiritual experience.

[AtheistCrusader]

7. Makes sense, as a business. Radio Shack did the same thing.

Similar quality products too.

[trotsky]

9. Hey Radio Shack had much more useful stuff than the RCC.

When the case for an old TV remote broke back in college (it was very simple, only had buttons for on/off/volume and channel up/down), I went to Radio Shack to get a project box and some contact switches to re-house the electronics. Worked perfectly for many more years.

[Lordquinton]

10. Radio shack had product guarantees

Religion has no such burden.