[Gamecock]

But I thought the Roman Catholic Church membership was growing!?!

[kearnyirish2]

The new members wouldn’t exactly be flocking to Buffalo, for economic & climate reasons. Even with the growth of the Latino & Philippino population in NJ, there will be more consolidations like this because the number of available priests to serve separate parishes is dropping, the building are getting older and more expensive to maintain, and there is no reason to build new churches as Americans attend less and less.

[Cronos]

Let's see Gamecock, Buffalo is a shrinking city, here are the population statistics from the US census bureau

Census	Population	%+/-
1950	580,132	0.7%
1960	532,759	-8.2%
1970	462,768	-13.1%
1980	357,870	-22.7%
1990	328,123	-8.3%
2000	270,240	-7.7%
Estimated 2009	270,240	-7.7%

So Buffalo has shrunk to nearly 50% of it's population, with people leaving to go to other parts of the country. In fact, as per wikipedia , Buffalo's current population is equivalent to its population in the year 1890, reversing 120 years of demographic change.

The East Side was Polish-American and the West, Italian American, but now the Poles have moved out and the East side is predominantly an AFrican-American neighborhood.

The Muslim population has increased and is now 3,000 --> 1.5% of the city's population --> now THAT should be the news you and I should be worried about

[Claud]

You’re in New York, you know what’s going on the Northeastern cities. Those beautiful churches in the cities were built from the pennies of immigrants—first Germans and Irish, then Italian, Polish, etc. They rose up right in the middle of strong ethnic neighborhoods.

Then everybody in these ethnic communities started moving out to the burbs. Lots of these churches found themselves without a parish anymore.

So what you’re seeing with closings in Northeastern cities is a local phenomenon that’s not reflected in the national numbers. I believe the Church grew nationally in 2010.

[wintertime]

From the tone of the article, I suspect that these were old ethnic neighborhoods with a changing demographic.

The question that was not answered in the article is whether or not parishes in other areas are growing.

By the way...My Catholic alma mater in Philadelphia closed a few years ago. The area is losing population. There are many abandoned houses, and there simply are not enough students ( Catholic or non-Catholic) to justify keeping the school open.

[MortMan]

The Buffalo Bishop is very, very (VERY) liberal.

Catholicism in this diocese is not traditional Roman Catholicism.