[NYer]

This is indeed a painful situation for practicing catholics. Regardless of your personal feelings towards Cardinal Dolan, one must acknowledge that the demographics of New York City have undergone a tremendous shift since many of these churches were built by European immigrants. It is especially anxious for me to await the fate of St. Michael's Church on W. 34th Street where my great, great grandparents baptized their 5 children. The current pastor is one you all recognize - Fr. George Rutler.

Ping!

[GeronL]

becoming mosques

[icwhatudo]

Spend less time doing “interfaith” services and more time spreading the faith.

Wierd how conservative areas are not closing Churches but are building them.

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

The consolidation makes sense. The sad thing is that they don’t build churches like they used to.

[miserare]

Not good news.

The American Church is dying.

[Oratam]

"Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth?"

Yes, but not in Manhattan.

[Lazamataz]

Jesus needs to hurry up.

[rwilson99]

High taxes + contraception.

Dropping population, and closing parishes.

[Heart-Rest]

"Pope Benedict reminded us that 'the vine must be pruned if it is to grow and produce fruit.'"

------------------------------------------------------------

Perhaps some of these cardinals should be pruned from the vine as well.

[married21]

If the original guests don’t want to come to the wedding, aren’t we supposed to go out into the streets and invite whoever, like in the parable?

Shouldn’t at least some of these parishes have thought about evangelization before they shrunk too much?

Shouldn’t we all be doing that?

[Eric Pode of Croydon]

"........but I still get to go to the Al Smith dinner every year with all my Democrat pals, so I'm not losing hope."

- Cardinal Dolan

[NKP_Vet]

Any town that has turned into liberal USA, like NY City, Buffalo, Pitt, Boston, are closing down Catholic Churches left and right. Liberals by and large don’t go to church. The Catholic Church is growing in the South and Catholic Churches are being built not torn down or sold to Muslims and Buddists, as is the case in the Northeast.

[Coleus]

a sign of the times, the white Europeans moved out of the cities and into the suburbs while the new Hispanic immigrants do not regularly attend mass...Yes, some churches do have a large Spanish mass but that’s usually because there may be only one Spanish mass in that church...from my observations here in the urban areas of new jersey, which is full of Hispanics, I see that a small percentage of them regularly attend mass. And many of them are joining fundamentalist, Mormon and