Posted on 12/07/2018 8:54:49 AM PST by Salvation
Lincoln Congregational Temple in Shaw, credit: NCinDC, Flickr
As I walk or drive through my Capitol Hill neighborhood here in Washington, D.C., I pass by more than twenty churches (all of them Protestant) that have been closed in the past decade. Many of them are grand and prominent buildings. (Click here to see four of them.) Most of the them have been converted to condominiums, likely due to historic preservation norms that seek to retain the exterior appearance of historic buildings.
A recent study by the local non-profit organization Sacred Spaces Conservancy confirms my anecdotal evidence about the large number of closures. On Capitol Hill, a growing neighborhood with a tremendous number of row houses, about 40 percent of buildings used for worship have closed [*]. Such a figure is shocking and demonstrates a collapse of religious observance. Our Catholic parishes have suffered as well, but thankfully none of them have closed.
As always, there is important detail behind the numbers. At the root is a dramatic demographic shift in the population of the District of Columbia. The once majority-black city is no longer so; African-Americans now make up less than 50 percent of the population. The new arrivals to the city are also younger. To say that the city is undergoing gentrification is not really accurate. The majority of the new residents are not gentry at all; they are largely young adults, saddled with college debt and unable to afford to own property. The median home price in this area is close to one million dollars. Because most of them do not have the means to buy a home, they rent, and even then must usually share with others to make it affordable.
This is the new demographic reality: A once solidly African-American area is now more racially diverse and younger as well. The new residents are in general less religiously observant and those who are “religious” are less tied to particular denominations or congregations. This is a challenge to institutions established in a very different world.
This has affected Protestant and Catholics in different ways.
The Protestant Experience:
There are reasons that the Protestant congregations have been more affected by the changes than the Catholic parishes. In general, Protestant denominations were and are divided in that they served specific groups defined by both racial and sectarian lines. For example, there might have been ten “Baptist” churches in a fairly small area, but they weren’t serving just different Baptist denominations; there were White Baptists, Black Baptists, Primitive Baptists, Free Will Baptists, and so forth. Add to this a slew of other denominations and distinctions such as African Methodist Episcopal, Evangelical Lutheran, Missouri Synod Lutheran, High Church Episcopal, Low Church Episcopal, and Broad Church Episcopal. The city churches were built during a time when these distinctions mattered.
However, it is the racial focus of Protestant churches that looms largest of all in this city. Dr. Martin Luther King once observed that the most segregated day of the week is Sunday. This still rings largely true. It wasn’t just race, it was the length of the service and styles of worship, preaching, and music. Black churches in solidly black neighborhoods could flourish in many varieties from storefront churches to megachurches to historical “anchor” churches such as Metropolitan Baptist and Foundry United Methodist. African-American congregations that identify strongly with black traditions of worship have not adjusted easily to the demographic shifts of recent years. Thus, they face the choice of either moving to where their congregants have moved or closing. It isn’t just “inflexible” niche marketing that is the problem; whites who move in are not easily persuaded to attend their services. Whether it is liturgical style, preaching content, or just the “awkward” experience of being a minority, whites and other non-African-American arrivals don’t join in large enough numbers to shore up a declining congregation.
In short, the combination of changing demographics and denominational division has spelled disaster for many traditionally black congregations. Some of them have moved to the suburbs; others have closed. Focusing on a niche market is a problem when the niche disappears or moves away.
As for the mainline (largely white) Protestant churches, I would argue that a collapse of faith has depleted them, at least collectively. Many of them ceased preaching the “old time religion” a long time ago, having largely assimilated to a post-Christian world and acclimated to the sexual revolution. Gone are the moral demands of the gospel, which have been replaced by a social “gospel.” Gone is the drama of salvation. Jesus is less Lord and Savior and more a good man and ethical teacher. For those who think the Catholic Church should chart a similar course, please note that as much as we have declined, the mainline Protestant churches have collectively seen an utter collapse in attendance [**].
The Catholic experience:
The experience of the Catholic parishes on Capitol Hill has not been ideal, but it is better, and we can survive collectively. There are reasons for this.
Our first commitment is generally to serve a neighborhood or region. In a certain sense, the whole world is divided up into parishes. Every diocesan parish has a boundary. Boundaries used to tell Catholics where they should attend Mass. Today, boundaries tell the Church where we are supposed to go. A parish is responsible for every person who lives within its boundaries. Thus, with few exceptions, the parish stays put whether its founding parishioners remain or move away. Although there are a few ethnic parishes here and there (mainly due to language and/or a special rite) that aim to serve only a particular group, this sort of “niche marketing” is generally frowned upon.
The Catholic Church is catholic (universal). My own parish has gone from a solidly African-American parish to one that is more than 40 percent non-African-American. In this, it is beginning to reflect the current makeup of the neighborhood, which is more racially diverse and much younger than it was. Noting this, we did a very Catholic thing. Although the changes brought stress, we went out to meet our neighbors. We knocked on doors; we talked to them in the park and at the local market. Over time we’ve adjusted to their needs; at their request we began an evening Mass that has become quite popular (it seems that younger people tend to be night owls). We still have our longer, vibrant Gospel Mass for the benefit of our traditional parishioners, some of whom have stayed in the neighborhood and others who have moved away but continue to attend Mass here on Sundays. This has been the second big sea-change in this parish and neighborhood. (The first one took place after World War II, when the neighborhood became solidly black.) Through it all, our parish stays and cares for whoever lives here.
That said, things are not nearly as good or strong as they should be in the Catholic Parishes of Capitol Hill. Not one of them has more than 1000 people in attendance on Sunday. The largest has just under 900; mine has 600; two of them have fewer than 200. Several of our schools have closed. Part of the reason for the smaller number of parishioners is that all these parishes were built before the advent of the automobile and thus are much closer to one another than is true in the suburbs. People in my neighborhood have three Catholic parishes within walking distance, with Masses offered at all sorts of different times, lowering the number in any one parish.
Yet, truth be told, all our Capitol Hill parishes were once much fuller. The parish schools were bursting with children and our rectories and convents were brimming. To some degree, the fact that all our parishes are still open is based on inertia from prior times. We were bigger than the Protestant congregations to begin with and so it’s taken longer to erode. The danger is that we are parking on someone else’s dime; the fuel that those of the past left us is dwindling to mere fumes. The generation that built our parish churches was poorer than we are in a monetary sense but seemingly richer in faith. There was a time when more than 80 percent of Catholics went to Mass weekly. Today it’s only about 20 percent and the figure has been dropping by the year. The current scandal has surely not helped, but the problem is deeper, older, and wider than that. Despite the steep drop in attendance, it has often been “business as usual”; our focus seems to be institutional more so than Christological or eschatological.
The problem is not a local one in Capitol Hill. This steep decline has occurred throughout the Western world. A secular world has, by definition, a worldly focus and little time or thought for God. The Catholic Church has not always responded well to this.
There isn’t the time to set up a complete scheme for evangelization, but as most of you who read here know, I think accommodation/watering down of the faith is precisely the wrong path. We must shine brightly in a world of increasing darkness. As Catholics and Catholic parishes, we are called to love everyone, but we must love them enough to tell them the truth. A fiery love for Christ that holds Him in awe and deeply respects His teachings must be combined with a true love for souls such that we strive to save them rather than merely pleasing them.
In a neighborhood with an increasing population, no church that was once full should close. We cannot simply blame demographics for decreasing numbers of parishioners. If every parishioner found one convert or returnee, the parish would double in size. Is that really so hard? What percentage of our parishioners can say they have ever gotten even one person to return to Church and the sacraments? Blaming demographics is a convenient excuse.
If secularism has swept in, we cannot simply lament it; we must accept the responsibility that it has happened on our watch. We must meet the challenge with fortitude and with the knowledge that the Lord built a worldwide Church with a cadre of leaders who hardly looked promising. He did it against all odds. He asks that we bring our five loaves and two fishes and promises to multiply the harvest of holiness and the numbers as well. His graces are not exhausted, and His mercies are not withheld if we but ask and act.
What are your five loaves and two fishes? What are your parish’s five loaves and two fishes? Not one Catholic parish should close in a neighborhood where people still live. Even if the “old-timers” have moved on, there is still a harvest of human beings to bring in. The harvest is plentiful, so ask the Lord of the harvest, “Lord, who is that one person in my family or among my friends to whom you are sending me? Show me, Lord, and I will go to work.”
There is one rule I think that holds fast.
That is: Any organization is only as good as its leadership is good. And, the people in it are only as good as the leadership allows them to be good.
That said, there are some good leaders in the Catholic Church, but they are stifled by their leadership.
Back 35 years ago, myself and some friends bought a fairly modern church building to expand our church group.
We found the shocking reality is they are VERY expensive to run.
The ones build 100+ years ago are frighteningly expensive to run.
Eventually, more and more effort goes into funding the building and less and less goes into religious activity.
Eventually we sold the building.
This applies as well to the Catholic Church.
Catholics, when was the last time you heard a homily that honestly faced the danger posed to our immortal souls by our personal behavior, that called us to repent and turn our lives over to Jesus?
What is the focus of our shepherds but the promotion of leftist politics, in between their frenzied bouts of faggotry?
The Church has not been in the salvation business for a long time, and the falling out of the formerly faithful is not nearly finished.
But Jesus will not abandon us. The Church will be purged of the filth and the faithless, emerging smaller yet stronger, once again gathering the sheep to the Good Shepherd.
I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, the national capital of “closed Churches.” Much of our church closings is simply attributable to “natural causes.”
At one time, my home town had 15 Catholic Churches, all with free parish schools. There is now one Catholic Church, and no parish schools. Talk about painful.
The elderly caucasians have died or are in their 90s. They were the parents who sent my generation to parish schools. When the steel mills shut down their kids had to seek new
employment horizons. Like me and and my wife. Those who stayed went on public assistance. My hometown is nothing but Section 8 housing. And they don’t go to Mass.
“I believe that the degree of loss within Catholicism ties directly to defending pedophiles”
The problem is not pedophiles. The problem is ordinary, garden-variety homosexuals. The evildoers advance the notion of rampant pedophilia to take the heat off themselves.
“Canonizing JP2 was a bad idea...JP2 should have used papal authority to clean out the perverts.”
Yes. The floor of Hell is paved with the skulls of bad bishops.
“Overall, it’s a self made mess.”
Who is the “self” that made it? Faggot priests? Lay people who neglected to lay hands upon pervert priests and throw them out of the churches and into the gutter?
Aside from Satan and those who serve him, who is to blame?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qht73MF6C84
add to that, living in pain and years of unanswered prayers. What if prayer will only make things worse?
Amen!
Your perception is directly counter to people with whom I know directly effected by the pedophiles. You are claimingmin direct contradiction to my experience that the perception of rampant pedophilia was created by ordinary run of the mill homosexuals (who are also part of the problem) and that is simply untrue. My perception of rampant pedophilia comes from knowing bot men and women who were affected by pedophiles within the Catholic Church - some of whom had an audience with JP2 out of which nothing came. Try again.
That sucks. Crying ass shame that industries in America took such a beating that entire neighborhoods, towns and cities were transformed like that.
Most American Protestant denominations are no longer recognizably Christian. I won’t go to any church affiliated with a mainline denomination.
Where you will find the real churches is meeting in people’s homes, renting movie theaters, meeting at public school gyms and cafeterias to the extent that hasn’t been shut down by the atheists.
“Add to that, living in pain and years of unanswered prayers. What if prayer will only make things worse?”
William L. Brown wrote, “The attempt to make God just in the eyes of sinful men will always lead to error.”
Addressing this question in any meaningful way requires something that people like this almost universally lack: a familiarity with theology on an adult level.
People abandon religion in their teens, or these days often have no exposure, then make decisions and issue proclamations as though they were acquainted with Christian thought. It’s sad.
Hey! Bad news. It isn’t a loss of faith, it is a rejection and disgust with an increasingly degenerate and out of touch clergy.
Most modern churches just innoculate people into believing they are saved from their sins and they are all going to heaven. Either they are taught once you are baptized you go to heaven, no matter what you do (e.g., the Episcopagans), or they teach that everything is ok with God and Jesus. Finally they make sure no one in their congregations actually reads the Bible. If they did, they would be shocked by the difference between what Scripture says and what the churches are telling them.
“Your perception”
It is not “my perception.” Those are the facts, gleaned from actual reports of the incidents by people with access thereto.
Perhaps the problem lies with the definition of “pedophilia.” It is the attraction to children who have not reached puberty. Attraction to 10-year-olds is pedophilia. Attraction to 15-year-olds is not pedophilia. Never was, never will be.
“the perception of rampant pedophilia was created by ordinary run of the mill homosexuals (who are also part of the problem) and that is simply untrue.”
There is no “rampant pedophilia.” The vast majority of victims were teenage boys. That’s homosexuality, not pedophilia. Reports of widespread pedophilia are fake news, plain and simple.
Since Trump threw his hat in the ring more and more people have come to understand that we are subject to lying fake-news every day. Thank God for that. Some, however, have not yet drilled down far enough to see that fake news shaped mainstream opinion of Kennedy, the Vietnam War, Nixon, and now the nature of the problem with Catholic clergy.
The Good Monsignor is trying to shove this off on outside social forces.
For the most part it’s the BAD DECISIONS of Church leadership that has caused this.
Closing established parishes in inner-city neighborhoods to go and chase new money out in the suburbs.
Sweep a sex abuse scandal under the rug for decades and then find yourselves on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements, judgments and legal fees.
etc.
“If they did, they would be shocked by the difference between what Scripture says and what the churches are telling them.”
My experience with Protestantism over the past few decades has been very limited, so I’ll have to take your word for all that.
Since the feast of the Immaculate Conception (Dec 8) falls this year on a Saturday. Today my rural local parish My pastor comes from SriLanka (Ceylon)is holding a 5:30 pm vigil mass for the feast of the Immaculate Conception and an 8am mass on Saturday because of the regular Sunday vigil mass said at 5:30 pm on Saturday will not apply to Our Lady’s feast.
Frankly I expect both both masses to be lightly attended. I’m lucky to have a priest let alone have masses said on what were Holy Days of Obligation. Immaculate Conception was the name of the church and grammar school (12 Franciscan sisters) I attended while a kid in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood. The school has since been closed the parish disbanded and the church rededicated and given to the Holy Family religious order.
Just a couple of examples from just the past couple of days.
All of this is predicted in Scripture. Isiah 4:1 is my favorite. It basically says in the Last Days there will be 7 women ( women are denominations or churches)that will love one man (Jesus), and they will eat their own food (make their own doctrines) and wear their own garments (a garment is your righteousness-call evil good and good evil) but they want to be called Christian instread of the church of Satan. But there are multiple verses saying the love of the church will grow cold, there will be this lukewarm church in the Last Days, and so many other examples anyone can see what we will be up against as we approach the Last days. If you visit a newer growing church, most likely you would find one that preaches grace more than burning in hell. Most likely speaks in tongues as a sign of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Will preach more sermons on everything repeating itself such as the Antichrist is a type of Nimrod in Babylon, a type of Pharaoh that forgot Joseph, a type of Antiochus Epiphanies that killed a pig on the altar and declared himself god in the Temple according to Maccabees, and others. We see and preach that it will be as the days of Noah and Lot in the Last Days. Of course the days of lot is the emergence of sodomy being accepted and the Days of Noah refers to evil is good and good is evil and the corruption of the image of God with demonic seed.
Pretty much everything that uses robes, collars, and church furniture make men(and now women)the authority and not Jesus and His Word, is failing. There are multiple verses about large "trees" ( gatherings of people. Trees are people, Jesus said I am the vine you are the branches.) They have "beasts of the field" and "birds" in their branches. Beasts of the field are demons and birds are demons living in the people and demons are in the shade of the tree.) A demonic church will fail. Scripture says God will cut it down but leave the stump.
If we hang on to our denomination more than we hang on to Jesus and the Word of God, God will cut it down. It's not the people, it's the teaching. The message of God has beckoned people for thousands of years successfully. The farther we get from the teachings of the Bible, God will give us up to a reprobate mind.(Romans 1:28) A reprobate mind cannot think straight so the FIRST indication we are losing our minds is sodomy (Rom 1:24) They thought they were wise, but became fools. Doesn't "science" say it's OK to be Gay? Would teaching that God is creator and rejecting evolution stop this slide to Gomorrah? (Rom 1:20)
It's really easy to fix this, but we probably won't. We have reverted back to the original sin. We took Satan's advice and made ourselves as gods and worship ourselves. We are more proud of being a Catholic, Methodist, or Baptist, than following Scripture. We are so concerned that we are right and everyone else is wrong that we would rather go down swinging rather than stand with Jesus.
Another thing we do is worry about sin. Jesus either took our sin on the cross or He didn't. We point at each other and tell everyone I'm better that they are. No, you are just like the biggest sinner there is, but you have been forgiven. Our continuous sin is our nature. We should try to sanctify ourselves and be holy people put aside for God and stop worrying about our neighbors sin. It's his/her problem. If you keep pointing at your neighbors splinter, someone may notice the log you carry. You will never get believers by pointing out people's sins, but tell them God loves them and gave His Son to rescue them. Hellfire and Brimstone is fine to preach for informational purposes, but the love of God will overpower the desire for sin if the people are told about it. Our pride will always tell us we are better than the next guy or God doesn't really care about the sin I do. I can't count the number of lost people that tell me they don't go to church because of something another Christians has done to them. They immediately say "I'm better than they are".
bump for later
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