Posted on 04/05/2021 6:30:27 PM PDT by marshmallow
Chicago, Ill., Mar 31, 2021 / 06:01 pm MT (CNA).- Amid a plan to merge and close dozens of parishes, the Archdiocese of Chicago has disproportionately closed parishes that minister to black Catholics due to low attendance, according to an archdiocesan official.
“There have been disproportionate numbers of closings in the Black Catholic community, but this is going on all across the Diocese,” Cliff Barber, chief strategy officer of the archdiocese, said in a March 29 interview with the Chicago Crusader, a publication that focuses on the African American community.
“There has been some shared pain here, but it’s just been disproportionate in the Black Catholic community.”
Barber also heads the archdiocese’ Black Catholic Initiative, which seeks to support the Black Catholic community in the city. Barber said there are about 6,000 Mass-attending Black Catholics in the archdiocese, heavily concentrated in the south and west sides of the city.
The Chicago archdiocese has been closing and merging parishes for several years, with the latest round of mergers announced March 9-10.
One such parish is the predominantly African-American St. Peter Claver Mission, which will join the parishes of St. Benedict and St. Walter under a new parish name.
The Chicago archdiocese lists nearly forty parishes on its website as ministering specifically to the black community; Baker said there are nearly 800 predominantly Black Catholic parishes across the U.S., most of which are located in the east and south.
Overall, the church closures and mergers are part of Cardinal Blase Cupich’s project “Renew My Church,” which he announced in 2016. At the time, around 100 parishes were expected to close due to a shortage of priests and church buildings in need of repair.
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicnewsagency.com ...
Isn’t it racist to target predominantly black congregations? And it sounds like they admit they are targeting them.
Where’s Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan, et. al.???
Yes it’s interesting because In Europe: African-majority congregations keep churches open period. As Europeans on the whole are more secular than Americans in practice. But African-Americans tend to lean Protestant.
I was just saying in my above post that while African-Americans tend to lean Protestant, there are large swaths of African expats who are Catholic who seem to singlehandedly keep ‘dying’ churches in Europe alive...as Europeans themselves increasingly avoid church.
As far as USA is concerned, I was under impression majority of black Catholics are concentrated in Louisiana due to French/Creole connection.
Cupcake Cupich is closing 100 Parishes and making $$$ selling the land. The Chicago Archdiocese is totally corrupt.
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