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More Parish Closings Nationwide - What Are We to Learn and Do? Msgr. Charles Pope • May 8, 2017 • It was recently announced that a substantial number of Catholic parishes will be closing in Connecticut. This is just the latest in a national trend that is likely to affect the diocese where you live, especially in the north. I’d like to offer some rather quick thoughts and then ponder what I think is the root cause for our decline. Bishops don’t close parishes, people do. While it may be juridically true that bishops formally certify or give recognition...

“This was harder than I thought it would be,” Margaret O’Brien told a CBS reporter last weekend. O’Brien, 86, had been one of the hundred or so parishioners holding a round-the-clock vigil at St. Frances X. Cabrini church in Scituate, Mass. Eleven years ago the Boston Archdiocese announced that it was closing the parish, a reorganization necessitated by the financial settlements after the clergy sex-abuse scandal. The parishioners at St. Frances have tried to alter the hierarchy’s decision using canon law as well as the US legal system, maintaining a presence in the building so it would not be sold...

Father Rutler discusses spiritual realities behind the decision to close 55 churches.Catholics in dozens of parishes in New York City and several other counties that make up the Archdiocese of New York learned the sad news that the church where they have been worshiping will be closing. As part of a major reorganization, Cardinal Timothy Dolan announced the results of a study aimed at saving badly-needed funds and shifting churches and priests to areas outside the city where the Catholic population is growing. One well-known parish that was spared the axe is the midtown Manhattan Church of the Holy Innocents,...

WatervlietThe landmark 137-foot-tall bell tower will be the last piece of St. Patrick's Church to fall, according to developers.Before that happens, perhaps before the end of the week, demolition crews from Dan's Hauling and Demo will take apart the rest of the church on 19th Street.The 179,000-pound excavator at the building's northeast corner will extend its 112-foot-long arm to peel off the copper roof."We'll try to take off the cross on the north side," Steve Powers, vice president of Nigro Companies, said.The former church's brick walls will be pushed in on themselves."The tower will probably be the last remaining part...

ALBANY — Cities across the greater Capital Region will bear the brunt of a massive plan to close 33 worship sites throughout the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, Bishop Howard Hubbard announced Saturday. Troy will be ground zero in an unprecedented consolidation the 14-county diocese is undertaking to cope with shifting demographics and a shortage of priests. Hubbard, despite lobbying to change the outcome, decided to close six of the Collar City's dozen Catholic churches. That is more than any other city. And the list of soon-to-be-shuttered Troy churches includes St. Peter's, the state's third-oldest Catholic parish.Elsewhere, St. Teresa of...

Among the casualties of Oakland’s new Cathedral of Christ the Light is Old St. Mary’s Church, a 155 year-old parish that will close permanently in September. Oakland Bishop Emeritus John Cummins celebrated a special Mass of thanksgiving on July 26 at Old St. Mary’s Church to honor former parishioners, alumni of the old parish school, and all those who had ministered at the parish since its founding in 1858. St. Mary’s parish, however, goes back a few more years. "Oakland's first Catholic chapel was established on this site in 1853," parishioner Grant Ute told the Oakland Tribune. "In the early...

She spent her life praising God at Our Lady Queen of Angels Church - but Carmen Gonzalez's funeral will be held on the sidewalk outside the East Harlem building today because the Archdiocese of New York shuttered it last winter. Gonzalez, 72, a nearly life-long Our Lady parishioner who died Monday after a bout with cancer, fought the closure until the end, leading loved ones to say that the unusual memorial would be most fitting. "I have mixed feelings about this, but on the other hand, I think my mom would be very happy and would approve," her son Alfred...

The canon Missioner for the Diocese of Colorado who is in charge of congregational development for the diocese, says that as many as 12 parishes will close with three already having made the decision to shut down. He calls it "holy dying." He also blames it on "National Church issues". Lou Blanchard, known unaffectionately as the "Grim Reaper of Church Growth" by an orthodox priest in the diocese, announced this week that St. Francis, Colorado Springs has made the decision to close after declining over several years for many reasons including National Church Issues. Their final service will be on...

WEYMOUTH - More than two dozen stained glass windows removed from Catholic churches that are closing throughout Greater Boston will be installed in the new Sacred Heart Church in Weymouth when it is rebuilt next year. Eleven of them will come from Sacred Heart in Lawrence, which will soon be low-income housing. ‘‘We’re very excited - the windows will be spectacular,’’ the Rev. Harry Kaufman of Sacred Heart in Weymouth said yesterday. The 130-year-old Weymouth Landing landmark was destroyed by fire in June. The church hopes to break ground on the new building in the fall, with construction scheduled to...

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York announced plans yesterday for the most sweeping reorganization in its history of more than 150 years, recommending the closing of 31 parishes and 14 schools throughout the metropolitan region.At the same time, the archdiocese recommended creating five new parishes in Staten Island, Orange County and Dutchess County and constructing several new church buildings, mostly in northern Westchester County, Rockland County and Dutchess County, where many Catholics who have left the city have relocated.The closings would hit the archdiocese the hardest in its southern parts — the Bronx, Staten Island, Manhattan, Yonkers and central...

LAWRENCEVILLE, Pa. — Hops ferment in vats where wine was once consecrated on the altar of the former St. John the Baptist Church in Lawrenceville, Pa. A confessional is a souvenir stand in a pub that advertises “heavenly cuisine.”It has been years since bells pealed over worshippers in this old red-brick church. Mass was last celebrated beneath its high-vaulted ceiling in 1993 when the Diocese of Pittsburgh shuttered and sold St. John’s. A sign out front now advertises The Church Brew Works.Church closings are a reality in older U.S. cities. Since 2002 the Archdiocese of Chicago closed 10. Catholics in...

THE Church of England is to demand an urgent government cash injection of £55 million a year to avert an “apocalypse” with the closure of hundreds of medieval churches. The Right Rev Richard Chartres, Bishop of London and the Church’s third most senior bishop, is calling on the Government to stop treating the Church as a “museum piece” and to recognise its contribution to modern Britain. “It’s not apocalypse now but it is limited apocalypse soon,” he said. “If no extra money is forthcoming we will see a spate of church closures and losses to whole communities of buildings that...

A congregation that refused to pay its dues in protest of the Episcopal Church of the USA's ordination of a homosexual bishop has been dissolved by its diocese. Rochester's Episcopal diocese in New York voted Saturday to shut down All Saints Episcopal Church in Irondequoit, according to the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle newspaper.The church's property and other assets are to be turned over to the trustees of the diocese. The church refused to pay $16,000 it owed the diocese after the 2003 ordination of Bishop Gene Robinson in New Hampshire – a practicing homosexual – and the denomination's decision to...

As parishioners struggle to save the Holy Trinity Church in the South End from closing, they say they are both fighting the loss of their spiritual home and resisting the possible demise of a tradition found nowhere else in the Archdiocese of Boston -- the Latin Mass. Many said they believed it is because of their traditionalist background that Holy Trinity is on the list, a charge a church spokesman said is untrue. Terrence C. Donilon, spokesman for the archdiocese, reiterated the basic reasons for church closures -- a shortage of priests, parishioners, and money -- and insisted the Latin...

Hub voters would be asked if the Archdiocese of Boston ``has failed'' in its handling of church closings in neighborhoods under a nonbinding ballot question to be proposed by a trio of city councilors today.      ``In the past we've had nothing but failure and breakdown in communication and in the future we need to have better communication,'' said Brighton City Councilor Jerry P. McDermott, the lead sponsor.      The measure, which will be introduced at today's City Council meeting, will be on the Nov. 8 ballot if it passes. Also sponsoring it are South Boston City Councilor James M. Kelly and...

ROCHESTER — Less than a year ago, Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson was the wedge that split the Church of the Redeemer. Yesterday, he presided over its final service, accepting gifts and praising parishioners for their faith and service to the church. Though it had been open for 100 years, the church had been hampered for years by financial difficulties. The difficulties worsened when the majority of parishioners decided to leave the church rather than accept the leadership of Robinson, who is openly gay.

Members of St. Nicholas' Episcopal Church and supporters from churches around the city, state and nation began to fill the pews nearly an hour before Sunday's service. By 7 p.m., chairs spilled out into the sanctuary's foyer until there was standing room only. It was the final Sunday many of St. Nicholas' parishioners would gather together in the building they built only four years ago. Nearly 90 percent of the congregation is leaving St. Nicholas' to begin Christ Church Midland (Anglican Communion) after Bishop Wallis Ohl of the Episcopal Diocese of Northwest Texas told those who were dissatisfied with the...

Dwindling attendance and money problems behind diocese's reason When Jane Chynoweth looks around St. Dunstan's Episcopal Church, memories flood her mind. The church is where she raised children, socialized with lifelong friends and worshiped for more than 40 years. Now it is closing. ... The church — one of two Episcopal congregations in Modesto — owes $150,000 to the Fresno-based diocese, parishioners and clergy said. The closure is based on dwindling attendance — and giving — at the Carver Road church, which draws about 50 Sunday worshipers. ... ... Duke Golden, chief financial officer for the diocese, confirmed the church...

TARIQ ZEHAWI / THE RECORDWhere once the pews were full, warden Roy Van De Voort exits St. Mary's Memorial Episcopal Church in Haledon, which will close for good Sunday. Where once the pews were full, warden Roy Van De Voort exits St. Mary's Memorial Episcopal Church in Haledon, which will close for good Sunday. It was once the town's elite church, a quaint, hilltop chapel overlooking crowded streets and humming textile mills.But now the red velvet seat cushions are flat and faded, the choir robes are moldy and the guest book hasn't had a new signature in more than...

BROOKLYN DIOCESE TO SHUT 26 SCHOOLS February 10, 2005 -- Twenty-six Catholic elementary schools in Brooklyn and Queens will close after the school year — forcing more than 4,100 youngsters to find new schools before September, the Diocese of Brooklyn said yesterday. The largest blood-letting in diocese history — announced on Ash Wednesday — comes less than four months after The Post first reported that as many as 25 parish schools were facing the closing bell because of dwindling enrollment. The affected schools, 17 in Brooklyn and nine in Queens, represent more than one in six schools in the diocese.