Mega Churches and Mega Downsizers

While there must be stories like this all over the world, the specific downsizing of the Baltimore, MD Catholic Parish is almost breathtaking. A decade ago, some secular pundits predicted the decline in Christian membership and participation would not be a linear one, a straight line, but the line would curve down accelerating in decline. Baltimore looks like it is experiencing the latter. Like dioceses across the U.S. it has taken bankruptcy.  

The number of parishes is falling from 61 to 21. The number of places of worship will soon be reduced from 56 to 26. There were once 250,000 Catholics in the Baltimore parish, now 40,000.

The huge old churches of the Catholic Church and those of many Protestant churches will eventually stand empty. Since they are not paying property taxes, those buildings need to be torn down or repurposed as tax paying and productive properties. There are so many of these churches now there are firms that specialize in remodeling them for other uses. These buildings are not always reused. Their value is then only the value of the land they sit on less the costs of building demolition.  

One lament written on Christian sites is that some Catholic parishes provided social services and these will now be gone. That is true. The services, however, we paid for by Catholics and in many cases grants from governments. If a Catholic Church no longer spends money providing this service the money is there for some other agency or government to use for that or some other service.

A person commenting on the link site wrote that Catholic numbers in Maryland are not dropping as much as the link article reports. It is common for Catholic defenders to use the church's numbers. It's numbers refer to baptisms. One a baby is baptized as a Catholic the denomination continues to include in "Catholic" statistics even if the child never sees the inside of a church the rest of her life. 

Across the U.S. Catholic dioceses are boarding up churches and reducing worship sites. The church does not have the number or priests it needs to keep sites open. Priesthood is not an attractive career option.  Nor is there cash flow to maintain the old buildings. Yes, there are places where masses are packed. There will be a Catholic denomination for a long time yet. But the decline continues.