News From the Baltimore, MD, Diocese


The Baltimore Diocese announced a dramatic reduction in the number of churches. To justify this, it also made known that attendance at masses has plummeted. It was down before covid, it has not come back to the levels before covid. The Diocese told its members money from the sale of the empty buildings and property will stay in the Diocese and is not part of sexual abuse settlement which was for many millions of dollars.

The number of parishes will drop from about 61 to 23. There will be about 30 locations for worship and offices. The pews were 20% full before covid and now are 9% according to the Diocese website. While some of the decline can be attributed to a 10% drop in the population of the City of Baltimore proper, the Diocese includes some suburbs which, mostly, have not suffered as much population loss as central cities. The Diocese of Baltimore is the oldest one in the U.S. While times have been tough for downtown churches in big cities everywhere I've not heard of a retrenchment like Baltimore. 

One thing you can say for the Diocese of Baltimore, they are dealing with their situation realistically. That is, they are not saying, "Gosh, we're experiencing a little bump in the road here, things will get better soon when people realize they cannot be happy without returning to church." A very wealthy Catholic has been funding for years a "Return to home" media campaign. The ads invite former church goers to return. Numbers have continued to fall. That huge amount of money could have been spent on something useful.

The link talks of its Catholic convert numbers as well as children born to Catholics. The sum of these two do not equal the number dropping out. Of course, to even refer to children born to Catholics as a source of future Catholics is a joke. On the internet is a speech by the President of Missouri Synod Lutherans who brags that the future of his denomination is bright because their couples have slightly more children than other denominations. This is ridiculous because only a minority of children born into Christian families stay in the church.  

Catholic officials now seem to understand they cannot reverse the decline in those who attend or join their denomination. They are relegated to do what the rest of us are doing, sitting back and watching the future of Christianity unfold.

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