[afraidfortherepublic]

Video at source

[afraidfortherepublic]

Parish closing ping

[ALPAPilot]

Why don’t they just buy it from the Archdioces?

[icwhatudo]

They let the homosexuals and leftists take over the seminaries, now they are selling valuable Church properties to pay the settlements from sex abuse victims. What a shame.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

I can’t speak to all denominations, but I am familiar with the organization, if that is the word, of Baptists. When Baptists in a local area form a congregation, they incorporate the church which they create. That corporation has a constitution defining its organization and assigning authority to individuals, office holders and bodies such as trustees and deacons. Although Baptist churches may associate in, for example, the Southern Baptist Convention, and the convention itself will have officers, they are in no sense a hierarchy above the local churches. If the head of a local association tried to assert authority over a local church, that church could just withdraw fellowship from the association - and that would be that.

The Catholic Church is different than a Baptist Church. It does have a hierarchy which has authority. As such, when the faithful of a Catholic parish raise the money to buy land and erect a church building, they are doing so in the name of the hierarchy of the church, not in their own right; the local congregation is not an independent corporation owning its own facilities. If the local congregation tries to assert authority over itself, it has a legal problem because the property is in the name of the hierarchy, not that of the local congregation. But if you are a Catholic, I suppose that you believe that that is as it should be.

And it has to be said that the Baptist organization is naturally prone to splits in congregations - which they try to turn into a virtue by creating two churches where there had been only one. Sometimes that even works.

[NYer]

Truly sad! Here in the RC Diocese of Albany, there were 6 churches in Watervliet, some of them totally solvent and in the black. That did not stop the bishop from closing 5 of them! BTW, the bishop never appeared at any of the meetings held to discuss the number of churches to close. Today, 5 years later, many of those catholics have either stopped attending church (too crippled to drive to the sole, remaining church) while others have joined a large, evangelical church (the shopping mall church has now doubled in size to accommodate the influx of these catholics). There are workable solutions that should be explored.