Statistics put out by my Diocese indicate that over the past fifteen years the number of Catholics has fallen by 1/3 and Mass attendance has fallen by half.
Follow the Money.
“It will be hard-going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek . . . The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution — when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain . . . But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.”
- Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. “The church will become small.” from Faith and the Future (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2009).
I assume by your FR handle ... somewhere in Ohio?
“Statistics put out by my Diocese indicate that over the past fifteen years the number of Catholics has fallen by 1/3 and Mass attendance has fallen by half”
You always post the most bleak reports about life in New Jersey or wherever you happen to be. I feel bad for you. Here, where I am in Washington State, attendance is booming and I was at a very healthy Confirmation meeting last night.