[Pontiac]

The Catholic Church is the largest and numerically fastest growing church in America, with 67.8 million members, a growth of about 563,000 members.

And yet the Bishops are closing and selling a huge number of small and midsize parishes to raise money to pay off lawyers.

[dangus]

>> And yet the Bishops are closing and selling a huge number of small and midsize parishes to raise money to pay off lawyers. <<

I've lived in Boston. Believe me, those churches are dead. I'd go to a high-noon mass. There would be me, the priest, the lecter, a few old ladies, and a very big, fat fly you can't help noticing because it's the only form of life.


Go figure; child-raping perverts preaching statism from the altar don't effectively maintain church attendance. Who'd've thought? (/sarcasm)
The growth is outside of the cities like Boston where the church-closings are.

Now, of course, it is criminal if churches are being sold off for the money. On the other hand, if they are shutting down the parish and leaving the church for an oratory, that is unfortunate, but understandable given the absence of congregations.

[Conservative til I die]

And yet the Bishops are closing and selling a huge number of small and midsize parishes to raise money to pay off lawyers.

Actually a lot of it is geodemographic shifts. I live in the NY Metro area and in some of the neighborhoods on the West Side of Manhattan that are primarily industrial now, you might have three Churches within a 4-block radius. You might have 500 congregants max across those Churches. Property is extremely expensive in NY. It makes sense to consolidate those parishes.