Perhaps you are right concerning inner-city demographics. But Stoughton is a fairly wealthy suburb 15 miles south of Boston. The distribution of Catholic Churches in the area is still in-sync with the number of Catholics living there.
The problem is that the archdiocese is intent on selling churches to pay off the sexual abuse settlement, and that is not a problem about demographics. At the very least, the low Mass attendance of late is explainable as something the archdiocese itself is responsible for (the aftermath of the abuse scandal itself, heaped on decades of poor catechesis), and the archdiocese should be taking *serious* steps to do whatever is necessary to win people back and finally catechize them *before* it closes even one church.
Compounding the problem is the fact that the archdiocese, via the proceeds of a $100 million sale of seminary and chancery land and buildings last year, already HAS virtually the entire amount of the settlement ready to go. Why, then, does it feel the need to close one parish in five throughout the archdiocese at *this* time? Compounding the problem still further is the fact that the archdiocese is on public record as holding the deeds to over 1800 properties within the archdiocese itself (who knows what the potential figure is outside of it). Out of that, less than half have anything remotely to do with the primary mission of the Church (357 parishes, about 200 parish centers, 100 schools, a few hospitals). When one considers that *no* effort is being made to sell-off some of the income generating properties *first*, one can see the seeds for more long-term ill-will among already demoralized Catholics around here.
The Church is not "about" raising income, though, obviously, there is a need to raise funds. It's primary mission is to lay a foundation for the salvation of souls. Along the way to that end, the Church has an Everest of mea culpa's to put on prime time TV, an equally challenging mountain of retroactive orthodox catechesis to instill in nearly everyone under 55 or so, the immediate removal of the extremely large and entrenched gay subculture within the ranks of the clergy, and the purging of priests and other "professionals" who seem to think that the *only* mission of the Church is social service along the lines of the usual misguided "peace and justice" schtick.
When these things are accomplished, the Church may find itself welcoming back a lot more people due to a new sense of relevancy and contrition for past misfeasance, malfeasance and spiritual neglect. It *might* then need to have some in-place infrastructure to deal with the reverts. Closing the huge number of parishes contemplated is NOT a viable means to that end, and is a massive slap in the face to the descendants of the thousands of people who built these parishes with sweat equity and their scraped together pennies. These closures will serve to only guarantee that contributions will be *permanently* down in the long run. If the guys running the show around here are mere pragmatists, they might want to at least consider that fact.
Now that would be very bad financial planning. Those are the properties anybody would keep.
I don't think the shoes in Boston are through dropping. Unfortunately, the benchmark has been established that people can come forward and make allegations 30-40 years after the fact, when the offender and witnesses are all dead and memories have faded - doesn't seem to be any statute of limitations on this at all.
Now, the Boston archdiocese has nobody to blame but itself for being in this fix, given its long history of heterodox, pro-homosexual, enabling behavior. At the same time, though, they have put themselves in a fix where almost anyone can make an allegation and get a settlement. So they may see still more financial obligations coming down the road.
I would not be in Cardinal O'Malley's shoes for quids.