"When rural parishes close, by and large people stop going to Church."
In a guest post, Matthew Walton of Palmerston North brings to our notice a recent Dutch study on the effects of the closure of country parishes.
"As village churches close, Dutch Catholics leave faith rather than worship elsewhere" reads the headline in Crux.
https://cruxnow.com/church-in-europe/2020/01/as-village-churches-close-dutch-catholics-leave-faith-rather-than-worship-elsewhere/
"The willingness of people to attend Mass in another church nearby is shockingly low," reports Crux. "Church closure is not only the result of people leaving the Church, but as a result of a church closing more people decide to leave the Church."
"People come to see the functions of a parish as superseded by other community activities" Walton reports in his summary.
"So, when the parish closes, the Church gradually comes to be seen as no longer useful. Of course people will still go many miles for a "worthwhile" service. The sense of community that a parish fosters, however, has, by then, gone. So, effectively, the Faith dies or goes into hibernation.
"I have read others' comments on the Faith dying in rural areas of New Zealand. My wife Teresa and I remember an Ormondville parishioner telling us that when the Norsewood church closed, people stopped going to Mass.
"For professional people like bishops, priests and lay educators - who are supposed to understand what makes communities tick - one would think this would be a recognised phenomenon. It occurs also in the economy - when industry is taken away and nothing replaces it, rural communities decline.
All we seem to have had from our ecclesial authorities, however, is the lame reasoning that, "Er, well, not enough people are going to church now.
"How have we come to this?"
I add:
This is brought home to me every time I drive past the empty site of St Vincent's Takapau, on my way to Mass at Our Lady of the Southern Star Abbey, just 10 minutes away at Kopua, which offered an attractive alternative to parishioners in that you could walk in the door for Mass and out again at the end, without being lumbered with proclaiming the word, 'Eucharistic Ministry', arranging the flowers, mowing the lawns - or paying for the re-roofing.
Arguably, the abbey was the trigger for the closure of St Vincent's, which is now an events venue at the local Stately Home, Orua Wharo. Significantly, the Sunday congregation at the abbey itself is now a fraction what it was.
But NZ's Bishops - and priests and laypeople - should not accept this. We should not be sitting back, folding our hands and saying oh dear, how sad, never mind.
It's uphill work though, persuading our bishops that everything in the garden is not rosy. My nice old codger - he's a pertinacious old codger - has just made it through today to Cardinal John Dew with his objections to the celebration of Sacred Heart Napier's End-of-Year Mass in the Anglican Cathedral.
"What's wrong with that?" asked the Cardinal. "I've used the Anglican Cathedral in Wellington myself. The Mass gets celebrated in all sorts of places. In war, for example."
"That's a matter of necessity," said the old codger to the Cardinal. Then somehow they got started on Pope Francis, which wasn't what the old codger wanted to talk about. He wanted to get on to abortion and the Amazon Synod.
"Pope Francis is the best leader I've ever known," said the Cardinal. "He's leading us beautifully."
"I don't think he is," said the old codger. "Since Vatican II we've lost 98% of our congregations."
(I think he was getting a bit carried away, but it's a fact that only 13 per cent of British Catholics, for instance, now attend Mass weekly. Just as startlingly, 37 per cent of baptised Catholics answered “None” when asked whether they had a religion.)
"We'll have to agree to disagree," said the Cardinal to the old codger.
"He didn't want to know," said the old codger to me. "He closed me down. As soon as I disagreed with him he shut up shop."
Their conversation lasted "a minute or so".
Anyhow, back to Crux,which reports:
"Rik Torfs, a professor of church law at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium believes it’s important that the Church continues to approach people “with a fresh outlook” and doesn’t get too caught up in organizational matters.
“Despite the clumsy way in which churches tend to spread their message, I think that the content of the message is so strong that at some point it will receive more attention,” said Torfs.
“We just have to believe in it ourselves. Because who will want to become a member of a club that only talks about reorganization and downsizing? That’s not attractive.
“One of my students is a pastor and decided to start house-to-house visits in his parish, which were completely out of fashion there. He visited people who said they didn’t need him, but with whom he subsequently had a three-hour conversation.”
Bruce Tichbon says:
"Pope
Francis is the best leader I've ever known," said the Cardinal. "He's
leading us beautifully."
Surely that is a
political answer, perhaps because the Cardinal agrees with the seemingly
liberal,‘spirit of the age’, agenda of Pope Francis.
Take the sex
abuse scandal. The Pope blames it on priestly clericalism, some newly
hatched concept that priests are inherently arrogant and selfish.
The real
cause of the sex abuse scandal is failed leadership in the Church. By not
taking responsibility, and dumping blame on his (mostly) loyal priests Pope
Francis showed he is no leader of men. Are we surprised so few men want
to be priests now?
Take Amoris Laetitia, where a vague comment in a footnote becomes a major doctrinal shift
for the Church. Senior theologians write desperate letters to the Pope
begging him to resolve the glaring doctrinal conflicts, but he ignores them.
I could spend all
day writing more but I will stop there.
Is willfully
creating confusion leadership, or governance vandalism?
Please pray for
the Pope and our Cardinal.
Bruce Tichbon
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