Baltimore Catholic churches are celebrating their final Mass this weekend. Here’s what to know.
The Baltimore-area Catholic Church is grappling with declining attendance at Sunday Mass and the high cost of maintaining aging church structures and continuing services, so archdiocesan officials redrew parish lines to conserve resources. Sixty-one parishes at 59 worship sites are being consolidated into 23 parishes at 30 worship sites in the city and parts of Baltimore County, with some churches dating back to the 19th century set to close their doors.
Many of those combined parishes will hold their first Mass on Dec. 1, the first day of Advent.
Auxiliary Bishop Bruce Lewandowski, who has overseen the consolidation plan, acknowledged “these are not easy times for a lot of folks as they form new parishes” and that the archdiocese needed to give attention to the need for mourning. Come December, he said earlier this year, routine Masses would no longer be celebrated at the parishes being folded into others.
https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/commu...6KEMUL6F4/
The Baltimore-area Catholic Church is grappling with declining attendance at Sunday Mass and the high cost of maintaining aging church structures and continuing services, so archdiocesan officials redrew parish lines to conserve resources. Sixty-one parishes at 59 worship sites are being consolidated into 23 parishes at 30 worship sites in the city and parts of Baltimore County, with some churches dating back to the 19th century set to close their doors.
Many of those combined parishes will hold their first Mass on Dec. 1, the first day of Advent.
Auxiliary Bishop Bruce Lewandowski, who has overseen the consolidation plan, acknowledged “these are not easy times for a lot of folks as they form new parishes” and that the archdiocese needed to give attention to the need for mourning. Come December, he said earlier this year, routine Masses would no longer be celebrated at the parishes being folded into others.
https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/commu...6KEMUL6F4/
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
