With Sunday attendance down by 50%, Pennsylvania Catholic diocese plans to close parishes.
Quote:Erie County Catholic parishes would merge, partner under preliminary plan from diocese
Erie Catholic Bishop Lawrence Persico knows there are people who have been part of a particular parish their whole lives and maybe their parents and grandparents worshipped in the church building there, too.
Persico acknowledges that it will be hard for people to hear their parish might merge into another or their church might no longer have Masses.
Persico said there's no one reason for what's included in the parish proposal. The changes were spurred by several factors, he said.
Attendance at Roman Catholic Masses in Erie County declined by 45% between October 2010 and October 2022, according to information from the diocese.
The number of priests continues to drop, with fewer joining the ranks than those hitting retirement age.
Many of the older church buildings need repairs as maintenance was deferred over the years while money was put toward ministries or schools, Persico said.
"We don't know how long these parishes can sustain themselves," he said.
He said churches were built around Erie County in the past to meet the needs of the people and those needs aren't necessarily there anymore.
"We're trying to prepare for the future by right-sizing the diocese," he said this week. "Because we're not the diocese we were 50 years ago."
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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"