Decline of religion

[Fake Messiah]

Catholic Diocese of Oakland to close 13 churches amid financial woes

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland announced that more than a dozen churches in the East Bay will be closing amid ongoing financial woes.

In a statement posted Wednesday, Bishop Michael Barber said 12 parish sites would be closing, along with a pastoral center. Seven of the churches are in the city of Oakland, while the remaining closures involve churches in Alameda, Castro Valley, Crockett, Fremont and Walnut Creek.

Barber cited trends in declining Mass attendance, participation in the sacraments and Catholic school enrollment that began in the early 2010s. The bishop also noted that the diocese had an "all time low" of priests assigned to its 80 parishes.

"While many of our parishes were built to serve the Catholic Church of 1965, we now have far fewer priests and parishioners. Not all parishes can afford to pay for a support staff to fully serve the parish and our missionary aspirations. Others are surviving on rental of parish parking lots or empty school facilities," Barber said. "The status quo is not sustainable nor is it serving God's people."

The diocese filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2023 as it was facing hundreds of lawsuits over alleged sexual abuse by priests going back decades.

Last week, an Alameda County jury ordered the diocese to pay $16 million in a lawsuit involving a survivor.

https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/new...cial-woes/

[Fake Messiah]

Ireland

Sarah Breen: Let’s raise a glass to the happy news that Catholic weddings are in decline

Moving in together before marriage is no longer considered “living in sin”. The phrases “out of wedlock” and “illegitimate child” are largely extinct too, and good riddance. But I can’t help feeling personally put out.

Last week, new figures released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) revealed that the number of Catholic weddings has dropped by more than half in the last 10 years. Civil ceremonies are now the most popular way to tie the knot.

Did anyone raise an eyebrow? I’ve wrestled myself into Spanx for plenty of weddings in the last decade, and only one or two were in a church. There were beautiful acoustics and lovely stained-glass windows, but the ceremonies were stuffy and impersonal. The priest is often unpredictable and doddery.

And it feels very naughty cheering when the bride and groom kiss at the end. A massive statue of a man nailed to a cross wearing a crown of thorns kind of kills the vibe. I have never associated a church with joy.

These new numbers are further evidence that Catholicism no longer has Ireland in the chokehold it once did. In the 2022 census, 69pc of the population identified as Roman Catholic, down from 78pc in 2016. It’s a robust figure, but plenty of people would have automatically ticked that box because they believed they were telling the truth: once you’ve been baptised, it’s almost impossible to formally defect from Catholicism.

But how many of those people are actually practising? The shrinking congregations at a random mass – and I don’t mean Christmas morning when the congregation is boosted by those who want to show off their new coats – tell the true story.

​The reality is that, given the opportunity, most couples would prefer to leave the church out of their celebration.

As much as conservatives insist that Catholic weddings would still be the go-to if priests could officiate them in hotels without jumping through hoops, the reality is that young millennials and Gen Z have seen enough. The scandals are too fresh in their minds. They are watching the excavation at Tuam closely. They are generations who are exercising their right to choose.

When my husband and I made the decision not to baptise our children, one family member quietly took me aside. She laid a hand gently on my forearm, eyes like saucers. “But what about the babies in Limbo?” she whispered. I had to explain that, having given the whole “original sin” thing some thought, I didn’t believe in Limbo. I was confident I could raise my children without quoting the 10 commandments or issuing threats about what does and doesn’t make baby Jesus cry. Morals are not exclusive to religion.

Many Irish people still baptise their children, not because they are devout, but because they are afraid to think outside the box. They want the day out and the nice pictures and believe it will upset granny if she doesn’t see baby in the family christening gown.

Upholding the status quo is the reason that 88pc of our state-run primary schools have a Catholic ethos. Couples don’t want a church wedding, but will allow their children to be taught faith formation by teachers who are required to hold the Catholic Certificate in Religious Studies as a condition of their employment.

Yes, you can have your child “opt out”, but there is no official provision in place for them when everyone else is being taught what a crucifixion is and learning prayers by heart. Many parents report that opted-out children just sit at the back of the classroom while soaking in the lesson whether they like it or not.

https://m.independent.ie/opinion/comment...07357.html

[Fake Messiah]

America's pastor pipeline is collapsing

Fewer Americans want to become pastors, accelerating a leadership vacuum inside one of the country's oldest civic institutions.

U.S. Master of Divinity enrollment at accredited schools under the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) fell 14% from 2020 to 2024.

Graduate-level and college-level enrollment at Catholic seminaries were down significantly in the 2024-2025 academic year, the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University said.

Black Protestant enrollment in ATS Master of Divinity and professional M.A. programs fell 31% from 2000 to 2020.

Churches are trying to fill pulpits as older clergy retire, congregations shrink and burnout rises.

More than 4 in 10 clergy surveyed in fall 2023 said they had seriously considered leaving their congregations since 2020, per Hartford Institute data reported by The Associated Press.

The leadership crunch comes as the U.S. saw 15,000 churches close last year and as a record 29% of Americans now identify as religiously unaffiliated.

Rural churches are hit first because many already share pastors, rely on part-time clergy or ask one minister to cover multiple congregations.

The drop is part of the "decline of Protestantism in the U.S. Catholicism is pretty much in the same boat," Eileen Campbell-Reed, author of "Pastoral Imagination: Bringing the Practice of Ministry to Life," and a research professor at Vanderbilt Divinity School, tells Axios.

Campbell-Reed said the strain of the pandemic — layered on long-term decline — pushed many clergy out of ministry and discouraged new entrants. In addition, political polarization pushed some out.
"It's harder and harder to be the pastor of a 'purple church.'"

The rapid growth of the Catholic Church in Asia and Africa — and a priest shortage in the U.S. — has led the church to send a rising number of priests from those regions to the U.S.

https://www.axios.com/2026/05/10/christi...seminaries

[Fake Messiah]

Latinos are leaving the U.S. Catholic Church in droves. Pope Leo could bring them back.

According to Pew Research, young Latinos are more likely to be unaffiliated with a religion than they are to be Catholic. Among U.S.-born Latinos ages 18 to 29, 49 percent do not affiliate with a religion. Across all generations, only 36 percent of U.S.-born Latinos identify as Catholic.

When Pope Leo XIV introduced himself to the world in prepared remarks on May 8, 2025, he spoke almost exclusively in Italian. He did pray in Latin and, to the delight of Latin Americans everywhere, he also briefly spoke in Spanish when greeting his “dear Diocese of Chiclayo, Peru.”

He did not speak English, notably, but it is precisely his ability to speak the language, along with his identification with Latin America, that could help the U.S.-born pope stem the exodus of U.S. Latinos from the church. His linguistic abilities and cultural and technological awareness are the pathway to reach young U.S. Latinos.

Admittedly, the wave of disaffiliation includes immigrants from Latin America who prefer to speak Spanish. Even after acclimating in the United States, many immigrants report feeling more comfortable in their native tongue, especially at Mass or in private prayer. Leo’s comfort speaking Spanish helps with immigrants as it does with his outreach to all of Latin America.

Yet more than 60 percent of Catholics under 18 are Latino. More than 90 percent of these young Latinos were born in the United States. They often feel more comfortable communicating in English and increasingly feel uncomfortable at church.

https://www.americamagazine.org/short-ta...h-english/

[Fake Messiah]

Charlie Kirk’s death did not inspire the national spiritual awakening that was promised.

TPUSA’s “Make Heaven Crowded” revival tour is a disaster

As the name suggests, the tour’s stated goal is mass conversions to Christianity. And while Lucas Miles, the director of TPUSA Faith, insists this is about sharing the gospel over politics, videos from the event make clear that the hope is also to point voters toward the Republican Party. After all, right-wing politics was Kirk’s life’s work, despite revisionist efforts to paint him as a Christian prophet.

At the first stop of the tour in January, Erika Kirk declared “we will change this country” through a “revival” brought by an evangelical movement that “rises up and prays for this nation.”

These many months later, though, it seems that Charlie Kirk’s heaven isn’t going to be so crowded after all. The tour’s stops have been exclusively at evangelical churches and universities with crowds that don’t look especially different than what you’d get on any given Sunday at those locations. Despite TPUSA being marketed as a youth organization, and despite claims from the pulpit that there’s a youth revival in the works, the people spread out through semi-full auditoriums have tended to be gray-haired or balding. Even at Regent University, where one would expect a robust audience of young Christians, video of the event shows mostly older attendees — and plenty of empty seats.

The content of the programming suggests the organizers are well aware that they’re not trying to win souls to Christ as they claim. Sure, there’s the usual array of professional converts, with sometimes iffy stories about how they found Jesus after being lost in the wilderness. But strikingly, most of the speakers don’t even pretend at that, admitting that they grew up Christian and focusing on biological reproduction as their best bet for growing the church ranks, a message that meshes well with the increasingly white nationalist bent of Kirk’s beloved GOP.

Perhaps the funniest sign that Make Heaven Crowded isn’t doing so hot? The striking absence of Erika Kirk, who spoke at the kick-off event in Los Angeles but has otherwise been missing in action. She was reportedly scheduled to show up at the Orlando, Florida, stop in February, but that was canceled at the last minute. Kirk also bowed out of scheduled appearances in Plano, Texas, and at Iowa State University. But these absences haven’t received as much attention as her cancellation of a University of Georgia event in April, which left Vice President JD Vance speaking to an underwhelming crowd. While the excuses change — “family time,” “security concerns” and “scheduling conflicts” have been cited — the one constant is that Erika Kirk manages to not appear when the crowds aren’t looking robust.

The Make Heaven Crowded tour is sponsored by Preborn!, an anti-abortion group, and each stop features heavy-handed shaming of women of who have abortions. One speaker after another turns to politics, such as Blaze Media’s Allie Beth Stuckey, who lectures the crowd about how same-sex marriage and abortion supposedly offend God, or Christian commentator Millicent Sedra, who argues that this is an age of “sexual perversion” based on “young people dressed up as fairies, dressed up as dogs” and “kitty litters in the toilets” — a reference to a widespread and debunked conservative hoax.

It must be hard to feel morally superior when the leader of their political movement has started a foreign war for no good reason and keeps finding ways to block the full release of the Epstein files. Being told that everyone else is going to hell likely provides that boost of self-deluding self-esteem they need to stay the course. But as a message to bring new people in the fold, “the road to heaven is MAGA” will not work.

https://www.salon.com/2026/05/17/tpusas-...-disaster/