Rich Leonardi is blogging about an article in Sunday’s Cincinnati Enquirer detailing the decline in weekend Mass attendance in both the Archdiocese of Cincinnati and the Diocese of Covington, just across the Ohio River in Kentucky.
… bishops and priests recognize the trend is headed in the wrong direction. Mass attendance fell by about 41,000 in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati in the past decade and by about 7,000 in the Diocese of Covington – a drop of almost 20 percent for each diocese.
Well, Rich, the Diocese of Rochester will see your 20% and raise you another 10.
In the 10 years ending in 2009 DOR’s Average October Attendance at parish churches has fallen by over 30% (30.2%, to be precise).**
One Cincinnati reader gave her diagnosis of the problem in this LTE:
Regarding the article … on the declining attendance at Catholic schools and parishes, I think it can be attributed to a post-Vatican II failure of Catholic education of both children and adults, leaving them ignorant of the faith and susceptible to being misled by people twisting Vatican II teachings to their own wishes. Catholics given a high-carb and, in some cases, junk-food education, having missed out on the meat and potatoes and fruits and vegetables, will end up stunted “cafeteria Catholics.” I think that many of our Catholic educational institutions, while not in academic emergency, are in catechistic emergency.
I cannot say for certain how true that is for the Cincinnati area, but it is spot on for the Diocese of Rochester.
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**[To be perfectly fair, in 2008 DOR began collecting October Mass attendance numbers from such non-parish locations as prisons, nursing homes, campus chapels, monasteries, senior living centers, migrant ministries and motherhouses and that data does show a significant number of Catholics to be attending weekend Mass at such sites (3,853 in 2008 and 5,313 last year). This data, however, does not exist for the years prior to 2008 and so, in the interest of comparing apples with apples, the recent, non-parish data has not been included in the above 10-year chart.]
Tags: DoR Stats and Surveys
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There were approximately 295,000 Catholics in the DoR in the year 2000. If 30% (88,500) attended weekend Mass then we are talking about a decline of 30% of 88,500 or almost 27,000 souls. An astounding loss in nine years! What a tragedy! If this were a business, heads would have rolled along time ago!
Monk,
The 2000 AOA number is 108,000 and the 2009 number is 75,400. The loss over 9 years is therefore 32,600, or 3.91% per year.
Thanks for the clarification Mike. It would be interesting to know where they all went. My guess is that many of them left the Catholic Church and attend other denominations. The DoR doesn’t seem to care to find out. Other than the loss of income, they seem to be ok with it. Do you think the DoR would ever be interested in the Catholics Come Home Campaign? I doubt it. Cost too much money!
Monk,
Over this past weekend I ran into a lady who used to work as a secretary in my former parish. While still a practicing Catholic, she now holds a similar job in a local Episcopal church. We got talking about the drop in DOR Mass attendance and she said that her new employer had been seeing just the opposite: an increase in the number attending services, with many of the newcomers being former Catholics.
Monk,
Re Catholics Come Home: We will not see this in DOR as long as Bishop Clark is running the show.
While their web site never explicitly states it, the CCH program is clearly designed for reasonably orthodox dioceses and has loads of orthodox content.
Can you imagine the collective hissy-fit from Sr. Joan Sabola and Nancy DeRycke, should they ever read the following on a “Rochester Catholics Come Home” web page:
The above comes from the CCH web site (see here), as does the following …
Bishop Clark, in the homily from his 1997 Mass for gays and lesbians, said,
I cannot imagine anyone who is so causally dismissive of the Church’s interpretation of some pretty clearly worded biblical texts having anything to do with a program that embraces the Church’s teaching on homosexuality.
No, the Catholics Come Home program not be seen in DOR until at least 2012.
Mike, you’re right about CCH. If the site actually refers people to “Courage,” that’s one strike against it (now if it referred to “Dignity USA,” everything would be just fine). And I’m learning how deeply entrenched the homosexual agenda is within the American Catholic Church (I think this may be improving), but especially within our diocese. The tentacles reach far and wide – from priest advocates for homosexuality to questionable sex ed programs both in public and catholic schools.