Your News Now has a short video clip up on yesterday’s closing Mass at Our Lady of Mercy Church in Greece. A portion of the clip features a quote from DOR spokesman Doug Mandelaro:

Many of the members [of the parish], if not most, were workers at Kodak and as Kodak has downsized over the last few decades, people move out and go elsewhere. Out migration. financial strife, so the decision was made to close it and again it’s always hard to do that, but you try to do the best thing and right-size as best as you can.

Once again the diocese is trotting out its “demographic shift” rationalization for a falloff in church attendance.  It used to blame our declining numbers on the “dramatic depopulation” that it claimed was happening in DOR, but had to stop spreading that myth when it became widely known that U.S. Census Bureau data showed no depopulation in DOR, dramatic or otherwise.

The “demographic shift” is also a myth. There are no vacant, boarded-up houses in this or any other section of Greece.  The are no sky-rocketing apartment vacancies.  The population has been, in a word, stable.  For the “demographic shift” to be true, then, Catholics – and only Catholics – would have to have been moving out in droves over many, many years, with non-Catholics – and only non-Catholics – moving in to replace them. There is absolutely no evidence of that having taken place.

No, Mr. Mandelaro, the real reason Catholics have abandoned this and other parishes is that DOR has stopped teaching the true Faith.  What is taught, usually by example (i.e., liturgical abuse) but sometimes from the pulpit, simply has no power to draw people into the Church and to keep them there.

That is the problem, Mr. Mandelaro, and when DOR finally starts doing something about it – if it ever does – then and only then will the bleeding begin to stop.