The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston identified 28 parishes Thursday that are part of the first wave of a major reorganization intended to address declining Mass attendance, financial struggles, and a shrinking number of priests.
The reorganization, to be phased in across all 288 parishes over five years, is designed to help parishes share resources. Archdiocesan officials hope the plan will reverse troubling trends by making parishes stronger, better organized, and focused on bringing more people to church.
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The church sits like mike Dukakis did on the tank. They just don't get it. The reason why people have left the church is because of the way they handled the affair of the priests molesting boys. They sent cardinal law to the vatican and gave him his own wing to preside over. They foolishly thought people would just forget. We do not forget and you have never resolved the issue. So now they talk about dealing with diminished mass attendance, priest shortages and anemic fund raising like all they need to do is shuffle the deck a bit. No Never You have to come clean and change your ways or the catholic church will fade into oblivion. We don't buy your lame answers anymore.
The closings are a response in part to the shortage of priests. The hierarchy talks about "leaving room for the Holy Spirit to work". The Holy Spirit is working....providing women and married men and priests who resigned to marry and have a family.... but the hierarchy doesn't hear that part of the workings of the Holy Spirit. Nor does it hear that ALL people are beloved by God-children, gays, women. We should be expanding to fit the Times, not contracting to fit the past.