The closures will be mainly in Baltimore City with some in the surrounding county areas. The Archdiocese is proposing up to 40 closures out of 61 parish churches.

While shifting attendance patterns may form a large part of it, I have to wonder if the enormous payouts for child abuse cases is also a significant factor.

https://www.wbaltv.com/article/archdiocese-of-baltimore-considers-closing-churches/60446375

I never click on your links cuz I don't know that I can trust you all that much...

Does your so-called linked article mention what the Baltimore archdionicians intend to do with the buildings and/or property?

And is there any mention of the mormons swooping in to grab up any available land parcel?

Lol, you are wise to be suspicious of me, EoD. ;)

They will probably sell the church buildings. Who is buying, I just don't know. And I remain ever vigilant against any temple intrusions.

They didn't take Jake and Elwood up on their offer.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ujxDA9VsQG4

Close them all ! Let god sort them out !

I bet the Q15 will never ever announce temple closures in General Conference. But you know its gotta happen someday.

More likely it’s the severe church contraction couple with severe priest shortage. In my area has seen the same, and the archdiocese has not the sex payout scandal to deal with

Possibly. But I've often seen priests sent around to different parishes as opposed to closing them. The Baltimore TV stations have constant ads from lawyers looking for clients who were abused by Catholic priests. I think the local Archdiocese is expecting to feel even more financial pain shortly. IIRC, that's how it went down in Boston after the scandals there.

I'm not going to look up the numbers, but it was a major hemorrhaging of $$ over several years. Just when membership was dropping, and disgusted members were skimping on donations. For curiosity's sake, here's an outline of how they handled the settlements.

In Boston (Brighton district), straddling the city line with Newton is a very large, nominally Catholic, university: Boston College (BC) (not to be confused with Boston University, further downtown). BC has a huge endowment. Not Harvard huge ($55M), but large.

Across Commonwealth Avenue from BC is St. John's Seminary, a beautiful campus on 67 lush suburban acres, with lots of fine buildings and buildable space. Seminarian enrollment at St.J's has been dropping (no surprise there). I pass through there, occasionally, and sort of marvel at huge gothic buildings that once held hundreds of prospective priests, and now are mostly empty. Such are the trends. Much of the seminary training has been relocated to Boston's South End, site of Holy Cross Cathedral and the archdiocesan HQ.

So: BC "bought" St. Johns from the Archdiocese for bundles and bundles of money. Thus, the Archdiocese was able to pay the settlements.

Miscellaneous: Cardinal Bernard Law ("Lawless?"), who oversaw the abuse coverup and arranged for abusing priests to be quietly transferred to other parishes, retired, or assigned to less exposed (no pun intended) positions, retired and took a plum job at the Vatican, where he worked and lived (outside the parameters of extradition) until he died. He probably expected to go to Heaven...

>> Miscellaneous: Cardinal Bernard Law ("Lawless?"), who oversaw the abuse coverup and arranged for abusing priests to be quietly transferred to other parishes, retired, or assigned to less exposed (no pun intended) positions, retired and took a plum job at the Vatican, where he worked and lived (outside the parameters of extradition) until he died. He probably expected to go to Heaven..

Thanks for the details. Cardinal Law would have had Francis's blessing for relocation. Francis thinks that confession and repentance are enough to "punish" the priests who have abused children. He really doesn't get that these criminals need to be locked up.

I really do think that the Baltimore Archdiocese is facing a lot of the same financial pain as Boston.

In 2003 Cardinal Law(less) was replaced by Sean Francis O'Malley OFM, who was not a bishop in regular Catholic hierarchy (especially the Boston Archdiocese) but a Franciscan monk (of some rank, don't know. Abbot?). The RC church went, sort of, outside the church to get a leader for this very (critically) important post.
The only thing I know is that he brought the St.J seminarians into town for training and service.
Cardinal O'Malley still occupies the position. I don't follow Catholic politics. Boston city politics (A "blood sport" as it's called here) are much more entertaining.

If they can't recruit an adequate number of priests from the Boston area, where can they recruit them?

On the basis of very scattered, anecdotal info, I think a fair number are coming from 3rd World nations.

That makes sense.

Baltimore is a failed city notorious for its drug and homicide rates. Many people are moving out of the inner cities. But I agree with the other reasons people are giving.

Isn't Baltimore where Pol Pot went after putting China in its place? The reason, I read in Tocqueville or Mathus--I forget which--was that neither Beijing nor Phnom Penh have extradition treaties with the Shah of Maryland.

But you would know better than I.

I personally wouldn't pronounce it just yet, for various reasons. Baltimore has some truly lovely churches along with some devoted community members. I've seen Catholic Charities do a great deal of good there. The Catholic church just needs to get its act together with regard to child abuse. You would think that church authorities would have learned after the Boston scandals.

Baltimore's population has decreased by a third since 1950:

https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/baltimore-md-population

  
  

Thank you for your countervailing efforts with the aliens.

The ultimate replacement conspiracy theory.

https://www.space.com/alien-mummies-nasa-uap-study-team



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/17/2024 03:43PM by caffiend.

Yes, that's a part of it, but the population has been decreasing for a very long time. It's nothing new.

summer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Yes, that's a part of it, but the population has
> been decreasing for a very long time. It's nothing
> new.

The shipping industry has changed a lot since the war and that must have had a major effect on cities like Baltimore. Docks are containerized and mechanized and so far fewer people need to be employed in them. The new facilities also tend to be away from downtown areas.

The Port of Baltimore still employs a ton of people -- about 15,000 direct employees with about 150,000 total jobs. Workers come in from all over the region. That's why the Key Bridge collapse was a major disaster. It had a huge impact on shipping, not just for the region, but for the entire country. For instance, the PoB takes in more new cars than any other port in the U.S. If you are driving a Mercedes Benz, it likely came in through Baltimore. Baltimore also takes in lot of sugar due to the Domino company being located here.

Changing demographics as a lot to do with this. Baltimore city is mostly urban blacks who tend to not be Catholic or White hipsters who also tend to not be Catholic.

Plus not a lot of Keith Urban Blacks tend not to be White Hipsters, so there's that, too!!

A smaller Catholic presence in Baltimore* also means fewer parochial schools. These schools have been a major opportunity provider for inner-city children stuck with a failing public school system. But it's less religion in the public square, so there's that.

Yes, but one reason public schools fail is because people take their money and support to religion instead. They don't get to complain about public schools when they are a factor damaging public schools, IMO.

The Catholic church has been slowly closing their K-12 urban schools for many years now. They are still available to parents who are interested and who can pay the tuition.

I can state flatly that Baltimore City public schools offer a quality education. But the school system is attempting to educate many dysfunctional children from dysfunctional families. These children are often rude, disrespectful, and violent. They fight each other, attack teachers, throw furniture, and destroy classrooms. They are often tired, hungry, and emotionally dysregulated. They are not being raised correctly, or even barely at all. Nevertheless, urban teachers try their best every day to educate these children. If there were easy answers to all of these social problems, educators would have found them already. Not every urban child has these characteristics, but enough of them do to make the job of educating them very difficult.

Private and parochial schools have the ability to screen for and select students who will follow their rules. They can kick out the students who cannot or will not do so. With rare exceptions, the public schools do not have that luxury.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/22/2024 11:39AM by summer.