Here’s some sad and sobering news from across the Pond.
The Catholic Church is rapidly disappearing from the Netherlands.
In ten years. the entire archdiocese of Utrecht will probably only consist of 10 to 15 churches that still hold the Eucharistic celebrations, compared to the current 280 churches, Archbishop Wim Eijk said in an interview with the Gelderlander.
According to Eijk, 10 percent of the parishes in his Diocese are actually bankrupt, 10 percent are still rich and the other 80 percent are somewhere in between. The aging Catholic population and a rapid decline in Mass attendance is causing a problematic situation. Every year, Catholic Church attendance decreases by 5 to 6 percent. And fewer and fewer people support the Church financially.
Officially, the Netherlands has 3.5 million Catholic residents, but the vast majority of them never go to church, the Archbishop said.
On average 173,500 people attend a Catholic Church over the weekend, according to figures from the Nijmegen institute Kaski. "The Church is not closed by people who are still coming or by me, but by those who stay away and do not contribute anymore", Archbishop Eijk said to the newspaper.
One big problem is the high maintenance costs of the large, monumental churches. Keeping them open is becoming unaffordable.
Four years ago the Archbishop predicted that by 2028 there will only be 20 or 30 parishes left in the Utrecht diocese, the largest Diocese in the Netherlands in terms of area.
He now says that expectation was too positive. He believes that parishes will have to merge on a large scale.
I fear we will continue to hear stories such as this for decades to come and from dioceses all around the world.
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