Average Mass Counts in 2005 were 195,455 and 191,498 in 2006. Some districts in the Milwaukee Archdiocese have exhibited an increase in weekly attendance. In Districts 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9 and 14, moderate to significant increases in weekly Mass attendance were realized during October 2006 Mass counts.
The actual increases described tend to be slight, not "moderate to significant". Do these represent demographic shifts, or a change in parishioner outlook, or a change in what parishes in those districts do? No one in the article seems to have that answer.
As a challenge to each of the 16 districts in the Milwaukee Archdiocese, Archbishop Dolan and the implementation commission have requested each parish to address the declining attendance statistics and to work on increasing Mass attendance by 20 percent according to Noreen Welte, director of the archdiocesan planning office.
That kind of mandate should be accompanied with some suggestions on how to do it. Ms. Welte provides, if not the means, a motivation: salvation.
"Across the board, 37 percent of members show up on a regular basis to weekly Mass," she said. "This brings up huge implications for the future as the cost of running a parish continues to increase like any other business or lifestyle increases. If we have fewer people showing up, we have fewer people paying the bills. And if that trend doesn’t turn around, I don’t even want to project what the future looks like, but this is something we all need to look at."
Okay, it's salvation of parish budgets and payrolls, not salvation of parishioner souls.
By bringing the long-term ramifications to the forefront regarding fewer Catholics in the pews, Welte hopes that the Mass attendance concern will become a "bread and butter issue," with discussions taking place around evening dinner tables.
Maybe part of the problem is an anachronistic view of family life.
"We’d love it if Mass attendance becomes a bread and butter issue, because we want to know why people around the diocese do go to Mass and why they don't go," she said.
Step one might be to not just ask this question rhetorically. Has there been any professional polling done? Or is it asked rhetorically as a prelude to blaming the people who do show up.
While it may be easy to place the blame for a lack of Mass attendance on externals such as clergy abuse, lack of priests, or leadership issues, Welte admitted the focus might rest with more of a personal reflection on the calling to Catholicism, and an examination of personal and community shortcomings.
That "easy" and "admitted" were a nice touch.
P.S. While the article is about Mass attendance, when talking about the Cathedral parish the subject changes to total membership.
According to its pastor and rector, Fr. Carl Last, the Cathedral currently has 852 registered households or 1,516 members.
Fr. Last is quoted from a July bulletin.
"Fifteen percent of parishioners live in the 53202 (downtown/lower east side) zip code. Eighty-five percent of us live outside our zip code."
Which I calculate as 227 members from a Zip Code with a 2005 population of 21,711.
While national statistics remain unchanged, Mass counts have declined since 1999 in the Milwaukee Archdiocese. Despite an overall high of 232,804 average Sunday Mass attendance in 1999 and 191,498 as of October 2006, the declining attendance may have little to do with the clergy sex scandal and more on external factors such as profiled in a 2004 study by USA Today...
ReplyDeleteInteresting wording, no?
What was attendance in 1990? 1980? 1950? And what was the percentage of Catholics attending Mass in those years?
The absolute number, by itself, is almost meaningless.
Here are national percentages since 1965, based on polls.
ReplyDeleteFr. Nathan Reesman (St. Mary, Elm Grove) offers some wonderfully thoughtful suggestions at
ReplyDeletehttp://www.stmaryeg.org/parish/FrNathan/
Click on "Mass Attendance." And, if you have time, read his other stuff, too. He's newly ordained (May, 2006, I believe); we need more like him.
Thanks, anony. He's a good guy.
ReplyDeleteHow many 02ians attend the other four Catholic churches in 02? How many 02ians attend the half dozen or more Catholic churches within a 20-minute stroll or single-bus ride of 02, including SS Peter and Paul 2 blocks from 02 and the Gesu, 10 blocks from 02, and OL of Guadalupe, only a few blocks from 02-land? Why do the Catholics of 02-land choose the churches they do? Any answers??
ReplyDeleteI've emailed the Archdioces asking the number of Catholics from 53202 belonging to other parishes.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of statistics, while on the parish mission trip to Santa Apolonia, Guatemala, I saw posted in the local Catholic church a table from the Diocese of Solala-Chimaltenango showing, by parish, such things as the amount contributed in various types of collections and the number of seminarians. Oddly enough, I've never seen anything similar from our Archdiocese posted at my parish.
As I recall, you belong to the Cathedral parish, so you might be in a better position to say why it has virtually no appeal to the Catholics in its vicinity.
An awful lot of the parishioners I know walk to mass, which almost definitely means they live in 53202, or at least have a cubicle in one of the cubicle farms there.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing we don't know is how many of the condo dwellers and MSOE students who make up "lower 02" are supposed to be Catholic. I think we are overdue for a territorial parish census........