Are we managing decline or opening to renewal?

A Sobering Report from the Ground

A shorter version of this essay will appear in an upcoming bulletin for the parishioners of Stella Maris Family of Parishes. I think the topic of parish decline, parish renewal, and parish consolidation is interesting, so I thought I’d share a bit on Substack. Of course, it’s impossible to encapsulate this entire topic in a single post (or many posts). It’s a complex reality involving history, legacy, leadership, many lives, and a lot of affect. Still, I believe this humble contribution from the perspective of evangelization has something to add to the conversation.

I’m not a numbers guy. But numbers are not nothing. And there are three sets of numbers that have been on my mind the last few weeks. These are pieces of the statistical data that are part of the story of the parishes at which I serve as the director of evangelization. When compared to broader studies and anecdotal data, they are representative of the trend lines of many parishes across the region (and country), so publishing this for a broader audience on Substack makes good sense.¹

Steadily Declining Mass Attendance

Each year, the Archdiocese of Cincinnati conducts the “October count” to determine the average weekend Mass attendance at each church. People debate the value of the count, as a snapshot is, well…just a snapshot. Still, it offers some insight, however limited.

For my family of four parishes, as a whole back in 2014, we averaged 2,329 people attending Mass. (I’m not sure what percentage of the registered parishioners that represented at the time, as I don’t have access to that data.) By 2019, pre-COVID mind you, that number had dropped to 1,884, before bottoming out in 2020 at 968. In 2021, we rebounded up to 1,285 but have essentially been a flat-line the last few years, coming in at 1,301 in 2024. When you do the math, our Mass attendance has been on the trending at a 44% decrease over ten years across the four parishes. For more specific numbers:

• St. Bernadette in 2014 averaged 603 people a weekend and 366 in 2024 (39% decrease).

• St. Mary in 2014 averaged 327 people a weekend and 165 in 2024 (49% decrease).

• St. Peter in 2014 averaged 210 people a weekend and 125 in 2024 (40% decrease).

• St. Thomas More in 2014 averaged 1,189 people a weekend and 645 in 2024 (45% decrease).

Unfortunately, our path seems to travel roughly the same trend line as the rest of the country. As a priest friend of mine who was serving as the vocations director for my home diocese once said to me: “I’m less concerned about a priest shortage and more concerned there won’t be people in the pews.” Perhaps it’s a people crisis, not a vocations crisis. I would argue that this people crisis is, in fact, the most understated and significant contributor to our need for pastoral planning and consolidation in the first place.

Steadily Declining Religious Education Numbers

It was hard to gather data regarding our religious ed/PSR/CCD numbers in recent history, so here’s the best I’ve got (through 2024):

• In 2013, St. Bernadette had 35 families involved in religious ed. This dropped to 18 families by 2020, and 10 in 2024 (a 71% decrease over 11 years).

• In 2017, St. Mary had 34 families involved in religious ed. This dropped to 24 families by 2020 and 9 families in 2024 (a 73% decrease over 7 years).

• In 2012, St. Peter had 65 families involved in religious ed. By 2020, this number had dropped to 14, and 7 families in 2024 (a 89% decrease over 12 years).

• In 2013, St. Thomas More had 79 families enrolled in PSR. By 2020, the number declined to 42 and 23 families in 2024 (a 70% decrease over 11 years).

The data is too sketchy and the periods too inconsistent to draw any significant conclusions other than the obvious ones about a negative trend line that began before COVID and never recovered.

Rapidly Aging Core

The most alarming piece of data, by far, comes with the Disciple Maker Index that was carried out by the Catholic Leadership Institute across our parishes in 2022. The DMI invites parishioners to complete a lengthy survey to reflect on “where they are on their journey of discipleship,” which then “enables parish leadership to make data-driven decisions to help parishioners grow in their faith.” Naturally, the most engaged parishioners would have been the ones to hear about this (announced at Masses and in the bulletin) and complete it. Of the 485 respondents, roughly 50% were 66 and older, and a whopping 75% were 56 and older. These staggering numbers indicate a rapidly aging core group of parishioners. When combined with the religious education data above, and the decline in weekly Mass attendance, the future begins to look rather grim. It’s a bit like a statistical nosedive heading straight for the bowels of the earth.

So, what do we do?

The internal decline coupled with the movement of the broader culture toward a post-Christian society and worldview makes for a formidable situation. What do we do? Well, we either keep our heads buried firmly in the sand and manage the steady decline, or we re-engage and innovate. We either stay in maintenance mode and let the status quo drive us into the grave or we somehow get missional.

In the face of these circumstances, the 2012 Synod of Bishops document gives a solid directive:

In facing these challenges, the Church does not give up or retreat into herself; instead, she undertakes a project to revitalize herself. She makes the Person of Jesus Christ and a personal encounter with him central to her thinking, knowing that he will give his Spirit and provide the force to announce and proclaim the Gospel in new ways which can speak to today's cultures.²

As far as I can tell, nobody at Stella Maris is exempt from such a call. From the clergy to the staff, and older parishioners to very young ones, all of us are called to encounter Christ anew and allow this conversion to move deep in our hearts, opening them to receive afresh the Holy Spirit. Renewal begins here, in our hearts. This has to be the starting point and any structural or strategic shifts must flow from the renewed encounter with Christ and the pursuit of holiness. Joseph Ratzinger, in The Ratzinger Report (1985), was clear about the need, above all, for saints. He says, “Saints, in fact, reformed the Church in depth, not by working up plans for new structures, but by reforming themselves. What the Church needs in order to respond to the needs of man in every age is holiness, not management.”³ When Ratzinger speaks of saints, as he is here, he’s not referring to canonized people, or even canonizable ones. He’s speaking, like St. Paul, about those who have been encountered by Christ and who are being transformed, and whose lives become like windows — allowing the light of Christ to pass through them and into the lives of others. Saints are reference points.

All of this, plus some serious inspiration from Dom Chautard’s 1912 classic, The Soul of the Apostolate, stands behind what I call the “shock troop” approach to evangelization that is grounded in friendship.⁴ This person-first approach is the engine behind all our evangelization efforts — evangelization built on persons and friendship, not programs.

Renewing Structures

Ratzinger calls for saints — holiness — over and over again. This is where he puts the focus. It’s his urgent emphasis. We’re not going to strategize our way to success. As he notes:

After the end of the apostolic age the early Church had as yet developed only relatively little in the way of a direct missionary activity as a Church, that it did not have any particular strategy for proclaiming the faith to the heathen, and that nevertheless this became the age of the greatest missionary success. The conversion of the ancient world to Christianity was not the result of any planned activity on the part of the Church but the fruit of the proof of the faith as it became visible in the life of Christians and of the community of the Church...The Church’s community of life invited people to share in this life in which was revealed the truth from which this kind of life arose. On the other hand the apostasy of the modern age rests on the disappearance of the verification of faith in the life of Christians...The new evangelization we need so urgently today is not to be attained with cleverly thought out ideas, however cunningly these are elaborated: the catastrophic failure of modern catechesis is all too obvious. It is only the interaction of a truth conclusive in itself with its proof in the life of this truth that can enable that particular evidence of the faith to be illuminated that the human heart awaits: it is only through this door that the Holy Spirit enters the world.⁵

This said, he also recognizes the Church, in every age, needs structures and vehicles and vocabulary by which the faith can be communicated. Often, these structures ossify and become less effective. The assumptions they were built upon shift. They begin to smack of institution or bureaucracy. Programs become the end and not the means to a greater end. They stand in need of renewal. It’s not necessarily that the programs (or the people who facilitated them) have failed, but that culture changed. What once communicated the Gospel effectively isn’t so effect anymore. The Church — saints — have to accept this new reality and change approaches to successfully address it.

As I noted in my July 20 bulletin article, we’re already seeing signs of new life around the Family of Parishes in adult formation and in spiritual response to those who are no longer practicing their faith. But we need to continue down the path of renewal, and the way I see it, we have two clear opportunities for structural renewal right in front of our faces. The first comes with the large number of retirees or soon-to-be retirees. In other words, people who have some time on their hands. From what I’ve found over the last two years, many of these people are looking for formation and ways to engage. Additionally, we need to find ways to engage effectively the current generation of younger parents. The Stella Maris Institute is an attempt to form and mobilize such parishioners.

Next, due to good leadership combined with the EdChoice grant, our two parochial schools are full. The vast majority of school families are disengaged from the broader life of the parish and we’ve had an influx of non-Catholic families in the schools. In other words, our biggest catechetical apostolates are clear mission ground for evangelization. Plus, we have other young families who are committed to public education or homeschooling. To reach whole families with school-age children, and the school-age children themselves, we recently hired a coordinator of family evangelization and a coordinator of youth ministry. We will build on them and the teams they’ll form.

Of course, many other elements stand in need of renewal. Some of these we know, and others will become clear in the future. Some we can prioritize now, others will have to wait given resource constraints. All told, the consolidation of resources through Beacons of Light opens possibilities that would likely remain elusive for any one of our parishes.

The Risk of Renewal

Renewal is risky. Plus, a Family of Parishes on the way to becoming one canonical parish is frontier territory. We’ve never done this before. None of us have. We’re a bit like a start-up, and start-ups are messy business. Still, we have an opportunity to respond to the Holy Spirit and innovate. Will new approaches result in immediate re-engagement with the Catholic faith? Maybe. But probably not. It’s likely going to be a slow burn, a long road. Will every attempt succeed? No. And this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Why? In Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, David Epstein notes that:

The more work eminent creators produced, the more duds they churned out, and the higher their chances of supernova success. Thomas Edison held more than a thousand patents, most completely unimportant, and was rejected for many more. His failures were legion, but his successes—the mass-market light bulb, the phonograph, a precursor to the film projector—were earthshaking.⁶

Again, trying and failing isn’t necessarily a bad thing. We’ll hit the mark sometimes and miss more. But the worst thing would be not trying at all.

1. To be sure, these are just three pieces of information within a broad and complex reality. So we can only place so much stock in the story they tell. Still, I think the stats I will present in this essay give credence to what most of us see and feel.

2. Synod of Bishops, Lineamenta: The New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith, 2012.

3. Ratzinger, The Ratzinger Report, 53.

4. It would be worth a post dedicated solely to the “shock troop” concept in the near future.

5. Ratzinger, The Yes of Jesus Christ, 34–35.

6. Epstein, Range, 288.