SHREWSBURY — Roman Catholic parishes in north ºüÀêÊÓƵ city and county are generally withering, parishes in St. Charles County are mostly growing, and dozens of other parishes are left in limbo awaiting the Archdiocese of ºüÀêÊÓƵ’ major overhaul of its blueprint across the region.
Data from each parish, released Sept. 15 by the archdiocese, provide clues about where the Catholic presence is fading and where more church and school closures could be seen.
Hundreds of listening sessions, to review those numbers, were scheduled to start Saturday for Catholics in all 178 parishes, lasting until mid-November. At each meeting, drafts for merging or closing parishes will be presented for feedback. The proposals have already been shown to priests and lay leaders, although they won’t be released publicly until after the sessions are completed.
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The archdiocese’s “All Things New†reorganization is expected to reduce the number of parishes to about 100 through mergers or closings when final plans are announced in May. Some are skeptical that parishioners will have much say in the outcome and believe the decision to slash operations has already been set.
“It makes it sound like they’re listening to the faithful, but you’re listening to what they’re telling you,†said John Walsh, a church organist who plays throughout the archdiocese. “There is a lot of anxiety.â€
Separate consolidation plans for Catholic grade schools will arrive early next year, before registration opens for the 2023-2024 school year. The first shockwaves from the downsizing came last month with the decision to close Rosati-Kain and St. Mary’s high schools in ºüÀêÊÓƵ.
Funerals and baptisms
Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski, speaking about the data released last month, said a comparison of baptisms to funerals will be among key metrics considered in determining the health of a parish.
Just over half of the 178 parishes in the archdiocese are dying out, with 91 recording more funerals than total baptisms in the last year. The ratio is most pronounced at parishes in north ºüÀêÊÓƵ County, such as St. Jude in Overland, which saw 16 deaths and three baptisms in the year ending June 30, and St. Angela Merici in Florissant, with 21 deaths and four baptisms.
Funerals (686) exceeded baptisms (485) in the 18 parishes in the south ºüÀêÊÓƵ County Deanery, where several medium-sized parishes are clustered in the Lemay area. Of the 14 parishes with no infant baptisms in the last year, more than half are in the Ste. Genevieve region.
By comparison, St. Joseph in Cottleville, the archdiocese’s largest parish with nearly 18,000 parishioners, baptized 107 infants and experienced 72 deaths over the same timeframe. Another youthful parish, St. Theodore in Flint Hill, had 41 infant baptisms to eight deaths.
The archdiocese cautions a single year of funeral and baptism data may not provide a full picture of a parish’s strength — and the workbooks include 10-year trend lines for each.
Other criteria according to Rozanski will include a parish’s engagement in the community, measured in part by filling pews at Mass. Pastors are looking to raise spirits and spur evangelism by bringing people back to the churches, which were three-quarters empty on average last year.
Seven out of eight churches where attendance fell to 10% or lower of capacity during weekend Mass in 2021 were in ºüÀêÊÓƵ city, plus St. Rita in Vinita Park.
Of the nine churches that filled more than 50% of their pews, four were in St. Charles County, two in Lincoln County and one each in Jefferson, Perry and Warren counties. The best attendance rate in St. Charles County is St. Paul, the second fastest growing parish in the archdiocese with 850 registered families and 59% of pews filled.
The 950-seat St. Francis Xavier on the ºüÀêÊÓƵ University campus is the most popular for weddings, averaging more than one each week, but only reaches 17% of its capacity during weekend Mass.
Changing demographics and church finances
The announced closures of Rosati-Kain and St. Mary’s high schools have raised questions from critics about the archdiocese’s commitment to a diverse community. The majority of students at both schools are Black or Hispanic.
The closures have also prompted backlash toward “All Things New,†with groups at both schools organizing to stay open independent of the archdiocese.
Top offertories in 2021
Parish | City | Est. num. Catholics | Est. 2021 offertory |
---|---|---|---|
St. Clement of Rome | Des Peres | 4,440 | $3,400,000 |
Immaculate Conception | Dardenne Prairie | 15,070 | $3,050,000 |
St. Joseph | Cottleville | 17,825 | $2,750,000 |
Ascension | Chesterfield | 8,420 | $2,400,000 |
Incarnate Word | Chesterfield | 6,030 | $1,950,000 |
Assumption | O'Fallon | 9,470 | $1,750,000 |
St. Peter | Kirkwood | 6,770 | $1,700,000 |
Holy Infant | Ballwin | 9,850 | $1,700,000 |
St. Clare of Assisi | Ellisville | 5,630 | $1,700,000 |
St. Alban Roe | Wildwood | 7,250 | $1,620,000 |
St. Justin the Martyr | Sunset Hills | 2,432 | $1,575,000 |
Archdiocese leaders have said they need to balance scholarship dollars against the number of students who attend Mass and are registered parishioners.
The church workbooks reference white flight in several of the ºüÀêÊÓƵ city and county parishes as causing declines in membership. In announcing the closure of the two schools, Rozanski said the archdiocese is no longer serving a primarily immigrant community as it did in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Walsh, the church organist, points out there are new immigrant groups coming to ºüÀêÊÓƵ.
“Just look at the Bosnians, Ukrainians, Afghanis, Latinos,†he said. “We have a whole new immigrant community. Evangelization should be directed towards that.â€
The smallest parish in the city is St. John Nepomuk, built by Czech immigrants in 1854 in the LaSalle Park neighborhood. The parish has no geographic boundaries and 80 registered Catholics. St. Agatha, a Polish parish in Soulard, had the lowest attendance rate for weekend Mass with 4% of seats filled in the 650-capacity church.
Along with the city and north ºüÀêÊÓƵ County, rural areas are likely to take a big hit in losing parishes. There are nine parishes with fewer than 100 Catholic households in the Ste. Genevieve Deanery, which encompasses Ste. Genevieve, Perry and St. Francois counties and part of Washington County.
Annual offerings from churchgoers in 2021 ranged from about $3.4 million at St. Clement of Rome in Des Peres to $10,000 at St. James in Perry County. Most of the parishes that have experienced a decline in total offerings of 20% or more in the last decade are in ºüÀêÊÓƵ city or north ºüÀêÊÓƵ County.
Five of the nine parishes in north ºüÀêÊÓƵ are operating at a deficit, according to the archdiocese.
Worst offertory decreases, 2012-2021
Parish | Est. num. Catholics | Pct. chg. in offertory | City |
---|---|---|---|
St. James (mission) | 88 | -58% | Crosstown |
St. Andrew Kim (Korean) | 195 | -55% | University City |
St. John Paul II | 2,016 | -50% | Affton |
St. John the Apostle and Evangelist | 94 | -43% | ºüÀêÊÓƵ |
St. Clare | 782 | -36% | St. Clair |
St. Vincent de Paul | 710 | -36% | ºüÀêÊÓƵ |
St. Rita | 95 | -34% | Vinita Park |
St. John the Baptist | 1,279 | -34% | ºüÀêÊÓƵ |
Immaculate Heart of Mary | 855 | -32% | ºüÀêÊÓƵ |
Mary Queen of Peace | 4,500 | -32% | Webster Groves |
St. Sabina | 1,610 | -31% | Florissant |
Our Lady of the Holy Cross | 207 | -30% | ºüÀêÊÓƵ |
St. Joseph (mission) | 60 | -30% | Highland |
‘Roamin’ Catholic’
Similar parish consolidations have played out in Rust Belt cities like Cleveland, Detroit and Pittsburgh. The process in Columbus, Ohio, led by the same consulting firm Catholic Leadership Institute as ºüÀêÊÓƵ, is about a month ahead and offers some clues in the , which show mergers and closures with one priest overseeing up to four parishes.
In Cleveland, 29 of 224 parishes were closed and 41 others merged in 2009. The 216 parishes in Detroit combined into 51 “families†two years ago, sharing leadership and expenses from bookkeeping to snow removal. School systems in some of the cities have moved to a regional model, where students from various parishes attend one elementary, middle or high school together.
Baltimore, Archbishop Rozanski’s hometown, has just started its multiyear parish downsizing called “Seek the City to Come.â€
The last major restructuring across the Archdiocese of ºüÀêÊÓƵ came in 2005, when 31 parishes were closed. In all, 116 parishes have closed since 1883. The most recent was Holy Trinity in St. Ann in 2020.
Patricia Carosello, a parishioner at St. Stephen Protomartyr in south ºüÀêÊÓƵ, calls herself a “roamin’ Catholic†because she has been trying out different churches in part to prepare for mergers.
She’s been to St. Mark in Lemay, Immaculate Heart of Mary, Our Lady of Sorrows and St. John the Baptist in south ºüÀêÊÓƵ for Mass in the last couple years and says she’s only seen a full church during a funeral.
“It’s going to be bad come spring,†Carosello said. “I’m a very devout Catholic but I don’t like the diocese. The diocese is run by people and bean counters, I guess.â€