LEMMINGS – Wake up!!!!
The Catholic Leadership Institute and the Archdiocese of Saint Louis are racing Catholics over the cliff.
This so-called Evangelization effort is a FRAUD. If they believed it would be successful, why would you close a single parish or school? PEW Research shows that when a parish/parish school is closed, 20-50% of members stop going to church. Fewer convert.
Struggling parishes should be mentored by successful ones so that not a single parishioner is denied access to the sacraments due to closure/merger/reorganization.
What is the cost of this initiative, and more importantly, what is its tangible success in other dioceses? No one seems to have an answer – why would you implement a program with no track record of success?
Why- when a compelling reason for closures is a shortage of priest- is this not being addressed!
Aside from pious words and position papers, little has been done to assure the faithful that the priest scandal has been resolved. Payments and settlements of suits have not eliminated distrust of seminaries and the clergy. Predators are still serving and grooming.
Adding to this shortage is the abysmal catechesis parishes and Catholic schools have delivered, a fact acknowledged by many in the Archdiocese.
Unless and until these questions are answered, “All Things New” should be halted and the real roots of this crisis in the Church be identified and healed. Doing otherwise is analogous to removing black mold from a home by covering it with very expensive wallpaper. It institutionalizes the failures of the past.