By Sophie Foster
Opinion Editor
The Archdiocese of Baltimore, which oversees the city’s presence of organized Catholicism, is poised to drastically reduce its number of worship sites.
According to its Seek the City to Come proposal, in fact, the number of worship and ministry cites in the city and its immediate suburbs will be reduced to 26, with options for constructing or creating new ministries.
The proposal, which began with gathering input and embarking on visits to parishes in the city and its immediate suburbs, is now in its “public comment phase” as they deliberate on a myriad of subjects, but most notably, “the merging of parish campuses,” according to the archdiocese’s website.
Three public comment sessions are scheduled in the near future: at 6:30 p.m. on April 25 at Archbishop Curley High School, at 7 p.m. on April 29 at Our Lady of Fatima, and at 6:30 p.m. on April 30 at Our Lady of Victory Church.
This news immediately ricocheted through the Catholic community in Maryland, many of whom wanted answers to the question of why their parish might be shutting down.
According to The Baltimore Banner, “Catholics…reacted with sorrow, anger and outrage to news that the archdiocese planned to shutter two-thirds of the churches. Many vowed to fight to keep open churches to which they and their families had belonged for decades.”
The answer to the big “why” question, ultimately, is far less sensational than some might anticipate.
Really, it is as simple as this: in 2024, substantially fewer people would call themselves churchgoers than, say, 50 years ago. Enrollment is down at private Catholic schools — the Institute of Notre Dame and Seton Keough High School, for example, both closed their doors in the last 10 years — and church attendance is low. This decision, then, should come as a surprise to almost no one, least of all practicing Catholics who have seen the empty pews firsthand.
According to Auxiliary Bishop and Vicar Bruce Lewandowski for WBAL, while the city once had a quarter of a million practicing Catholics, the number now sits between five and eight thousand.
“We have the same infrastructure, the same buildings, but really [a] much smaller Catholic community,” Lewandowski said.
The reason for the decline in attendance is also quite straightforward. Social dialogues shift and the public’s standards and interests change. The reality with any organization is that if you do not evolve, you do not thrive, and the Catholic church as an institution has long been under fire for refusing to progress at the pace of societal evolution.
We also cannot overlook that this downsizing comes on the heels of 2023’s news release that more than 150 priests and figures associated with the Archdiocese of Baltimore abused more than 600 children, according to CBS News.
Church and archdiocesan officials were allegedly involved in decades of coverups. According to CBS News, the report “paints a damning picture of the archdiocese” and was described as “pervasive, pernicious and persistent abuse by priests and other Archdiocese personnel…It’s also a history of repeated coverup of that abuse by the Catholic Church” by Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown.
Beyond this striking issue, the archdiocese consistently falls distant from popular opinion on critical social issues in Maryland.
According to Pew Research Center, for example, 64% of Marylanders believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases and 60% of Marylanders are in favor of same sex marriage’s continued legality.
Archbishop William E. Lori, however, viewed the overturning of Roe v. Wade as “good news for our nation…and the cause of life” and “a victory,” according to The Catholic Review. The archdiocese also promotes its Courage and Encourage initiative, which “seeks to help persons with same-sex attractions develop an interior life of chastity and move beyond the confines of the homosexual identity.”
Again and again, the Archdiocese of Baltimore misses the mark on popular opinion. It embeds itself in horrific controversy and fails to align with what the public wants moving forward, and in that failure, loses the membership numbers required to stay afloat financially.
Most Catholics of Baltimore are not victims here. This is not persecution — it is a business in decline behaving like a business in decline.
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Photo caption: The city of Baltimore will likely see many of its churches, such as St. Leo’s Church (above) close in the near future.