Circuit Riding Updated?

Re: Circuit Riding Updated?


There is the issue of the number of priests and there are financial issues.

The priests do a lot more than just say Sunday (or Saturday) mass. They also go to each nursing home in their assigned area and say masses at those through out the week as well as perfoming "Last Rights" rituals at nursing homes and local hospitals, visiting ill members of their parish, etc..

From a financial aspect, paying for the priest is probably a pretty small amount. Most of the Church run day care centers and schools are subsidized through the church. The people that utilize them aren't paying the full cost of whatever service is provided. The Boston Globe ran an article a few months back mentioning that something like 40% of the kids that attend Catholic schools are there on full grants. If you figure 25 per grade level and 8 grades in an elementry school that's 200 kids. 40% puts 80 of them there gratis. At $8K/year that's $640K the church pays for just one school and that's just the tuition costs.

There is BIG money involved in every catholic parish and as long as expenses exceed revenue they'll continue cutting their numbers back.

Not to mention the revenue the church will generate from sale of the real estate to help pay off its "priestly pedophile" scandals.

I agree that a priest's salary is probably the least of the expenses the Archdiocese faces and, yes, I am aware that pastoral care includes more than just Sunday Mass.

One of the things the Archdiocese is trying to do is geographically consolidate priests, not limit their duties. With the priests collected in fewer church buildings, the people are being asked to commute a little.

There is one church of three closing in the town where I live, which is very small, geographically. The church slated to close is almost on the town line. Parishioners could easily attend the large church in the town center or a church that is just as close to them in the next town to the north.

I frankly didn't know about parochial school students being subsidized but there are far fewer schools then there were in the middle of the last century and fewer parents elect to send their kids to parochial schools.

One of the schools slated to close, St. Peter's, claims to be self-sustaining. However, I question whether it is self-sustaining because it is part of a church and therefore paying no rent, no mortgage and no property tax.

Day care centers are probably not subsidized and they are generally money makers. One of the reasons why they make money is they utilize other wise empty rooms in public schools, churches and synagogues that are cleaned and heated anyway. For the most part, the real expense is in the form of teachers' salaries and supplies.

Of course, there is expense involved in keeping smaller parishes open: heat, lighting, secretarial and janitorial services, grounds keeping and more.

I suspect these churches are closing is to sell the property to pay for the pedophile law suits.