Cleansing Fire

Defending Truth and Tradition in the Lay-Run Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester

Posts Tagged ‘Average October Attendance’

DOR loses 1/3 of its Mass goers in 10 years

February 28th, 2011, Promulgated by Mike

71,901 souls were attending Mass in parish churches in the Diocese of Rochester last year, down from 75,376 in 2009 and 108,000 in 2000. This represents a one-year drop in parish Mass attendance of some 4.6% and a 33.4% drop in a mere decade.  Put another way, we have been losing  an average of 4.0% of our parish Mass attendees each year for the last 10 years.

DOR’s Average October Attendance numbers since 2000 look like this …

Plotted on a graph the numbers show a steady decline that gives no indication of slowing down (the uptick in 2001 is almost certainly due to the widely reported national surge in church attendance in the weeks immediately following the tragic events of 9/11/2001) …

Nationwide, Mass attendance is about 35%. In the Diocese of Rochester, noted for its widespread liturgical abuse and dissent from Church teaching, Mass attendance is now running at 23%.  Contrast this with the 62% Mass attendance rate in the Diocese of Lincoln, known for its fidelity to Rome.

“By their fruits you will know them.” – Jesus, as quoted in Matthew 7:20

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We’re winning! … er, better make that, We’re losing!

September 21st, 2010, Promulgated by Mike

Rich Leonardi is blogging about an article in Sunday’s Cincinnati Enquirer detailing the decline in weekend Mass attendance in both the Archdiocese of Cincinnati and the Diocese of Covington, just across the Ohio River in Kentucky.

… bishops and priests recognize the trend is headed in the wrong direction. Mass attendance fell by about 41,000 in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati in the past decade and by about 7,000 in the Diocese of Covington – a drop of almost 20 percent for each diocese.

Well, Rich, the Diocese of Rochester will see your 20% and raise you another 10.

In the 10 years ending in 2009 DOR’s Average October Attendance at parish churches has fallen by over 30% (30.2%, to be precise).**

One Cincinnati reader gave her diagnosis of the problem in this LTE:

Regarding the article … on the declining attendance at Catholic schools and parishes, I think it can be attributed to a post-Vatican II failure of Catholic education of both children and adults, leaving them ignorant of the faith and susceptible to being misled by people twisting Vatican II teachings to their own wishes. Catholics given a high-carb and, in some cases, junk-food education, having missed out on the meat and potatoes and fruits and vegetables, will end up stunted “cafeteria Catholics.” I think that many of our Catholic educational institutions, while not in academic emergency, are in catechistic emergency.

I cannot say for certain how true that is for the Cincinnati area, but it is spot on for the Diocese of Rochester.

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**[To be perfectly fair, in 2008 DOR began collecting October Mass attendance numbers from such non-parish locations as prisons, nursing homes, campus chapels, monasteries, senior living centers, migrant ministries and motherhouses and that data does show a significant number of Catholics to be attending weekend Mass at such sites (3,853 in 2008 and 5,313 last year).  This data, however, does not exist for the years prior to 2008 and so, in the interest of comparing apples with apples, the recent, non-parish data has not been included in the above 10-year chart.]

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