What happened to my old parish?

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Apr 23, 2026

When I moved back to my native Boston area as an adult with a young family, we found a home just a couple of blocks from the house where I had lived as a child—and where my parents still lived. The proximity to the children’s grandparents was a bonus, but the house was perfect in several other respects. It was in a nice neighborhood, which I knew well. The town was adjacent to the city, and my downtown office was a quick train ride away. The home was within easy walking distance to a library and to an unusually beautiful parish church.

The town had never been affluent (which is why we could afford to live there). There certainly wasn’t much money to spare among the Irish and Italian families who lived there in the late 19th century. But their little contributions multiplied, and in 1900 the current church was dedicated: a lovely building, with a magnificent upper church (the reredos, I was told, had once been at St. Patrick’s cathedral in New York), and a lower church that was less grand but not unattractive.

Nor did the parishioners stop there. Anxious to show their respect for the priesthood, they build a sumptuous rectory, so imposing that the first pastor refused to live in it, saying that it was inappropriate for a simple priest to live in a mansion.

By the time my parents moved into town in 1950, the parish had a thriving parochial school, serving grades 1 through 8, staffed by the Sisters of St. Joseph with help from only a couple of lay teachers. There were 52 (!) students in my class. By the time I graduated, another school building had appeared, with classrooms to accommodate another eight classes.

The Mass schedule offered nine options on Sunday (there was no anticipatory Mass in those days). The early-morning Masses were sparsely attended, but by the middle of Sunday morning there would be two Masses celebrated simultaneously—starting times slightly staggered—in the upper and lower churches. And the pews would be full.

Well, if you’re old enough, or have read enough, you know what happened. By the time I moved back to town in 1987, the schedule of Masses had been trimmed back, and still the pews were never crowded on an ordinary Sunday. (Christmas and Easter, maybe, or a big wedding or funeral.) And the schools? Closed.

When I asked the pastor—a good priest—whether he’d be interested in a drive to reopen the schools, he quickly dismissed the idea. His explanation struck me as incoherent. “We need to keep them closed for a generation,” he said, “so that we can open them for the next generation.” That logic didn’t parse for me, since I’m the father of only one generation of children; my duty was to provide for their education. Moreover, if they had no experience of a Catholic grammar school, it might not even occur to them to start up what would be a brand-new one.

So the schools stayed closed; those big brick buildings stood empty. Later, while we were living there, a different pastor shut down discussion of the possibility that one of the buildings could host an independent Catholic school. Eventually the buildings were demolished, the property sold.

We moved out of town, and out of the Boston archdiocese, in 1999. I haven’t been back to my old parish—my memories, frankly, are not fond—but I understand it is one of the healthiest parishes in the archdiocese, with a full complement of events and ministries and invitations to participate in the sacraments. I do not mean here to criticize the parish; I only mean to point out that it is a much smaller operation. There are three Masses on Sunday morning now, not nine (plus the anticipatory Mass on Saturday afternoon, and the “Lifeteen Mass,” for those who can endure it, on Sunday afternoon). And of course there is no parochial school.

What happened? The town’s population has increased. The percentage of residents who identify themselves as Catholics is roughly the same. But the pews are rarely full. The town has become wealthier, and on paper the parishioners would seem far better able to build a new school than those who actually did so a few generations ago. But the Sisters of St. Joseph are no longer available to furnish teachers, and decent salaries for lay teachers would be tough to support.

One more important factor: There aren’t as many children to fill the schools. I grew up in a neighborhood where our family, with six children, was more or less average. The same houses are now occupied by couples with one or two children. Across the street from my parents, a young couple added a huge addition to their house when the wife was expecting her 2nd child. The previous owners had managed to raise seven children there. What was adequate for one generation was grossly inadequate for the next. So the increase in income was quickly eaten up; the motivation to scrimp and save and build a school had disappeared—as had the motivation to get to Mass on Sunday. A question of priorities.

My story is far from unique. Thousands—hundreds of thousands—of Catholic Americans my age could tell the same tale. This is the story—it is the story—of the Catholic Church in our country over the past century: a story of decline. And until Church leaders acknowledge the disaster, and recognize the urgent need to jettison the policies that brought us to this pass, the story is unlikely to change.