Amsterdam diocese to close 60% of churches
September 26, 2022
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CWN Editor's Note: The Diocese of Amsterdam has announced plans to close 60% of its churches over the course of the next five years, in a move prompted by a plummeting number of active Catholics.
The diocese, which had 218 parishes as recently as 1980, now has only 164 churches; of these, 99 will be closed under a reorganization plan, and 37 more will be “support churches” slated for later closing in a second round of downsizing.
Bishop Jan Hendriks said that the covid lockdown pandemic “has accelerated the process of shrinkage we were already in: faithful churchgoers of an advanced age have grown even older and have sometimes stopped attending church; others have become accustomed to a different format for Sunday mornings, volunteers have dropped out, choirs have stopped.”
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Posted by: Randal Mandock -
Sep. 27, 2022 12:06 AM ET USA
A reported goal of the "pastoral" Vatican II council was to make Catholicism more palatable to "modern" sensibilities. How's that working out? Let's hueristically assess the news reports about the health of the Catholic Church in the West since Vatican II. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s Evangelicals reported on the millions of Central and South American Catholics who left the Church and "found Christ". In the U.S., Canada, and Europe 100s of parishes have been closing ("consolidating") annually.
