Like the three services celebrated earlier in the morning and the four that will follow into the afternoon, the 10:45 a.m. Sunday Mass at St. Thomas the Apostle Church in the Pico-Union district of downtown Los Angeles is crammed to the rafters, even though the church holds nearly 1,000 parishioners. When I spoke on a recent Sunday to Msgr. Jarlath Cunnane, or Father Jay, as he is known by his congregation, he said: "If we had the space, I think another thousand people might well come to each Sunday Mass. We’re full, bursting at the seams, and so are most churches in the archdiocese."
In many ways, this is the best of times to be a Catholic in Los Angeles. "In the 1980s, we were conscious of dioceses closing churches all over the Eastern United States," Cunnane told me. We were sitting in his office in a low-slung new building across the street from the church, where the administrative work of the parish is done. "Our problem is the reverse: were it not for the shortage of priests, we would be expanding our ministry."
This news comes as something of a surprise, given the fact that the last four decades have been such a catastrophe for American Catholicism. The statistics speak for themselves: In 1965, there were 49,000 seminarians; in 2002, there were 4,700. In 1965, there were 1,556 Catholic high schools; in 2002, there were 786. Mass attendance dropped from 74 percent of self-identified Catholics in 1958 to 25 percent in 2000. The number of priests has not fallen quite as drastically — 58,000 in 1965; 45,000 in 2002 — but the median age for priests today is 56, and 16 percent of them are from foreign countries.
The above article is taken from the New York Times. The entire article is attached to this message and can be downloaded.
