Are churches being sold as common real estate..

[Princess Turandot]

where you live? Now granted, in NYC the RC churches as well as other denominations sit on real estate worth a gold mine. If a parish has to be closed and the church is no longer in use, I suppose I could see selling the land. What bothers me is the continued use of these buildings after they have been de-consecrated. I truly wish that the Church would insist that the buildings be raised as well, unless they had historical significance..

While there are several examples of this in NYC, the one that got to me was the National Shrine of St. Ann. I'll be the first to admit that I had an interest in the church since my parents were married there and my dad was buried from there. It sadly wasn't a very attractive church in many ways.

The Chuch sold the property to NY University aka the entity that consumed the villages. The university tore down all but the front facade of the former church as an entry way into the apartment building. Not only does it look rather incongruous, but it's a sad reminder of what was.

Is this going on in other parts of the country?

[hedgehog]

1. Absolutely. It's bad enough to see the hierarchy abandoning the cities.

The excuse is that all the Catholics moved to the suburbs. So what are the people who moved in to take their place, chopped liver? Apparently the bishops have never heard of evangelizing.

What's even worse is seeing thriving parishes shut down and the property sold because of the artificial shortage of priests and/or need to pay off law suits.

[47of74]

2. Several examples here in Iowa

I live near Dubuque, Iowa and have seen a number of instances where this has happened. Many country parishes don't have a resident priest - there may be one priest for half a dozen parishes. That's for the fortunate ones that remain open. There's a lot of old country parishes that mainly because of a lack of priests have been closed down entirely and the buildings relegated to profane use.

About a mile from my house there's the former St. Joseph Prairie Catholic Church. It was a small country parish that most of my aunts on my dad's side were all married in and that my brother and sister were baptized in. I also made my first communion from there. In 1990 the Archdiocese made it an oratory, and a few years later it was relegated to profane use and sold to the guy who had purchased the rectory when the parish was made an oratory. Today the church building is a storage shed, with a large door on the side of the church. It's a shame that it happened but I do recall rumors going around that some right wing religious extremists had been making inquiries on the building, so I'm glad it didn't get sold to them.

In Cascade, Iowa there was once two parishes - St. Martin's for the Irish families in Cascade, and St. Mary's for the German families. The parishes were less than a mile apart from each other. My great-grandparents were married at St. Mary's in the early 1900s. In the 1990s the two parishes were combined, and St. Mary's was eventually closed. The parish did take the organ out of St. Mary's and is installing it in St. Martin's. St. Mary's was considered as a location for the libary before becoming an antiques store.

One case where the parish didn't close but moved to larger quarters happened up in Asbury, Iowa. There's a parish named Resurrection Catholic Church. It started in the 1850s as St. Philomena's parish. Some years ago they adopted their current name and moved about a half mile east to a new building. The old building was purchased and incorporated into a nursing home facility.