Dave you brought up some very good points and a few that I shared with Robert. I teach PSR and volunteer with the youth groups. I've been doing it since 1989. I agree with the viewpoint that sports, camps, "afterschool activities" are being held at a higher ranking than PSR or attending Church. It's a disgrace in our Faith. Between the last 2 years I have had 3 students drop out of PSR due to the class "conflicting" with basketball, football or cheerleading. Nevermind now that our Parish offers PSR at earlier times so that the children can come to PSR (have a meal as well) and then be able to be at home for 1-1/2 hours before "practice" starts! We've even create a 1 week summer camp for PSR. Hardly covers 4 chapters let alone a full school year but we're trying "to serve." Parents are now pushing for first eucharist/reconciliation/ confirmation to be done ALL AT THE SAME TIME in 2nd Grade!!! Is that a crazy request or what?!? But sure enough a few parishes in good ol' Cleveland, Ohio are doing it. Their thought is if they appease the parents that they will retain the memberships and/or the donations. Wrong. In my opinion those parents pushing this are not the parents that are "regular" monetary contributors, voluteers, nor attend mass on a semi- regular to regular basis. We've even created a "home school" version of PSR. We pay for everything! Even give you a movie! Still we can't get parents to DO the work. I'm very truly concerned about the future of our Catholic Faith and future legacy. Children now pass from grade to grade and teachers cannot have them repeat PSR grades even though the child has not attended more than 1 day of class, can't recite one prayer, can't answer basic questions of our Faith, can't tell you the difference from Bible stories or even list the most basic holidays that we Catholics celebrate. Yes, it's THAT bad! Anyhoo my point is that this is why the Church's are closing. My generation. We are not doing anything, or if we are doing something we're not doing enough. And we don't teach our kids and SHOW our children the importance of our Faith and the importance of respect for all Faiths and God's people! Thus Churches will continue to wean as well as members... Other Faiths invest in their youth, in their Churches, in their senior members, in their history and just keep building upon it. We are not. They are increasing membership and size, we are just maintaining (if you have to generalize). The one thing that I will have to agree to disagree with you is the number of children for the "rich" verses the "poor" and/or the "caucasion" verses the "minorities" groups. Many minorities do not have access to education, health care, etc. Even with so many negative externals (lack of monies and access to education/healthcare/better wages/employment, etc) against them they do have a lot of "ethnic" (lack of a better word) positives and blessing therefore they can and are able to conceive, carry to full term, and have children with less complications. White women have a lot of difficulty conceiving and/or bearing children and/or carrying fetuses to full term even with fantastic health care at their disposal. I find that perplexing and concerning. White women also wait a longer time than minorities to begin conceiving children. Most of the blame is due to education and standards of living. Everyone wants to blame women for wanting cars, large houses, fancy vacations, etc. But the fact is that just having a bachelor degree is no longer "enough" to get one hired and/or to earn a decent living. And by decent I don't mean fancy cars/houses/vacations, etc. I just mean a house, health insurance, basic car, basic living expenses. So by the time we start thinking of having children you find yourself at the age of 30 or 32! Those that are "lucky" to find an appropriate loving "mate" may be able to marry and to "try" to conceive children at the age of 24. But more and more white women at that age are having to go into IVF for assistance or perhaps to try adoption since they've had so many miscarriages. I met one lady at the age of 32 who had SIX (6) miscarriages. She then signed up for adoption and that took over 2 years just to get on a "list". I know for one of my clients is a professional group of OB/GYN's, Anthesiaologists, etc. They keep complaining that they see younger and younger patients coming in and it concerns them. The older patients (40+) they can understand those dinamics but the younger is concerning. So my point in all this babble of mine is to say, just be careful blaming "white" women for not having enough children. For most it's not their own choice but that is what life gave them. I know in my own case I lost my firstborn due to a birth defect. He died at the age of 3 weeks. Due to being hooked up to all sorts of life support machines I never was able to hold him until he died during hospital procedures. After that I was blessed to have 1 more child. Then his father left us while I was pregnant. My dream of having a big family was gone. Now I"m too old to have more children. But at least I am one of the lucky ones to actually have a child. I see so many couples write down in pen and tears in our Parish "prayer book" how they can't even conceive a child, let alone carry them to full term. So with each "race" there are the positives and the negatives. And behind each face that shows a story is a factual story, so continue to be wise not to "assume" for most or all peoples. Great email! Thanks for the read! :) On Jan 25, 2007, at 7:20 AM, davem9759@juno.com wrote: Well, this has been interesting conversation, so let me put in my 2 cents. There was a HUGE drop of support for the church after the so-called sex scandals came to light. Some of these cases were more than questionable, but to avoid more bad publicity, and scandal the church paid off on a number of cases, and offered free counseling to some of the suffering souls. Some of the problems we are seeing today is a result of our own irreverence. We've become a society that wanted to be able to go to church Sunday morning in blue jeans and tank tops. Surely the parents that allowed their children to do so, or even argued against having to dress up helped to foster the socio-trend which seems to have taken the importance and value of attending church out of the paradigm. That paradigm is that we once viewed church as significant and crucial to family and society as we attempted to become a civilized culture. Church was a place where we gave God his glory and received our forgiveness and the sacrament of life - the Eucharist. With the degradation of value in attending church because of the loss of it's significance in our lives for personal and spiritual growth other activities became more important to us in forming social bonds - i.e soccer games, and football games. As the soccer mom culture grew, and the children's activities became ! more critical to their growth and development, church became a less necessary activity. Parent's tend to believe that their child is the star of the game, we want our children to be successful, and somehow sports became more important that having the values that we receive by attending church. Soccer is todays church, and unfortunately - very few good values other than sportsmanship are taught. Depending on the coach - the new role model replacing the parish priest; some sportsmanship may even be sacrificed for the sake of the game. What lesson does that teach? Next is the church paradigm which causes people to move out of parish or stop attending. The value placed on new members. I get my envelopes all the time. I gave my time prolife, RCIA, ministry formation, etc.; and when the calling came (I think it was always there) at 40 to request to become a deacon - the old farts group that controls the Diaconate (guys in their late 50's and 60's) said I was too young. - I wonder what Jeremiah would have said to that. When new members join the church they are quickly grabbed for as many groups as they can handle and soon become burned out, and uninterested - even avoiding church to prevent being asked for more time. I've been a lifelong Catholic at the same parish - I see it all the time. So how do you breathe new life into a parish that is suffering - A parish on our west side of town was failing to meet it's bills, and attendance. Someone came up with a brilliant idea that breathed life into it.. welcome the minorities. First they set up Spanish language masses, and brought in people from the other parishes to help with their needs - i.e volunteers to help distribute clothing donations, etc. Some churches found Asian speaking members to assist in their community. The problem was that the church didn't reflect the community and those people didn't attend. Once that was addressed attendance improved. My parish is in the middle of an affluent white neighborhood, and a poor mostly minority community. The affluent families only had one or two children ( I blame that on liberal idealogy - birth control and abortion), while the minority families have at least 2 -3 children. These families are working people who tend to get looks when they come into the ch! apel. While the parish says it is welcoming - the community of parishioners shows otherwise. I think Christ would be ashamed! We need to get the churches to become truly welcoming, and truly supportive of the people who live in the community that should be able to attend that parish. That of itself will improve things. Many latins, asians and other groups are being welcomed into the "evangelical" or mega rock and roll churches. We haven't as Catholics addressed that. When was the last time you saw a "Catholic Church" add on the tv or radio. To end this on the main point - to ask to preserve a church because it has been historically part of a culture probably won't do anything to help the church's bottom line and likely will result in the closure unless it can be preserved as a shrine or basillica. The best bet is to speak of the church's early history of helping a community of immigrants (Croatians, etc.) and redirecting that focus to the new immigrants or minoritys in order to improve attendance. I find it amazing that schools are closing because of lack of support, in this area at least only one school closed years ago because of that; now it is being rehabilitated. Their is a large population of suburbians who want their children in the safer "private" parochial schools, maybe from a sense of elitism or esteem - still if it appeals to them why not address it as a marketing tool. Good luck in the rest. I hope that the Croatian heritage can be preserved. Dave ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to CROATIA- request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

I don't have a comment on the whole "where does the blame lie for the churches closing" debate, but I do have one comment to make about the following paragraph: --- Natalie Prodan <prodan@alltel.net> wrote: > Parents are now pushing for first > eucharist/reconciliation/ > confirmation to be done ALL AT THE SAME TIME in 2nd > Grade!!! Is that > a crazy request or what?!? But sure enough a few > parishes in good ol' > Cleveland, Ohio are doing it. Their thought is if > they appease the > parents that they will retain the memberships and/or > the donations. This is how it's done in the Byzantine Catholic Church. The child is baptized, confirmed AND given first communion at the same time, when they're only a few months old! We also allow our priests to get married, even in American again (finally!). Guess we must be crazy ;) These links have a little more information about Byzantine Catholicism and our crazy ways: http://www.parma.org/what.htm http://home.att.net/~Local_Catholic/ OK, I guess I DO have a comment on the debate after all. If the (Roman) Catholic Church needs to keep these sacraments "separate" in order for the church to continue to receive monetary support, is that really right? It's a form of spiritual blackmail on the part of the church, "You MUST remain a member until all these sacraments have been imparted on you over a span of 16 years, or your child will not be a full-fledged Catholic!" Whereas on the other hand, if the parents want their children to receive all the sacraments in one go solely so their family no longer has an "obligation" to the church, where has the church gone wrong? Not with the children, but with those children's parents when THEY were attending PSR and receiving their sacraments. How strong is someone's faith, really, if they're only remaining a member of the church so that their child can receive the sacraments necessary to "make" them a Catholic? There's more to it than that, and somewhere the message got lost. For families like that, whether their child receives all the sacraments at one time or spread out over a span of 16 years, the only thing the church gains is a few more years of monetary contributions. Which is grand, but monetary contributions can only keep a church going so long if its parishioners are just automatons going through the motions rather than making their parish a real part of their lives and the community. Diane, who is one of the church's youth here in Cleveland at age 31, and also a prime example of the white gal with no children yet since I just got married in June 2006. We are not gossiping cruelly. We are just trying to understand life. --Natalie Goldberg Diane M. Homza ek242dmh@yahoo.com ____________________________________________________________________________________ Bored stiff? Loosen up... Download and play hundreds of games for free on Yahoo! Games. http://games.yahoo.com/games/front