Parishes are closing, but the revival is happening

Last week, the Archdiocese of Dubuque, Iowa, announced it is combining its 80 parishes into 24 parish groupings. These widespread parish consolidations are happening in dioceses all over the country, like Cleveland and Pittsburgh.

And yet, last month, Hallow released a study surveying dioceses in the US and found that in 80% of dioceses, including our four biggest dioceses, there is an increase in converts from last year to this year.

So how do we reconcile these two competing claims?

Depending on who you ask, the Church is either experiencing a monumental decline or unprecedented growth.

The supposed paradox exists only if we treat growth and decline as if they’re driven by the same thing. They are not.

Our Church is being pruned

We think of growth and decline in the Church as two mutually exclusive realities; something either grows or declines. However, when the Lord speaks about the Church in His parables, He often uses imagery of a fig tree or a vine, things that need to be pruned.

I recently had an arborist come to my house and evaluate my trees. He said that most of the branches on the tree were useless and needed to be cut off. For the tree to remain healthy, it would need to lose most of the branches it has. For a while, it would look much smaller than it does now, but later it would be fuller at the crown.

Every branch takes nutrients and water from the tree. If it isn’t providing fruit or shade, the branch needs to be cut off. That cut allows the rest of the tree to thrive. It allows for decline and growth.

“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit.” (John 15:1-2)

The same pruning is happening in the Church. Take the famous “8 leave for every one who joins” statistic. The eight had a dead faith and were cut off. The one who joins will bear fruit; the eight did not. We should not celebrate them leaving and hope to God they return, but it is a net benefit to the Church.

Of course, the decline and growth in the Church are happening at the same time. That’s how pruning works.

The trend is going in the right direction

The decline is the tail end of a trend where the faith was preached poorly. Cultural Catholicism, the sins of the 60s and 70s, the lessening of the importance of religion, beige Catholicism—all those things are at an end. We’re reaping the benefits of that poor church management.

The growth is the first fruit of a decades-long missionary activity through nationwide organizations like FOCUS, Life Teen, Catholic Answers, devout Catholic colleges, etc. These organizations were pushing and pushing for missionary activity in the Church to continue, and it’s working.

We need to recognize the good that’s happening. We need to recognize the evil that happened. Ultimately, I reject the idea that things are terrible. Things are getting a lot better. The faith is becoming more and more front and center in our culture.

We need to be able to hold multiple things in tension at the same time. The decline is real, but we are winning.

We cannot slack off

That said, we can’t let this slacken our resolve to evangelize.

Both decline and growth can encourage and discourage people. Some people are motivated by growth and want to work for it to continue, but are demoralized by decline. Some are motivated by decline and work hard when things are bad, but when things are good, they’re not motivated to work.

We need to be sober and look at the whole picture. God is working, but we still have work to do.

In one of Jesus’s parables, a master sees a barren fig tree and orders it to be removed. The servant asks for one more year to care for the tree and see if it will bear fruit. The Lord leaves the ending open. We do not know the master’s reply, let alone if the servant’s plan worked.

In the case of the tree of the Church in America, it seems the master agreed to the servant’s plan. Our barren tree did begin to give fruit. But we do not know how much fruit the master expects. We do not know how much time we have left.

We are bearing fruit. But is our year coming to an end?