Higher-ups at the Catholic Church in Rome have come out in support of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s (AOP’s) prior decision to demolish St. Laurentius Church and sell the real estate on which it sits. As we’ve recently reported, the Vatican in its defense of the AOP’s decision described Fishtown as “an example of urban blight.”

This, as you could imagine, caused quite a stir.

“Seriously? If it wasn’t so sad it would be hysterical,” wrote Save Saint Laurentius (SSL) committee member Maggie O’Brien in an e-mail to The Spirit. “Does anyone in the Archdiocese read [The Spirit]? Have any of them ever come to our community? To make such ridiculous remarks is absolutely irresponsible and infuriating. Talk about out of touch with reality.”

Thoughts of Pope Frankie and Archbishop Charlie chillin’ in the Vatican castle, flipping through The Spirit aside, our supposedly slummy neighborhood wasn’t the Vatican’s only beef with the local church and Fishtown more generally. They criticized St. Laurentius’s clergy and parishioners for their alleged failure to bring in new adherents. According to the recourse denial,

“[i]t appears the parishes of that section (Fishtown) did little to… evangelize new arrivals to the neighborhood, instead suffering dwindling membership, and relying upon the Archdiocese of Philadelphia for constant financial assistance, leading to the extinctive union in hopes of forming a more sustainable parish.”

Patricia Kinsman of SSL agrees with that part of the Vatican’s position. “[The] problem with Catholicism in general is that they don’t evangelize,” she said.

Awkward…

A user-posted comment on SSL’s Facebook page sums up the situation in Kinsman’s opinion. Responding to an article about St. Laurentius, the user wrote,

“One way to come to these parishes’ rescue would be to actually evangelize people rather than merely managing the decline of the Church.”

The decline to which that user refers is well documented. “Over the past four decades,” according to a 2013 Pew Research Center article,

“self-reported church attendance has declined among ‘strong’ Catholics as well as among Catholics overall. The share of all Catholics who say they attend Mass at least once a week has dropped from 47 percent in 1974 to 24 percent in 2012; among ‘strong’ Catholics, it has fallen more than 30 points, from 85 percent in 1974 to 53 percent in 2013.”

Locally speaking, there were about 537,699 Catholics living in Philadelphia in 1990, according to the Association of Religious Data Archives. The total had by 2010 dropped to around 378,561. That’s a loss of about 150,000 adherents over thirty years.

The future of Philadelphia’s Catholic faith looks even less promising than its past.

The AOP reported 20,663 infant baptisms in Philadelphia during 1990. The 2015 edition of Our Sunday Visitor’s Catholic Almanac reported an annual count of 11,851 infant baptisms, 335 adult baptisms and 302 full confirmations in Philadelphia during 2014.

The big export here is that the Vatican’s blaming a local parish for what seems very much like a citywide, if not a national or even global trend. And this does complicate St. Laurentius’s outlook.

But what’s causing the city’s faith to diminish? Is it local parishioners’ or the AOP’s fault for doing a poor job keeping young people interested in Catholicism? Is it the fault of the Internet and increasingly secular school curricula? Or is it rather a growing distrust toward Catholic authority figures with their arcane policies, sex abuse scandals and silly hats?

Maybe it’s just God’s fault in the end. Maybe this is all just a test.