He said the State would help villages and municipalities throughout France finance the upkeep and restoration of their empty churches.

As part of his commitment, the president intends to launch a new protection campaign: today, of the 50,000 religious buildings dedicated to worship (42,000 of which are Catholic), only 10,500 are classified or registered as historic monuments, which gives them greater access to subsidies. He also explained that he wants to use the national subsidy tool again, as was the case for Notre-Dame de Paris.

A necessary and popular measure

Very well. Since 1905, towns and villages have owned places of worship built before that date, the vast majority of which are Catholic churches, and are struggling to finance the restoration and upkeep of their bell towers.

It is, therefore, a necessary move.

It's also a popular measure, since, as all the polls and surveys show, the French people are extremely attached to their churches.

As soon as one of them is sold, converted into a hotel, a gym or whatever, the whole neighbourhood cries scandal...

Of course, but with less than 3% of the population attending Sunday worship, what's the point of these restorations?

To preserve a closed heritage?

We all know how difficult it is, in a number of villages, to get hold of the precious key that allows you to enter and admire an altarpiece or a painting that are hidden away in a place that is hardly ever used.

How long will the French be willing to pay (because we are the State) for buildings that have become ghosts of the past?

It's a delicate question.

On the one hand, our fellow citizens value their churches.

On the other hand, religious use is far from being the primary purpose for these locales.

The Catholic Church, as the benefactor of the buildings, has a say in how the properties are used.

It can therefore accept or refuse hosting other events, often concerts.

The difficulty today is that each steeple has its own parish priest, and so there are many different responses to requests.

It is undoubtedly in the interest of the institutional Church to allow "shared uses" of church building, or, as the bishops put it in a more restricted sense, "compatible uses".

A church can be used for Mass once a month, concerts or theatre, as well as a place of remembrance, education (heritage and history training), a space for artistic creation, or even charity work, such as a community grocery store or a day shelter for the homeless.

Fewer priests

With a little goodwill, there are a thousand ways of imagining these other services.

The institutional Church still needs to renounce this parochial conception of its organization, which dates back more than eight hundred years.

Since the Gregorian reform, the parish-church has been considered a sacramental space, under the authority of the parish priest.

In short, without the priest, there is no church... But this is no longer possible, simply because the number of priests is falling, and it is physically impossible for them to "hold" all those churches.

When a priest says "my" parish and has to manage 48 church buildings, it's quite complicated!

It must be recognized that the entire community is concerned about how these churches are put to use.

If the mayor's office is restoring a church, it's normal that city officials will want to see how it can be of service to society.

One thing is certain, and this should reassure the bishops who are apprehensive on this subject: the only way to ensure that these church buildings continue to serve the common good and are not privatized is for the Church to remain the lessee. Few, if any, want to dislodge it. We might as well rejoice...

• Isabelle de Gaulmyn is a senior editor at La Croix and former Vatican correspondent.
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

While many still hope things will go back to "normal" once a vaccine is widely available, one researcher is asking a tough question: "What if they never come back?"

Dan Cellucci, CEO of the Catholic Leadership Institute, a lay group that helps bishops and parish priests sustain their parishes, is in a good position to understand what was at stake for Catholics during the COVID-19 pandemic.

CLI is constantly gathering data on the Catholic Church's depressive trend, especially in the West, in Mass attendance and the number of parishioners.

"This pandemic has led to the acceleration of so many trend lines we were already on," Cellucci told Religion News Service in a phone interview from CLI's offices in Wayne, Pennsylvania, on Friday (Dec. 4).

"It's going to feel like things are being taken from us. And they are going to be taken from us.

"Churches are going to close, we are going to lose money. It's happening and it's going to happen," he added.

Among those Catholics who say they attend Mass at least once a week, 15% have reported that they are falling or moving away from the church, according to CLI's survey of 230,000 churchgoing Catholics from 1,255 U.S. parishes over the past six years.

Even those who report no drift in terms of attendance said they don't trust in the teaching authority of the church (52%), or never go to Confession (30%) or don't believe that the church is crucial for their faith (47%).

About 10% of the respondents said that they go to Mass mostly out of habit.

Cellucci questions whether this group's habit will survive a long period in which Masses have been prohibited or discouraged.

"When COVID-19 hit, immediately my alarm bell started going off," Cellucci said.

CLI data shows signs of "a great winnowing" among Catholic communities, he added, as parishes that have been able to adapt are attracting more followers, while those that were already challenged are now in a difficult spiral.

Pope Francis has suggested that if people were attending Mass out of habit, "then it's best if they stay home," before adding that in overcoming "this difficult trial" of COVID-19, it's possible that "the faithful will be more true, more authentic."

Cellucci said that while the prospect of a smaller church "may be in fact our reality, it should never be our goal." While the aggregate data from CLI "is very bad and very daunting," he added, some pastors and church leaders have rolled up their sleeves to face the challenge.

One of Cellucci's main concerns is the tendency in the Catholic Church "to look down and stay huddled," instead of doing what the situation calls for, which is "to push ourselves and each other to lift our heads up."

The role of clergy in navigating the current crisis is crucial, CLI data shows. Parishioners are 11 times more likely to recommend their parish if they recommend their pastor, according to the survey.

The finding is in tune with Francis' war on clericalism — the mentality among clergy that their power rests in their position, rather than service.

"If our faith is so concentrated in these men as opposed to in the Lord we are setting ourselves, and them, up for failure," Cellucci said.

"We really need to redirect people away from their buildings, away from their comfort zone and away from cults of personality to the only personality that matters, which is the person of Jesus Christ."

Younger Catholics have shown themselves to be particularly unattached to the physical presence of the church and individuals, choosing instead to find faith communities online, Cellucci said.

He credits Francis with foreseeing this trend in a July document on "The pastoral conversion of the parish community in the service of the evangelizing mission of the church," in which the pontiff invited priests to leave their churches and meet faithful where they are.

"Any pastoral action that is limited to the territory of the Parish is outdated," Francis wrote, adding that this attitude "appears to be more interested in preserving a nostalgia of former times as opposed to looking to the future with courage."

The pope also encouraged clergy to include laypeople as much as possible in the life and mission of the parish, while maintaining that priests remain the "protagonists of evangelization."

The pandemic, by closing buildings, has forced some of this thinking on parishes, forcing them to collect emails and organize online events, Cellucci said.

According to his data, too, some who never attended church have begun to explore the faith for the first time.

"There are a lot of challenges in this environment," Cellucci said, "but also a lot of opportunities."

The only way to emerge stronger is to be "entrepreneurial and innovative," he added, taking advantage of the new freedom generated by the pandemic.

"If we can encourage our parish leaders, clergy and lay, to be courageous I think we can make the right choices, and we can be beacons of light in this otherwise very dark world that we are facing right now," he concluded.

• Claire Giangravé - Vatican Correspondent RNS. First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

From Southland to Northland, Trade Me is listing more than 20 as-is-where-is churches or completed residential conversions, and real estate agents say interest is high.

Offerings range from a $150,000 original 1926 stone church near Oamaru to a $4.8m South Auckland warehouse used by the charismatic Faith City congregation. Continue reading

The Church Census, which will cover all churches of all denominations or none, will be taken in March-April.

New Zealand's 72 Census Districts will be covered

Massey University's associate professor of history, Peter Lineham, says there is no formal register of churches.

‘‘It's quite amazing, we just don't know.''

Sample surveys done by Massey University and Bible Society New Zealand have shown 14 per cent of New Zealanders go to church weekly and 20 per cent go at least once a month.

Source

• FarifaxDigital
• Baptist

The Pacific community came up with the idea at a meeting discussing submissions on the Auckland Unleashed document, which charts a course for the region's future. The council's Pacific People's Advisory Panel led the meeting in West Auckland, the first of four forums to be held for the Pacific community around the region.

Chairman the Rev Uesifili Unasa said talks about business and economic strategies in the city got the public talking about the number of Pacific Island churches in Auckland that could be better used.

"It makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? The argument is, why do you have to build, say, for example, a new Citizens Advice Bureau or another council facility when you've got hundreds of churches already up and running around Auckland?"

Read Article by Vaimoana Tapaleao