The diocese of Antigonish has to decide which of 62 churches in Richmond, Inverness, Antigonish and Guysborough Counties it can afford to keep open. Excluded from the review will be churches on First Nations territory, which are owned by the native communities.
An earlier review in Cape Breton and Victoria County closed 16 of 43 churches. The number of closures in Cape Breton was “more severe because the area is in pretty desperate decline,” Fr. Don MacGillvray told The News in Pictou County, N.S.
The review exercise isn’t just about closing parishes, according to a letter from Bishop Brian Dunn to local Catholics last May.
“This process has as its end goal the development of a specific action plan which is to be implemented throughout the diocese,” Dunn wrote.
Apart from the revi ew of churches, the diocese is planning a Diocesan Renewal Conference for Oct. 6 at the Memb e r t o u Convention Centre near Sydney, N.S.
While a number of sexual abuse cases haven’t helped, it’s the shifting demographics of rural Nova Scotia that is driving the church closures.
“Our population is decreasing in almost every part of the diocese mainly because of out migration and a lower birth rate,” Dunn wrote to parishioners in May. “We also recognize that parishioners generally attend less frequently and support the Church in a lesser way than in the past.”
While the diocese formally owns the churches, parishioners have to come up with the money to pay their priest and keep up the buildings. Parishes with Sunday congregations of a couple of dozen just don’t have the funds.
The process has been accelerated by a $15-million settlement with victims of clergy sexual abuse over the past 50 years. The diocese took large sums from parish reserve funds, sold banked real estate (not churches), and took out $6.5 million in loans from private lenders to meet the fall 2012 deadline for the settlement funds.
While the Catholic population of rural Nova Scotia is getting older and fewer, the decline in priests has been even more dramatic. In 1996 the diocese had 82 priests who averaged under 56 years of age. In 2011 they were down to 50 priests with an average age of 61.2. Dunn projects Antigonish will have 44 priests available in 2016, falling to 30 in 2021.
“The challenge that we face today is to make the appropriate changes so that we will have stronger, more viable parishes with richer and stronger faith communities,” Dunn said.