Cincinnati and the Demographic Transition of Catholicism

 I'm working on an in-depth series for The Pillar on the shifting demographics and geography of American Catholicism, but with the Archdiocese of Cincinnati making news last week with the announcement of its "parish family" plan, which will consolidate the 211 parishes in the archdiocese into 60 parish families which will share priests and other resources, it seemed like a good idea to do an immediate piece on what led Cincinnati to this point. 

It turns out that Cincinnati provides a good microcosm of the demographic changes going on in the American church, and hopefully it sharpens appetites for what it some come.

In 2019, Cincinnati had 211 parishes but only 143 diocesan priests in active ministry, according to data collected by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA). That situation, the archdiocese has said, is not sustainable. Its plan is to group parishes together, assign priests to share pastoral duties, and gradually see parishes formally merged.

As the archdiocese begins its project, we at The Pillar found ourselves wondering: Is Cincinnati's dramatic plan for parish closures a sign of what’s to come across the country, or is it responding to a problem unique to the Cincinnati archdiocese?  

We looked at some numbers to find out.

Given its size, the archdiocese has an unusually high number of parishes.

The Cincinnati archdiocese has the eighth-most parishes of any diocese in the U.S. Its 211 parishes follow closely behind Newark (212 parishes), Philadelphia (212), and Detroit (218). 

But while Newark, Philadelphia, and Detroit each have more than one million Catholics, the Cincinnati archdiocese has only 442,000 Catholics.

The disparity between the number of parishes and the number of Catholics is due, in part, to the changing demographics of the region. While the total population of the region has grown over the last 60 years, it is becoming less Catholic. The Catholic population of the archdiocese peaked in 1996 and has been dropping for the last 25 years.  

At its peak, 19% of the region’s population was Catholic. At latest count that number has declined to 14.5%.

You can read the whole thing at The Pillar, and if you're not already a subscribe, if this is the kind of Catholic journalism of which you'd like to see more, I'd encourage you to subscribe.