The reorganization of church sites and the prospect of closing down 50 parishes in the Archdiocese of Newark is not unusual for the Roman Catholic Church in America. Over the past 15 years, the archdioceses in Chicago and Detroit closed down many unprofitable churches and parochial schools.

The process of closing down churches is not an easy one, and usually evokes a lot of emotions among churchgoers. The representatives of the Newark Archdiocese reassured its parishioners that they will be making very careful decisions to avoid the kind of problems that the Detroit Archdiocese faced in 1980, when it published a list of churches to be closed down within a year, without giving previous notice.

To this effect, John Myers, Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Newark, organized two panels in 2003 to explore ways to assist some of the parishes and parochial schools in resolving the problems they face presently. According to the Archdiocese, growing urbanization has caused the number of parishioners to fall significantly, making a reorganization of the parishes necessary. “We are predicting that some churches will have to be closed down. Recent years proved that we are unable to support all of them,” says Jim Goodness, the spokesperson for the Archbishop.

The first parishes in New Jersey were built in the middle of the 19th century by Irish and German immigrants. Poles, Italians, and immigrants from other European nations started building their churches at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Each ethnic group wanted to have its own parish. Sometimes ethnic groups would built their churches a short distance from one another. Older immigrants often attended different churches than younger generations of the same ethnic group.

Currently, there are 78 Catholic churches in Bergen County, Essex, has 63, Hudson has 52, and Union has 42. According to Jim Goodness, geography will not be a factor in the decision-making process. Rather, the determining factor will be how active a particular church is. “If there are two parishes in one city and they both have a satisfactory number of churchgoers, there is no need to close down either one of them,” said Goodness. “For example, in Bergen County there are areas where the number of Catholics is growing.”

The deciding factor in whether a parish can or cannot survive will be the number of churchgoers it has, and the number of sacraments, such as christenings and weddings, that the church offers in a given year. Similarly, the future of the parochial schools will depend on the number of children attending those schools.