When five Roman Catholic parishes in Bayonne merged into two in January, Frank Scibetta, a Boy Scout troop leader who used to attend the now-closed Assumption Church, took his troop meetings and his Mass attendance to Bayonne’s Trinity Episcopal, though he’d been baptized at Assumption in 1976. “It was very sad and personal for me because I made all my sacraments there,” he said. “I had my communion there.” Assumption was built in 1902 by Italian immigrants like those in Scibetta’s family.
Scibetta moved to Trinity, where he was embraced by Father Greg Perez and his congregation, not due to a change in his religious identity, but out of convenience. He’d spent six months trying to find a new home for his scouts, when his wife found out about a potential space after bumping into a Trinity parishioner. He says his new church is “very “accepting. And I’m all for that in this day and age. All are welcome there.”
In January, Our Lady of Assumption, Mt. Carmel, and St. Michael and St. Joseph merged to form St. John Paul II. St. Mary Star of the Sea and St. Andrew merged to become Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich, which also took the place of four Catholic elementary schools.
Father Peter Wehrle of Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich says that Catholic churches are operating more efficiently, “but at one point we had eight churches and seven schools, and as a community that can no longer be supported.”
Changing communities
That Trinity embraced Scibetta, who still identifies as Roman Catholic, is a reminder that the landscape of religious identity is changing, as are the communities that shape them.
Director of Communications for the Archdiocese of Newark, Jim Goodness, says the church is reckoning with these changes. “How vibrant is the community and is it growing,” Goodness asked. “If it’s not growing, then it’s not able to support itself financially anymore.” Five parishes and four Catholic elementary schools in Bayonne were able to support only two parishes and one school.
The problems facing Roman Catholic churches are financial, due to a decline in attendance, despite the growing population of Roman Catholics in the United States, and in the world. According to a 2015 Georgetown University study, there are 68.1 million Catholics in the U.S., up from 57.4 million in 1995.
Baptisms are at an all-time low, as are communion receptions and funeral services. Around 24 percent of U.S. adult Roman Catholics say they attend Mass every week, down from 55 percent in 1965. In education, primary-school children in parish religious education is at 2.63 million, down from a peak of 3.59 million in 2000.
“It’s not so much of a phenomenon anymore, it’s a recognition,” Goodness said. “There just are not as many [religious] people around … because of the secularization of society.”
Secularization
According to a 2014 Pew U.S. Religious Landscape Study, younger people are increasingly identifying as religiously unaffiliated, which helps to explain the decline in church attendance and ceremonies. Thirty-five percent of the unaffiliated are between 18 and 29; 37 percent are between 30 and 49; 19 percent are between 50 and 64; and 9 percent are 65 and older. Seventy-five percent of the unaffiliated are at least third-generation Americans, indicating a Roman Catholic demographic shift to immigrant populations.
Jessica Montagne, 22, of Bayonne, says she identifies as a Christian only insofar as her family does, but does not attend Mass. “My family used to go on Christmas,” she said, “but I’m really busy, and it’s just not that important to me.” She was waiting at the 34th Street Light Rail platform for a train to take her to work on a Sunday morning.
“I think I know right from wrong without a priest telling me,” she added, noting that her least favorite thing about church was confession. “I didn’t feel like my wrongdoings are anyone’s business,” she said. “That’s between me and God. No middleman, well except the police.”
Her sentiments reflect the growing grey area of religious identity—the unaffiliated. Fifty-seven percent of the unaffiliated say they look most to “common sense” for moral guidance. Of the 41 percent who identify as Christian, 43 percent say they look most to religion for that moral compass.
“We are here for them, we offer them love and support, hope and eternal life in the future with God, and we would like for all of them to come home.” – Father Peter Wehrle
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From the stained-glass window
“I think in a lot of ways, God is no longer the center of our lives,” lamented Wehrle. “It’s not that people don’t have the time, but they choose not to make the time.”
Wehrle says he wishes it were not that way. Through church reorganization and community outreach, he is trying to change that. “Having faith communities within the boundaries offers a positive value to the community at large,” he says.
He is also optimistic that Mass attendance is starting to level out again. “It’s been stable because we added a ministry for the Latino population,” he said. Latino and other immigrant communities tend to be more devout than their third- or fourth-generation counterparts, and the church recognizes this. “When you go to Mass, that’s where you see young [Hispanic] people,” Wehrle said. “You see families with their kids, and it’s still a part of their life.”
Wehrle told of a funeral recently held in a Bayonne funeral home, where an associate was called to do a prayer service, and the son of the deceased asked why churches were closing. “This was a man who wasn’t bringing his father to the church for a funeral,” Wehrle said. “In that instance, the family made a choice not go to the church.”
Religious skepticism is not new to Wehrle. “Unfortunately, people say to me that church is just a business,” he said, “but we have to pay the bills just like everybody else.”
As long as people like Montagne choose not to attend church services and tithe, brick- and-mortar churches will struggle to stay open and continue along a consolidation path. Montagne says her older sister started going back to church after she had children. “Who knows,” she said, “maybe it will be more important to me when I’m older, but my life isn’t slowing down so far.”
Trinity Episcopal’s Father Greg agrees. “People live very busy lives today,” he said. “Their weekends are very important, and it doesn’t necessarily involve coming to a faith community to pray. It’s just a reality.” He says that he sees many finding new forms of spirituality and community that the church once provided. “I think people see there are other ways to live a wholesome life,” he said. “The prayer, the sacramental life, what I grew up with, if you don’t do that, it doesn’t make you a bad person.”
Pastor Gary Grindeland of Grace Lutheran echoes the sentiment that busy lives have encroached on church attendance. “People have to make decisions in life about what kinds of things can slide,” he said. “Your jobs can’t slide. Your kids can’t slide. The reality is, you have to put food on the table, and something has to give.”
Grindeland thinks it’s up to the church to go to the people. “The church has to go to work,” he said. “If we have something vitally important, we have to move out into the community and bring the good news to people.”
He practices what he preaches, handing out coffee and water on the green, and walking every street in Bayonne in his “Walk of Hope.”
When we caught up with Pastor Gary, he’d just returned from taking someone to the hospital. “We were asleep, and now we’re waking up,” he said. “We can no longer sit in our offices and expect people to come in.”
Wehrle’s says to Catholics in Bayonne, “We are here for them, we offer them love and support, hope and eternal life in the future with God, and we would like for all of them to come home.”
Rory Pasquariello may be reached at roryp@hudsonreporter.com.