60% of churches should close within 5 years

60% of churches in Catholic parishes in the Netherlands will close within the next five years.

Declining church members, volunteers, and income have been blamed.

Bishop Jan Hendricks announced the plan last month to about 90 parish administrators of the Haarlem diocese of Amsterdam.

The history of the 450-year-old parish dates back to 1559. It covers North Holland, the southern part of Flevoland and includes Amsterdam.

Hendricks, who has led the parish since 2020, said the pandemic has accelerated and has already reduced the number of loyal church members, volunteers and choirs.

Figures show that Mass attendance, which was over 25,000 in 2013, will drop to 12,000 in 2021.

Hendricks said 60% of Catholic churches (99 of the parish’s 164 parishes) must close within five years.

Of the remaining 65 churches, 37 can continue as “supporting churches” for five to 10 years, he said. This leaves only 28 “central churches” considered viable in the long term.

The parish does not have a list of churches that will be closed, but communities are asked to designate “central churches.”

“The idea is to create 28 positive evangelizing sites, and I hope the parish priests and parish committees can figure that out,” Hendricks says.

Since 2004, the parish has tried to downsize the church building.

Rural Catholics are most likely to be affected, one priest said.

A letter from the parish about the church’s closure wasn’t all that surprising, he says.

“In fact, we were already in the planning stages of closing one of our rural churches, and we were getting about 15 visitors every other week.

“We have been asked to close two churches over the next three years, and we will have to close one or two more churches over the next two years.

“This will be more difficult because there is no ‘natural process’.

“Communities that still feel thriving have to be asked to downsize, which is difficult.”

Churchgoers may find the “perceived volteface” over church closures challenging, he says.

“But for the ‘loop-savvy’ people, the change is not that big.

“We had a feeling this was coming. These are necessary decisions. Church attendance has consistently halved every decade and has been for decades.

“We are considering 30 parishes within ten years, hopefully offering a wide variety of liturgies and activities, but small parishes cannot offer this.

“The challenge with all of this is fear that the rest of the parishes are all in urban areas. How are we going to serve the countryside?

However, senior pastor Bert Patter said young people and families were “very pleased” with the 45-minute drive to church.

“People who really want to go to church now are more motivated than they used to be, but there are fewer of them,” he says.

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