By JOSEPH BUSTOS - jbustos@shawmedia.com
St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Woodstock is working on a five-year plan for the parish, part of which will be evangelization and how to reach out better.
However, average Mass attendance in 2010 was 25,215 during any given week, which is a 5 percent decline since 2005, while registrations have increased by 6 percent since 2005, according to the Rockford Diocese.
Churches do not require people to register, said Michael Cieslak, director of research and planning for the Rockford Diocese.
Cieslak said Mass attendance has been in decline at a slow rate across the country. This is because older, more faithful Catholics are dying or are less able to attend and younger Catholics “do not have the same sense of ‘obligation’ regarding worship as their parents and grandparents,” Cieslak said in an email.
He added that where Mass attendance increased, it was because of the increase in the Hispanic population in the area…..“More than 20 percent of all people attending Mass in the Rockford Diocese in the 2010 October Mass count did so at a Spanish Mass,”
Click on the following for the rest of the story: http://www.nwherald.com/2011/10/30/struggling-to-keep-the-faith/a6cm64a/
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