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| Catholic Parishes Grow As Suburbs Expand Influx of Hispanics, Recent Housing Boom Creates Need for More Churches By Gary Soulsman Daily Times January 2, 2008 http://www.dailytimesonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080102/NEWS01/801020330/1002 GLASGOW, Del. — Trish Gerhart feels blessed by Jesus' birth and is pleased to celebrate it for the first time this Christmas as a convert to Catholicism. "When I take part in the Mass, I feel more at peace and closer to God," said Gerhart, 55, of Bear. This is a joyous day in her life and in her parish, St. Margaret of Scotland, the Glasgow church celebrating its first Christmas in an 850-seat circular sanctuary. The parish started in a warehouse in 1999 and members say they feel a burst of enthusiasm with the recent dedication of their tall, skylit worship space. None of this is by accident. Similar stories of growth can be heard around the Diocese of Wilmington, which serves people in Delaware and the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Since the late 1990s, Bishop Michael Saltarelli has asked parishes to look decades ahead, resulting in a period of expansion. The Catholic faith is America's largest faith, representing almost a quarter of the population from 1965 to the present, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University. The 195 dioceses report a total growth of 19 million members during this time — to 64.4 million. Catholicism is Delaware's largest faith, too, flourishing in places where the state is growing. In Delaware, the church listed 126,000 members in 2,000; today, it lists 220,000. This is despite setbacks in recent years — such as the closing of some Wilmington-area schools because of declining enrollment and lawsuits filed by victims of sexual abuse by clergy.
"We have 2,200 people worshipping on weekends in winter now and this swells to 7,000 in summer," said the Rev. David Kelley, St. Ann's pastor. The new mission will be six miles inland. "It's going to be booming there and the mission will take some of the pressure off St. Ann's," Kelley said. The mission is named for an appearance of the Blessed Mother in Mexico in the 16th century. The name also points to the importance of Hispanics in the diocese. Brother Chris Posch, director of Hispanic ministries, estimates there are 100,000 Hispanics in the region — most of whom are Catholic — and their numbers are growing. Another reason for the diocese's expansion is Delaware's housing market, which only recently cooled. From 1990 to 2005 in beach communities and suburbs, such as Glasgow, growth was three to six times more than the 26 percent average growth rate for the state. In the Middletown-Odessa region, the population swelled by 122 percent over those 15 years, adding 22,500 people by 2005. On Jan. 17, Saltarelli turns 75, retirement age for a bishop, though by protocol he will not step down until a successor is named. In Flowers' view, the bishop will be remembered for a successful capital campaign that raised $20 million for schools, such as Christ the Teacher in Glasgow, and $30 million to expand parish buildings. The campaign didn't pay for everything but it focused attention and resources on growth, Flowers said. The new Catholic churches are some of the largest worship spaces in Delaware. And that's in step with a trend in other dioceses, said Charles Zech, director of the center for the study of church management at the Villanova School of Business. Building larger regional churches is more efficient than building a lot of smaller churches, he said. It would also be impossible to staff smaller churches, given that Catholicism is facing a shortage of priests, with U.S. ordinations having dropped from 994 in 1965 to 456 in 2007. |
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