Megachurches: the wave of the future?

In suburbs across America, "megachurches" are beginning to overtake the parishes of the previous generation. These gargantuan spiritual factories are not only comprised of churches, but restaurants and retail stores as well. Enormous services are held daily and are typically led by one charismatic master preacher.

In the cities, however, a different story unfolds. Churches are small and numerous, some only comprising 30 parishioners. Though many of these so-called "storefront" churches are struggling to survive, they provide a sanctuary to immigrants and the poor.

Although both types of institutions - the megachurch and the storefront church - are increasing in prevalence every year, it is unclear which institution will be the parish of the future.

In one of 24 separate events being held by the Institute of Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry's series titled "Building Up the Body of Christ," Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Archbishop Emeritus of Washington, D.C., answers this question.

McCarrick explained in detail what it means to be both a storefront church and a megachurch, compared megachurches to Egyptian monuments, and described them as being "part theater, part religious community."

The megachurch can also be easily recognized by its massive choirs, orchestras, elaborate lighting schemes, and opulently appareled preachers.

"Megachurches are looking for a huge congregation and are very expensive to operate," McCarrick said. They can do so, he explained, because the generosity of the congregation leaves them with an enormous amount of money.

Storefront churches are quite the opposite. "The storefront church is part of the community, where people look for a chance to be with the lord, where people know each other and try to help each other," McCarrick said.

McCarrick then recalled his childhood parish, an ideal model of a religious community that would be difficult to replicate in today's society.

The parish McCarrick described was self-contained, school-centered, and focused on the community, a commune for all that lived there, not just those who were Catholic. Catholic children raised in these parishes grew up in an environment saturated in Catholicism; from a very young age, they learned the prayers and hymns of their faith, an environment that vastly differs from the once-weekly catechism of today.

"What happened to that parish?" McCarrick asked. "I'm going to say that it doesn't exist anymore. Why? I have five M's for you: migration, money, manpower, mentality, and media."

The first of these, migration, focuses on the tremendous movement both into and out of America's cities. To put it simply, wealthier parishioners are moving into the suburbs, and immigrants are finding their way into the cities.

"The migration of the Catholics to the suburbs causes this disruption. How do you take care of the Hispanics who come in and the Orientals who come in and our African Americans who are already there?" McCarrick said. The new immigrant populations of the cities are less able to provide for the church than their predecessors.

"Second is the question of money: The city parishes don't have it any more, unless they're in a newly developed shopping center," McCarrick said.

The fact of the matter is that it takes money to keep a church open and money is lacking in both the cities and the suburbs. "Those people are highly mortgaged, they're paying for more dancing lessons, singing lessons, guitar lessons. The difficulty that we face is that the middle class expenses in those suburbs make a difference to the parish and parish life," McCarrick said.

The next item on McCarrick's list, manpower, translates to the dramatically decreasing number of priests. This decrease, McCarrick said, can be credited to the length of time required to properly educate a priest (five to six years) and the scandal suffered by the Catholic Church.

Last, a new mentality, references the turn from religion in the '60s.

"The '60s were a time when many things were changed, among them the fact that people stopped going to church. They estimate that when I was a boy, 75 percent of Catholics went to church. Now we're down to 25; that makes a difference. It affects what the church can do, what the church is all about," McCarrick said.

The absence of schools in the parish could be one cause; when families lose their daily connection to the parish, it loses its importance.

McCarrick also discussed the "contraceptive culture" that developed in the '60s, which led people to be open to pleasure but not to responsibility.

"Only now are we seeing what happens when a contraceptive culture takes over, it takes over a world. Within a few years, the populations of France, Spain, Germany, great European countries, will probably be more Muslim than Christian," McCarrick said. This phenomenon, he said, could be credited to the fact that Christians are just not having as many children.

The United States is seeing a similar trend; however, due to the large immigrant population, the trend is not as visible as it is in Europe.

"The church has been very blessed by Hispanic immigration; it has kept our economy and industry going, it has kept our churches alive to take care of these new people coming in," McCarrick said.

The last on the Cardinal's list, the media, has had a crushing effect on the church.

"The media really doesn't like us because we are for life and families and values … because of that, in many cases we feel moved away from active Catholic life because we want to be with 'it,' whatever 'it' is supposed to be," McCarrick said.

With these problems being integrated into society, what should a parish be? McCarrick said a parish should be many things: a place to gather, a place to worship, a place for religious education and formation, a place to pass on the faith, a place to serve the poor, and a place to find the clergy.