Painful Question: Why do so many Catholic parishes die?

[Freethinker65]

4. People move, neighborhoods change.

Older churches with schools have declining enrollments and are too big to maintain. Parishes sell off buildings and land and combine parishes. Sometimes other denominations buy the space, but there are often areas that had a massive church every couple of blocks. The church is not the only place people congregate now. People are more mobile and have more choices than when these churches and church complexes were planned and built.

Where I grew up, the local parish closed down the elementary school, then the high school, and finally the church within a span of about 30 years. The neighborhood aged and changed and the families that moved in sent their kids to our just fine public schools.

I never went to the parochial school and knew few that did. I stopped attending mass after my first communion because I was a non-believer. Of my adult ultra Catholic raised nieces and nephews, less than half attend church regularly.