单选题 The Catholic Church is changing in America at its most visible point: the parish church where believers pray, sing and clasp hands across pews to share the peace of God. Today there are fewer parishes and fewer priests than in 1990 and fewer of the nation's 65 million Catholics in those pews. And there's no sign of return.
Some blame the explosive 2002 clergy sexual abuse scandal and its financial price tag. But a study of 176 Roman Catholic dioceses shows no statistically significant link between the decline in priests and parishes and the $ 772 million the church has spent to date on dealing with the scandal.
Rather, the changes are driven by a constellation of factors:
·Catholics are moving from cities in the Northeast and Midwest to the suburbs, South and Southwest.
·For decades, so few men have become priests that one in five dioceses now can't put a priest in every parish.
·Mass attendance has fallen as each generation has become less religiously observant.
·Bishops--trained to bless, not to budget--lack the managerial skills to govern multimillion-dollar institutions.
All these trends had begun years before the scandal piled on financial pressures to cover settlements, legal costs, care and counseling for victims and abusers. The Archdiocese of Boston, epicenter of the crisis, sold chancery property to cover $ 85 million in settlements last year, and this year will close 67 churches and recast 16 others as new parishes or worship sites without a full-time priest. Archbishop Sean O'Malley has said the crisis and the {{U}}reconfiguration plan{{/U}} are "in no way" related. He cites demographic shifts, the priest shortage and aging, crumbling buildings too costly to keep up. Fargo, N. D. , which spent $ 821,000 on the abuse crisis, will close 23 parishes, but it's because the diocese is short of more than 50 priests for its 158 parishes, some with fewer than a dozen families attending Mass.
They know how this ~eels in Milwaukee. That archdiocese shuttered about one in five parishes from 1995 to 2003. The city consolidations "gave some people who had been driving back into the city from new homes in the suburbs a chance to say they had no loyalty to a new parish and begin going to one near their home,' says Noreen Welte, director of parish planning for the Milwaukee Archdiocese. "It gave some people who already were mad at the church for one reason or another an excuse to stop going altogether. "

单选题 The relationship between the first two paragraphs can be described as

A. the Catholic Church of the past compared with that of today.
B. the problem with the Catholic Church revealed and explained.
C. the reform of the catholic Church argued for and against.
D. the practice of the Catholic Church introduced and condemned.

单选题 Attendance of the Church has declined because

A. there are fewer parishes and priests now.
B. few Catholics observe religious rules.
C. people are losing enthusiasm for religion.
D. the financial pressures are overwhelming.

单选题 The "reconfiguration plan"(Para. 4) probably refers to

A. selling the Church property.
B. covering the cost of settlements.
C. shutting and remolding churches.
D. keeping up crumbling buildings.

单选题 Noreen Welte seems to suggest that some people

A. had difficulty adopting a new parish.
B. preferred to go to the church near their home.
C. disliked the church for several reasons.
D. meant to escape the church.

单选题 Which of the following reflects the change of Catholic Church?

A. Fewer prayers in the church.
B. Fewer pews in the parish.
C. Fewer Catholics in America.
D. Fewer signs in the peace of God.