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Statistics on Easter-related church attendance in the six-county Southern Alleghenies region never have dominated newspaper front-page headlines during the week following the commemoration of Jesus Christ's resurrection following his suffering and death on a cross on Mount Calvary.
Attendance here usually is reported by use of the words "large" or "low" or some other similar adjective, but actual numbers comparing the latest year with previous ones for churches in the region are unheard of.
It would require significant effort and much time to compile such a report. Nevertheless, an article in the April 8-9 edition of the Wall Street Journal focused on the attendance topic under the headline "On fourth Easter since COVID-19, churches face fresh challenges."
Under the main headline was the message, "Americans view religion as less important than they did two decades ago. And while church attendance is down from before the pandemic, about 1 in 7 say they are more likely to attend virtual services."
Whether that message is applicable to Southern Alleghenies church congregations can be described as anyone's guess. Yet such information is secondary to identifying and acknowledging the cause or causes contributing to whatever the region's attendance levels might be, not only for the celebration of Easter but for other holidays and Sundays as well.
Dan Cellucci, CEO of the Catholic Leadership Institute, for example, estimates that just 17% of baptized Catholics now attend Mass weekly, as required by the church, down from 22% in 2019.
The Pew Research Center has determined that the category of Christian with the highest percentage of regular attendees is that of white evangelical Protestants, with 58% attending monthly. However, even that number is 5 percentage points lower than the 63% listed for 2019.
It probably can be stated accurately that few churches in this region have been able to recover completely attendance-wise from the devastating COVID-19 pandemic, but without official statistics hardly anyone will know for sure the degree of recovery to date.
A reasonable question is whether area congregations really want to know the actual numbers.
Meanwhile, on one particular front -- the Archdiocese of Baltimore, Md. -- parishioners had the unfortunate experience this Easter of having to react to news that more than 150 priests and others involved with the archdiocese had been accused of having sexually abused more than 600 children over a period of six decades.
One important point that has emerged from various locales across this country, including perhaps here, is that televised services, while deemed so important during the pandemic, might now be, to some degree, hurting in-person attendance.
Many workers are kept away from attending church services because of their work schedules.
Yes, numerous people also still have serious medical problems stemming from COVID that limit their church attendance, while others still remain fearful of close contact with others in a church environment.
Churches here do, in fact, face the challenges to which the Journal alluded, and they need to find ways to surmount them.