This news is not exactly the sort of thing you want to read as you’re getting ready to head to mass on Sunday morning. But it’s happening more and more:

Armed sheriff’s deputies removed the last man from the Catholic church here 10 days ago, pasting “No Trespassing” signs on the doors as they left and surrounding the perimeter of the grounds with crime-scene tape reading: “Do Not Cross.”

It was the end of a seven-month vigil by parishioners trying to keep the church open.

“We were told that if we go as far as the parking lot, we will be arrested,” said Mary Cargian, 78, who married at the church, St. Mary’s, in 1967 and had worshiped there ever since.

For 217 days, 100 volunteers took turns occupying St. Mary’s, where the door locks had been changed just before a priest celebrated the last Mass on June 30. When the Mass ended, some volunteers stayed, and then the occupants took turns. They gathered in the church for prayer services on Sundays, continued to raise donations and even filed an appeal with the Vatican, arguing that the 108-year-old church was worth saving.

The church is one of 30 that have been closed or merged by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Syracuse since last spring as part of a broad and turbulent reorganization expected to affect most of the diocese’s remaining 154 parishes in the coming years.

Over the past decade, dioceses nationwide have been consolidating parishes in the face of rising heating costs, aging priests and shrinking congregations, prompting angry sit-ins and protests in Boston, Chicago and Detroit. But the situation in Syracuse and other fading factory towns upstate is more acute, as the number of Catholics has shrunk even faster than the population in general.

“We knew back in the early ’80s that we were going to have a diminished number of clergy, but what we didn’t realize was that upstate New York would take such a hit with the loss of business, industries and people,” said the Rev. James P. Lang, vicar of parishes for the Diocese of Syracuse.

“There came a point when we had to make a decision,” Father Lang said. “We were either going to spend our resources to keep our buildings open or we were going to adapt to this new reality.”

Two years ago, the Archdiocese of New York announced plans to close 31 of its 409 parishes, mostly in Manhattan and the Bronx, and open five new ones, four of them in the far suburbs of Orange and Dutchess Counties, which are among the fastest-growing areas in the state. Three of the upstate dioceses, Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse, have lost fully a quarter of their churches: They had 590 churches in 2005, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, which tracks such data for the church, and have 440 today, the dioceses said.

The shifting demographics driving the church closings are most pronounced in the mid-Atlantic states, the upper Midwest and in old industrial hubs throughout the Northeast, where the Catholic immigrants who once made up a significant portion of the work force have decamped for the South and West since the manufacturing sector began its collapse in the 1970s.

“The loss in population is a political problem whose repercussions have been felt not just on the tax base and the infrastructure of those communities, but also in other areas, including religious institutions,” said Chester Gillis, chairman of the theology department at Georgetown University. “The bottom line is simple,” Professor Gillis said. “If you have less people donating to the church, it becomes unrealistic — and it is financially irresponsible, really — to keep a church building open.”

You can read more details at the link. Keep these folks, and all those suffering through the loss of a church, in your prayers.