**2. "Grave Reasons" for Relegating a Church Building to Profane Use**

Although church reuse is not a new phenomenon (De Wildt and Plum 2019, pp. 11–12), it has gained renewed interest in recent decades in those parts of the world that deal with a substantial decline in churchgoing, predominantly in western Europe. Nowadays a growing number of church buildings are considered obsolete, this is mostly attributed to declining numbers of people who partake in liturgical celebrations, to a shortage in priests and as a result of parish mergers. The *Letter from the Congregation for the Clergy* (Cardinal Piacenza and Iruzubieta 2013, p. 212) specifically states that:

"( ... ) it is necessary to distinguish clearly between three separate and distinct canonical processes: (1) the modification of parishes, (2) the relegation to profane use and/or the permanent closure of churches, and (3) the alienation of current or former sacred edifices. Each process has its own procedures, and each must be followed carefully and correctly."

Here, the relation between parish modifications and church profanation and/or closure is clearly made by stressing the point that these processes should be clearly distinguished, whereas in reality, in a lot of cases, the question of the restructuring of parishes is actually closely related to the question of what to do with obsolete churches (Paprocki 1995). The parish modification, this letter states, must always be a matter of separate consideration and the decree must be motivated "( ... ) with a cause that is specific, i.e., ad rem, to the individual parish or church under consideration." Both procedures, parish modifications and church closure, require separate decrees (Cardinal Piacenza and Iruzubieta 2013, p. 212). Noteworthy is the fact that according to the Vatican canon lawyer Nikolaus Schöch, a reduction in numbers of people who celebrate the liturgy, priest shortage or the church being obsolete as a result of parish mergers are considered to be insufficient reasons for the relegation of a church to secular use (Schöch 2007, p. 494). The North-American canon lawyer, John M. Huels, however, refers to exactly two of these grounds—a decline in people who celebrate liturgy and a reduction in numbers of priests—as possible grave reasons that can be used as an argument to relegate a church to profane use (Huels 2000, p. 1432). Yet another canon lawyer, Thomas Schüller from Germany, states that economic problems, changed pastoral structures and the fact that churches are no longer needed constitute grave reasons (Schüller 2012, p. 273). The *Procedural Guidelines for the Modification of Parishes, the Closure or Relegation of Churches to Profane but not Sordid Use, and the Alienation of the Same* (hereafter: procedural guidelines) states on the basis of jurisprudence:

"that the following reasons in themselves do not constitute grave cause:

i. a general plan of the diocese to reduce the number of churches;


As shown here, we encounter all kinds of different interpretations, which are all based on the same canon law articles, of what may be considered grave reasons for a church to be relegated to profane use. At the conference "Doesn't God Dwell Here Anymore? Decommissioning Places of Worship and Integrated Management of Ecclesiastical Cultural Heritage", held in Rome at the Pontifical Gregorian University in November 2018, the Pontifical Council for Culture and the delegates of the episcopal conferences of Europe, Canada, the United States and Australia approved guidelines for ecclesial communities (Guidelines 2019) (hereafter: Vatican guidelines). In this document, the juridical complaints that may arise when a church is relegated to profane use on the base of jurisprudence are addressed. One of these problems is the reduction of

"a church to profane use without any of the necessary grave causes (today this is almost always identified with the impossibility of safely maintaining a building" (Guidelines 2019, p. 277).

Here, the "grave cause" is equated with the impossibility of maintaining a building safely and no other examples of what may constitute "grave cause" are referred to.

As we see, in the case of the Roman Catholic church the question of how to deconsecrate a church is usually answered with reference to canon law. In order to answer the question how to undo the sacredness of a church building, we first have to redirect our attention to the question: how does a church building actually become sacred according to canon law?
