Placemaking in a Postsecular Age: Sorting "Sacred" from "Profane" in the Adaptive Reuse of Relegated U.S. Catholic Churches

Abstract:What does the real estate industry's "highest and best use" principle mean in the context of adapting historic Catholic churches to new purposes? Interviews with pertinent stakeholders in U.S. dioceses engage this question, attentive to the material impact of parish closures, preferred and avoided church building reuses, and implications for Catholicism's meaning within communities. Contending with the sacred complicates those value propositions motivated by "highest and best use." Far from signaling religion's disappearance, the adaptive reuse of Catholic churches recasts "church" as an enduring sacred witness, carrying representations of "Church" in the world. Decision makers approach former churches as adaptations of sacred purpose to profane contexts, reverberating a Durkheimian notion of church as moral community alongside perceptions of loss and irreversible change.