In an article about the parish closing review panel in Boston crediting Archbishop Sean O’Malley with recent changes to the plan, we also hear about how the panel is doing its work of reviewing the parish closing orders:
Subcommittees of two or three people have been going to each parish and trying to decide how many churches those communities need and financially can sustain in an archdiocese suffering from a shortage of priests and a 50 percent drop in donations.
Of course, this is what should have been done in the first place. Have competent groups of people go to each community and sit down with the people of those parishes and determine the configuration of the Catholic churches in that town that would best serve those people. It would have been a far sight better than the free-for-all grudge matches that we were subjected to instead.
