To be honest, we didn't have high expectations for the turnout at the rally outside St. Charles Borromeo. Imagine the allure: "Drive a half hour or so to come hold a sign on a weekday January morning/afternoon in pouring rain! Surely you don't have anything better to do, anyway, like work, homeschool, or laundry, right?" Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Let that be a lesson: never underestimate the commitment of our Council of Parishes membership!

The bishop and some of his friends must have arrived super early to avoid us, since our first picketers arrived nearly an hour and a half before the meeting was scheduled to begin. Guess we're a pretty rowdy looking group. Ha ha!


The meeting held inside the church was one to which approximately 40 "priest conveners" were invited, in addition to various lackeys like undercover sisters Marilyn Vollmer and Roseanne Quinn, and of course Bishop Galante. The purpose of the meeting was, effectively, to give a pep talk to the priest conveners.

They brought in a slick consultant to speak with them. (Hey, at least we know our money is being spent on something useful...SIKE!) She is facilitator Peg Garvey-Mitchell from the "National Pastoral Life Center" (again ironic since the whole program is intended to destroy pastoral life by destroying parishes and communities).


It is our understanding that morale is very low not only among priests in the diocese generally, but also among the priest conveners. This is why the meeting was needed. We have learned that several priests--none of whom have contacted the Council of Parishes or Savestmarys.net in any way, nor have we contacted them--are having serious second thoughts about their status as priest conveners. So the imposed program is apparently unpopular among laity and clerics alike, with the exception of a select few. (One wonders how, precisely, this select few envision themselves personally benefiting from this diabolical scheme, but we digress.)

Our information of low morale may have been confirmed by the attendance at the "pep talk" meeting yesterday. In retrospect we should have been more methodical about counting each priest as he entered the building, but judging from the cars in the parking lot upon our arrival (we got there very early) and the number of priests we saw enter the building, we estimate only about 20-25 priests actually bothered going.