Overall the piece is certainly well done, although there are some very insignificant inaccuracies. For example, though Julie's non-Catholic husband ("Kelley") does certainly have views on the situation, he does not write articles (or poems for that matter) for the Save St. Mary's website. Occasionally he has been so disgusted with outright lies of the Diocesan Administration that he's written pieces for his own personal blog, which are then linked to by SSM. This is, of course, ironic since people like him are who Galante is supposedly trying to reach but who he is instead alienating. Sadly, Bishop Galante has also succeeded in alienating young families, older Catholics, and, well, most people in between so far as we can tell. Strangely, all those who we knew who would have considered the possibility of coming into the Faith have put the possibility completely out of their minds because of what they are currently seeing.

The bottom line is that anyone who thinks the forced closure of parishes, outright lies, hireling "ministers," corporate slickness, and evangelical protestant-style megachurches are going to attract people to the Faith, they are deluding themselves. What's really going on here, so far as we can tell is [a] a moneygrab and [b] a forcing down the throats of the faithful an agenda to radically change the church from within. Yeah, there are unfortunately some aging liberals in high places want to see the "quatholic" church of their dreams come to life before they leave this earth. But to what end?

In any case, we highly encourage you to read this latest installment of Ms. Carlson's since it is such a good synopsis of what's happened thus far. Link: click here. The article is entitled, "The Worldwide Catholic Church is Going Through Changes" and it is dated Nov. 13, 2009. Here are a couple small snippets from the article:

[1] Kelley wrote, "Twas the Night Before Merger," which Heiland posted in a Jan. 7 blog on SSMM. It stated, in part: "Twas the Night Before Merger, when all through the church [appeared] lists of new ministries for all the search"; "Wawas with crosses [that] point up to the sky"; and "Coffee mugs... hung by the cappuccino bar with care, in the hopes that the barrista soon would there."

"Wawaization" is some-thing many protesters fear most from the reconfiguration of parishes and worship sites in the Camden Diocese.

However, according to Kelley, in a May 31, 2008 blog: "The bishop (Bishop Joseph Galante) gave the church-saving movement its best metaphor when he disparaged the little churches he wants to shutter as 'Wawa churches.' The bishop might as well condemn motherhood, baseball and apple pie if he's going to take on South Jersey's Wawa. One disgruntled 'Catholic in name only' rose to reclaim the Wawa label, saying that all these little churches were indeed like Wawa: ubiquitous, open at all hours, with good food that brought people in."

[2] [Said John Sendman of St. Jude's in Blackwood:] "There are a lot of people who are going to leave the church on account of this," he said. "The people I know believe in a small church with a group of people who know each other and pray together.

[3]"The thing that is interesting," Pierzynski [of St. Vincent Pallotti, Haddon Heights] said, "is that most rec-ommendations were to cluster parishes, which means that all parishes remain open, but share a priest. Mergers mean more parishes and properties are available to sell. The other priests may be asked to retire, or will be reassigned. It doesn't vary too much between the mergers and the clusters.

"[The diocese] quickly changed that and said that [the priest shortage] wasn't the reason for the mergers. Then [the diocese] cited vibrancy. But parishioners have stopped giving [donations], and now they've cited financial reasons. That's a situation they themselves created. By closing and merging parishes, you create a priest overage. "It's funny to watch them spin it around to what they need it to be," he said.