It may have not made big headlines, but I have no doubt it stunned a good many people in the Diocese of Camden, New Jersey: a massive restructuring of the diocese that will see fully half of the parishes shuttered.

Details below, from the Inquirer:

As Bishop Joseph A. Galante braced for the grief he knew would follow the news that nearly half the parishes in the Camden Diocese would close, he thought often of his brother Bill.

“He and his wife spend time in Naples, Fla.,” the bishop said on Friday, a day after he detailed a massive restructuring of the Roman Catholic diocese’s 124 parishes.

“And all he talks about is how vibrant the local parish is: the people going to Mass, the wonderful preaching, concerts with sacred music and popular music.”

The vitality and community his brother has found in Florida are what he hopes South Jersey Catholics will one day encounter in the 66 parishes that will remain.

On Thursday, he announced a restructuring of the diocese so sweeping, Galante said, that “it surprised even me.”

Citing a steady decline in the number of priests, and a 24 percent Mass attendance in the diocese that he called “appalling,” Galante told a news conference that over the next two years he would close 30 parishes and turn another 28 into secondary “worship sites” inside newly redrawn parish boundaries.

The secondary sites will be used mostly for Saturday evening and Sunday Masses.

The scope of the closing appears to be the largest ever for any of the nation’s 195 Roman Catholic dioceses.

In 2005, Cardinal Sean O’Malley shocked the Boston Archdiocese when he announced he would close about 24 percent of its parishes – then a record. That decision provoked demonstrations, sit-ins, and a legal challenge that the Vatican recently decided in O’Malley’s favor.

Galante, a Philadelphia native who took charge of the 500,000-member Camden diocese in 2004, said he was optimistic his reconfigured parishes would emerge as “dynamic” communities that are “reaching out to people all the time, not just Saturdays and Sundays.”

Speaking on Friday from his winter home in Florida, Bill Galante – a retired Catholic school teacher and administrator – described St. John the Evangelist parish in Naples as “an amazing, amazing parish.”

“It has something for everyone, young and old. . . . I couldn’t begin to describe it all.”

The thick parish bulletin describes so many events and programs that “it reads like a magazine,” said Bill Galante, who, with his wife, Mary Anne, lives in Yardley for most of the year.

Bishop Galante said his plan was “no quick fix” to what ails some of his parishes.

“I don’t expect to be around to see the full flowering of what we want to do,” he said, observing that he turns 70 in July and expects to retire at 75. “But I hope to see the beginning.”

With the number of priests in the diocese projected to be just 85 in 2015 – half what it is now – the Catholic laity must take a greater leadership role, he said.

Today’s priests “have to be the enablers, the catalysts who will bring the laity in to share responsibility,” Galante said. “I keep telling our seminarians: The major role of the priest nowadays is the formation of his collaborators.”

There’s much more at the link. Let’s keep this diocese, like so many others, in our prayers…