A reader comments:

This past Saturday night we attended the Mass for the 50th Anniversary of our parish, celebrated by the Archbishop, who introduced the new pastor, who will take over next month. Not mentioned by either the Archbishop or the pastor-designate, probably for obvious reasons, was the priest’s last job, except for a veiled reference to "fine administrative work with a difficult situation".

I then read an interesting story on the front page of the Metro Section of this morning’s NYT : http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/27/nyregion/27catholic.html .

The morning after our bishop and our new pastor were extending best wishes to one worshipping community in a rich suburb, these two leaders closed another worshipping community in a poorer part of the County, not all that far away.

I in no way envy them their unpleasant job of consolidating aging and shrinking parishes, but right now I feel that their hierarchical self-congratulations were the height of dishonesty. 

Related: Coping with parish closings in Toledo

This is unrelated to the correspondent’s note, but just in general, about parish closings. So very much of this is demographics, and hardly anyone every tries to bring all the numbers together and make sense of it . Parishes bursting in NoVa and Houston (and countless other places), closing in Toledo, Boston, and so on…Given the capital, I’ve no doubt that you could open scores of new Catholic schools in the Sunbelt and the South, and they’d all be full in a week.