On a tangentially related note:

Where does Burke come off proposing to close St. Pius V? Is the South Grand parish too progressive for him? They already had to close the school - in part because many of the wealthier residents fear diversity and got permission to send their kids to St. Margaret of Scotland. Burke wouldn't dream of closing St. Margaret's, with their City-funded Housing Corporation, ties to the Garden District, Flora Place and Compton Heights, Jim and Steve Conway, et al. (Bob Byrne, recently retired editor of the City employee newsletter "Newsgram", was once a St. Louis Review reporter and is a longtime St. Margaret's member).

And the worst part is the proposal to divvy up the parish along Grand - west to Holy Family and east to "a regional parish to be named later" housed at the current St. Wenceslaus. Thanks to Martie Aboussie, St. Wenceslaus is preserved even though it's not the most beautiful church and has one of the smallest parishes geographies currently (about 12 city blocks mostly in Benton Park West).

I live in the St. Wenceslaus parish, but I don't support these moves. Closing St. Francis de Sales except for Latin mass is just criminal - so much for the "Cathedral of South St. Louis." So does that mean St. Agatha's (current home of Latin masses) closes completely?

Also the proposals will now leave the entire historic Carondelet neighborhood without an active parish, as both Sts. Mary and Joseph as well as St. Boniface will close.

Do you realize that many of the parishes and schools being closed are being consolidated into parishes that were branches off of them!? For example, in Affton, St. George at Heege and Gravois closed its school, merging with several others nearby, all of which were splits off from St. George in the 1950s.

Even St. Raphael's in St. Louis Hills was a split off from St. George back during those boom years. St. Raphael, home to many high-level city bureaucrats, just did a major capital campaign. St. George - a beautiful church similar in style to St. Ambrose on the Hill - may not be around much longer, it seems.

My great-grandfather donated his farm to the Archdiocese in the mid-1950s to provide a site for St. Timothy's, a recently closed parish on Union Road and a split off from St. George. My grandmother was for her entire 80+ years an active member of St. George, and both my parents went to school there in the 1950s. I was baptized there in 1978, although never confirmed.

While I have never been a practicing Catholic, I still care about the people who rely on these institutions as the glue of the community. While I recognize that money is tight and priests are in short supply, this looks like politically motivated consolidation. Conservative and machine-type Democrats win; progressives and working-class communities lose. And that is infuriating.

I readily acknowledge the problems inherit with the tendency to seek data that supports one's chosen position. Nonetheless, I found the above link helpful for my "Catholic Kerry" vote.

sorry, messed up the link, here it is:

http://www.courier-journal.com/cjextra/editorials/2004/10/11/oped-stassen1011-5709.html