Parish mergers in many parts of the country are a fact of life. Every July there is a new announcement that a priest is covering two parishes, or two parishes are becoming one. In other parts of the country, entire dioceses have merged all of their parishes at once, as in Pittsburgh. In these dioceses, the people seem hopeless. They feel like there’s nothing that laypeople can do to stop it.
But in August, in the Diocese of Buffalo, a group of laypeople successfully stopped two mergers in their diocese by appealing to the Vatican. And this little act of lay action proves that there are things that laypeople can do to save their parishes.
