The decline of Catholic life in Connecticut
"... every shuttered church is one less mechanism for reminding people that there are moral and social obligations (not that any church gets them completely right) and one less mechanism for building connections among people and assuring them support, comfort, and shelter against life's storms."

True everywhere.  This is a really good piece of writing that speaks to hearts as well as minds.  It echoes the story out of Iowa and Nebraska, and other places where there are population shifts, declines in participation in the practice of faith, and the decline in the number of priests  

What new forms can the gathering of people of faith take where there are not enough priests to go around and not enough people to afford to maintain the old church?  What new ways to "build the connections" to keep alive the awareness of the moral and social obligations that naturally exist in a community?