Camden Bishop Joesph Galante met with members of Assumption Church in Wildwood Crest tonight and the members of the parish were able to voice their concerns to the Bishop and explain why they felt that their church should not be merged with St. Anne's. Those concerns included spiritual reasons of people that have been around the parish for 50 years and logistical reasons of the St. Anne's not having a lot of parking readily available for use. In total, around 300 people attended the meeting.The event began at 7 PM with a small group of protesters standing outside of the church, waiting for Bishop Galante to show up. After Galante made his appearance, he was seated at the front of the church and members of the parish were asked to come forward and make their individual case as to why Assumption parish should remain open. Most of the comments were on the issues though Galante did acknowledge that there was one personal attack that he was going to ignore.
Members of the church spoke for about two hours and at which point, Bishop Galante had a chance to respond to some of the comments that had been made throughout the night. He explained his reasoning for merging churches. One of the issues he spoke about was a study that had been done saying that the county would only have eight priests available for use in the year 2015. The Catholic Church as a whole is dealing with a dwindling amount of priests and many of the decisions that have been made have been as a way to look towards the future, to ensure that the churches that are running have the services that they need. Galante also mentioned that one of the outcries has recently been to have youth service coordinators at parishes throughout the state, currently there is one in the Camden Dioceses that he said covers six counties.
However, upon speaking with some of the parishioners from Assumption and speaking with Corinne Robinson, who helped organize the petition drive to show the parishes displeasure of having to merge with St. Anne's, they did not seem happy with the response they received from the Bishop. Galante spoke for over ten minutes, and was interrupted numerous times by the unhappy crowd, about the reasoning from the decision, but never gave any inclination that he might reverse his decision and rather spoke about the process that took place that places the church in this situation. Galante also reaffirmed that Assumption would not be closed all year long (currently it is slated to be a summer only parish) and said it could hold masses throughout the year, but that would be decided by the priest in charge at that time. The members of the church that Coastal Broadcasting spoke to following the event were not happy with this response as they would like to have some answers.
This merger could face some other serious problems in that the biggest ovation of the night came when one of the parishioners said that he would not go to St. Anne's and would rather find another church. There is a real concern that if this merger goes through as it, that the Assumption parish would not merge with St. Anne's to become one big new community, but rather it would fall by the wayside as members of Assumption find other venues to practice their faith.
Galante walking towards Assumption Church
