A recent thread posted information from the Cincinnati diocese. Having featured prominently in "Goodbye Good Men," and having successfully engineered a complete collapse in the priesthood, the diocese finally stops sending out "happy talk" press releases and admits that the priesthood in the diocese is in a terminal state.
The reason for the change of policy? It is too late to reverse the trend. They have accomplished their purpose. Now they are moving on to stage 2: a program for "a new model of Church." This means clustering parishes and having lots of "lay pastoral administrators" with just a handful of priests to administer sacraments.
The first part of this program has already been launched in the rural area of the diocese. Nine priests have been assigned to 27 parishes, 1 priest for every 3 parishes. The rest of the diocese will soon be following suit. A Saul Alinsky-style program is underway to "gather views from the laity." This is code-speak for pretending to get consensus for a program that has already been decided upon.