By now, most people in our area know the story of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. After a half-century of residing next to Interstate 290 and its heavy traffic, the church began to fall apart.

So church leaders made the decision to close the parish and merge with Our Lady of Loreto Church on Grafton Hill. The ensuing fight between some parishioners, pastor Monsignor Stephen Pedone, and Bishop Robert McManus has been a public mess. I will not relitigate the case for or against closing. Rather, I want to focus on how the church was closed and what might have been done differently.