Composed of thirty-five interviews conducted from participants in the 1990 consolidation of ten parishes in Chicago's Englewood and participants in the 1995 San Francisco consolidation after the 1989 earthquake, offers a study for any parish leader to use as a reference when facing such a conflicted issue. This work explores the roles of ritual and pastoral care and proposes a series of new rites: group reconciliation, atonement, lament, leave-taking, memorial, and inauguration, based on the personal experience of those involved in parish restructurings. Chapters include: The Best We Could Do with Church? Demographics, Finances, and Culture, Traditions of Reconciliation: Conflict, Communion, and Sacred Remembering, The Negotiation of Crisis: Forgiveness, Trauma, and Sacred Space, Remembering in a Different Kind of Way: Grief, Lament, and Healing, Towards New Rituals of Reconciliation at the Closure of Sacred Space.