The following came in a May 5 email to Cal Catholic. We contacted emailer to get the other seven events.

1)  St. Patrick Proto-Cathedral in San Jose, burned in August 2012, has been declared a total loss and will have to be rebuilt.  The diocese has put out an email to the priests and lay staffs, but I cannot find it online.  The church will be rebuilt with the name Our Lady of La Vang, in honor of the parish being the Vietnamese national church.  The rebuild will cost in the tens of millions of dollars.  The minority Hispanic faction is apparently upset by the renaming.  This is the most populous parish in the diocese.

2)  Fr. Mark Catalana, longtime vocation director of the diocese, died unexpectedly on Thursday.  He had been injured by riding a bicycle a few weeks ago (struck by a car) but his recovery was proceeding apace.  Felt ill Thursday morning, brought to the hospital, died of an apparent heart attack– all within hours.  Not quite 50 years old.  Every priest and lay staffer is in shock in this diocese:  the man used his bike for primary transportation, was in apparent great health.

Appointed by Bishop McGrath to be Vocation Director, San Jose went from a seminarian-poor diocese to a seminarian-rich diocese during his tenure.  Up to him, the diocesan yapdogs would make lots of noises about “priestless parishes.”  Nobody apart from a few lone wingnuts speak about that now as we have a serviceable number of priests and expect to do so for decades.  Also served as chaplain to the homeschoolers in the diocese. Obituary here.

3)  The Drexel Initiative.  Requires participating parochial schools to raise millions while eliminating the pastor’s authority over the school.  Deathknell of Catholic influence in the schools.  Lots of controversy, especially at St. Clare School where the pastor was publically humiliated, but I can’t give you sources yet.

Diocesan PR spin can be found here.  “Mandatory” priest meeting regarding the initiative a couple weeks ago was apparently ignored by the vast majority of the priests, who understood that yet another San Jose scam was upon them.  PR doesn’t reflect the reality of the changed governance structure:  principals and school staffs will henceforth report to the superintendent, not the pastors.