Of the two hundred - plus churches which were shut down by the Archdiocese of Boston, they have met with many varied fates.

The town of Wellesley had a church right on Route no. 9, which is not only a main commuter/connector route but is prime commercial real estate with everything from local businesses to state-of-the-art shopping malls. That particular church was a recent comer; some people moved to Wellesley who wanted a Catholic parish to worship in, and the church that was built was, honestly, a sort of cookie cutter church, nothing historical or unique.

Route no. 9 isn't going anyplace. The church, however, was literally razed down to the parking-lot foundation. You would never know that it had been there in the first place. Something else, and it is something commercial that is going to make money, is being built where the church stood.

The church which waked and buried Jack Kerouac back in the day, in his native Lowell, may have been a faithful reproduction of a Western-European continental style of architecture, so not terribly original, but the photos of the interior -- they were breathtaking in their beauty and elegance, with the Romanesque arches and all. The building is still standing. It is condominiums now.

I never looked inside -- Lowell is a ways away from me. I only saw those photographs on the webpages which the Archdiocese of Boston dedicated to 'real estate for sale.'

So many more ...