Wasn’t that church being closed due to parish consolidations? Buried down toward the end of the article is the line:
Sister Mary Parks, spokeswoman for the diocese, defended the church consolidations. Although money will be saved by the church closings, that is not the main reason for consolidation, she said. “What will be saved is an enormous amount of duplication,”.
I can’t find any evidence that the parish exists today, and depending on the use the building was consigned to, it might have been completely appropriate not to leave the altar in place. In any event, the article does not strike me as a legitimate news piece, and I have a feeling that the “hard-hitting” intro, which blasts church officials by saying, “It is insisted that the 100 year old altars were ‘unnecessary duplications’,” is probably just a misunderstanding of the fact that the church itself was an unsupportable “duplication” given regional demographics, and due to be closed down.
It definitely sounds like this was not handled in a very good way, but before accusing priests of “sacrilege” it might help to learn if this was, you know, preparatory to closing down the church, and not just because the priest didn’t like icky old altars or something.