Well, it is now two years later and will respond to my own question with my best answer.

Auto reconciliation is great, but sometimes it is WRONG, too.  So at the end of the month when the paper statement from the bank arrives (or electronic) you then go into your Bank Journal and confirm that your PAPER bank statement begins with the total of your last VALIDATED entry, then you check each entry on the paper statement against your auto-entries in the journal.  As you tick it off on the paper, you mark the statement entry as "Validated".

In short, VALIDATED means you have looked at the official statement and confirmed that all lines in a particular entry are accurate.

Hopefully this helps save someone else a bit of homework ;-)