A Program for Reform, Part Three

Last updated on: November 25, 2019 at 9:06 pm by Gabriel Blanchard

A Program for Reform, Part Three 2019-11-25T21:06:06-04:00 Gabriel Blanchard

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Financial corruption is another major element that runs throughout the Church’s scandals. It takes money to cover things up, spin them when they get out, fight lengthy court battles, and pay for victims’ compensation. It overlaps with some of the sexual scandals in themselves, too: in not a few cases of sexual predation on young people, the grooming of the victims involved expensive gifts and vacations. And then there’s the good old-fashioned brazen self-centeredness of men like the recently disgraced Bishop Bransfield of Wheeling-Charleston: nothing complicated, just the lifestyle of an opulent jetsetter in a diocese where some people don’t have little luxuries like running water.

II. Financial Reform

1. All bishops shall be required to make a vow of personal poverty. As successors of the Apostles and ministers of Christ, it is the responsibility of bishops to care for the poor; and nothing is so likely to keep someone conscious of the poor as being one of the poor. Magnificent churches are one thing—it is appropriate to give God our best and loveliest, not because he needs it (he made it after all) but as a gesture of thanks and praise; episcopal palaces and splendorous chanceries are something else entirely, and the money that such things both represent and require would be better spent on the poor: the parallel of Judas’ complaint about Jesus being anointed at Bethany applies to churches, not to mansions and seaside condominiums, still less to the unsavory behavior that such mansions and condos have been used to conceal.

This idea has some precedent in the Christian East (Orthodox and Catholic alike), where bishops are generally selected from among monastic clergy; a married priest whose wife dies can be consecrated a bishop, but, I understand, is required to take monastic vows first. And this reform proposal includes currently regnant bishops; giving them, say, a ninety day period to dispose of their excess property seems reasonable to me, but I’d be very much against their being dispensed from the rule as such.

2. Money or property received by a bishop in excess of poverty, regardless of origin, to be immediately donated to the poorest parishes or schools in the diocese or to charities. This is a corollary and safeguard of the preceding proposal. The legate suggested in I.1 is probably the best judge of what constitues excess money or property.

3. Every diocese and religious order to publish a complete financial statement at least once per year. And complete means complete: receipts of all kinds, including fees, tithes, donations, gifts, and any other legal word meaning “money/things the diocese/order received”; all outlays, including salaries, payments, expenses, and any other legal word meaning “money/things the diocese/order paid or gave to someone else”; all transfers of funds internally, e.g. from a church building endowment to a soup kitchen fund; and anything I’ve missed. Financial transparency is essential to counteract corruption. Obviously not all the laity will be able to understand it, nor are all laity paragons of financial innocence ourselves of course, but again, it’s a step toward making corruption more difficult to protect.

Images via Pixabay

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November 20, 2019

A Program for Reform, Part Two

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December 4, 2019 A Program for Reform, Part Four

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