EDITORIAL
EDITORIALS RELIGIOUS FUND-RAISING One of the strengths of American Catholicism has been the willingness of people to support its good works with contributions large but more often small and...
...Misadventures such as that of the Pallotine Fathers do much more than hurt their order and their works, real and alleged...
...The forceful handling of the Pallotine case is reassuring, but it is only the start of what needs to be done before cynicism is fully purged from religious fund-raising...
...Watchdogs of the public interest, such as die Washington Pasr, have re-sponded with statements of relief and encouragement to officials to continue to act decisively on the matter...
...Clutch officials have cracked down hard and publicly on the Baltimore mission of the Pallotine Fathers, from the local chancery through to Rome...
...We are not anxious to see gov-ernment at any level step into the fund-raising procedures of religious institutions, except, of course, in breaches of civil law...
...It is intolerable that these sums gath-ered for the hungry, the infirm, the destitute, should be turned to speculation or be diverted to enlarge the in-stitution's capital and non-religious holdings...
...It is a good suggestion, and a policy that is routinely followed by reputable non-religious agencies that depend on fund-raising...
...These money cases, and others not chronicled here, are all quite different...
...Nevertheless, all ha#e one thing in common...
...For many, therefore, it is disillusioning to follow the running story of the Pallotine Fathers of Baltimore: how the Pallotines reportedly lent Maryland Governor Marvin Mandel $54,000 used to help pay his 1974 divorce settlement...
...They can survive only by retaining the trust and confidence of those they appeal to...
...With a few, their troubles might be innocent, just sheer bad luck...
...it is, as earlier paragraphs point up, only part of a wider and distressful pattern of what amounts to institutional abuse and betrayal of those solicited, to say nothing of those in need...
...On the other hand, church authorities can do much more to prevent the cloak of religion from being exploited by the very people of religion...
...In some die collusion or scheming tot profit is not as blatant as in others...
...how the Pallotines allegedly cooperated in a 1971 fund appeal for Senator Edmund S. Muskie, shortly, before he be-came a candidate for President...
...The point is obvious...
...But reform of fund-raising policies must go much fur-ther than putting the Pallotines' house in order...
...They drama-tize the urgency of new and more responsible fiscal policies on the part of those institutions of religion that exist through the good will of the public...
...In 1974, there was the failure of the trust fund that cost the Diocese of Reno, the La Salette Fathers and other Catholic groups some $25 million, while raising questions whether Securities and Exchange Commission regu-lations had been respected...
...subsequently they were bit with a court judgment involving $2.8 million in liens on their National Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa in Doylestown, Pa...
...They plant an under-standable cynicism in the minds of the public, and thus they erode confidence in the fiscal responsibility and legitimacy of other institutions of religion dependent upon fund appeals...
...EDITORIALS RELIGIOUS FUND-RAISING One of the strengths of American Catholicism has been the willingness of people to support its good works with contributions large but more often small and sacrificial...
...For one thing, they could be much firmer in seeing that moneys raised are truly needed and used for the purposes for which they are solicited...
...how millions of Pallotine dollars have been invested in Maryland and Florida real estate...
...About the same time it became known that the Pauline Fathers were in financial straits resulting from the sale of bonds...
...This trust and confidence, in turn, are contingent upon alms solicited being used in measure and means consistent with the fund-raising appeals and peo-ple's expectations...
...Accountability, after all, is only a con-comitant of solicitation...
...The Pal-lotine story is too familiar...
...The Washington Post advises religious groups whose existence is directly tied to fund appeals to include in their solicitations detailed balance sheets so that potential contributors can make better judgments about the worthi-ness and effectiveness of those groups seeking their help...
...At the same time, those orders and institutions going to the public can be much more open and candid than most have been in the past...
...It is in-tolerable whether the action ends in financial disaster, as seems to have been the fate of the LaSalettes, or is wildly successful, as the Boys Town fund-raising opera-tion was discovered to be a few years ago, when it was revealed that its net worth was about $209 million and rising by $17 million a year or more, after all expenses -not only more than Boys Town needed, but more than it could hope to spend for years to come...
...Much of this is possible because religious fund-raising institutions are largely free of governmental regulatory auditing, and because church authorities themselves have been lax about many of the whys and wherefores of fund-raising under religious auspices...
...The disillusionment would be easier to bear if the Pallotine story were the exception, but, unhappily, it crowds upon a succession of financial mis-management revelations involving several Catholic institutions in recent years...
...A few years earlier there were the bankruptcy adventures of the Salva-torian order, which found itself facing $8.6 million in debts after being defrauded by a Washington attorney, and the Houston Jesuits, who lost $6 million in a stock deal engineered by one Frank Sharp-appropriate name...
...how of between $8 million and $15 million raised annually, only a fraction of the sum-$746,685 in 1974, for in-stance-finds its way in cash and supplies to the needy missions of its appeals...
Vol. 103 • February 1976 • No. 4
