True North from 'Saturday Morning,' IV
ing a growing uniformity," he said. "Each diocese is so different in terms of the way it is set up legally and financially. They're just so varied. They're all separate little corporations. It would...
...Yet there are no comprehensive data on how many parishes have finance councils, how they work, or how well...
...Pastors can appoint whomever they like to a council, and in some places the councils just act as rubber stamps for the pastor's decisions...
...Contrary to widespread assumptions, the lack of data about parish finances concerns not only the folks in the pew...
...Right now it is hit-and-miss...
...The bishop himself is often clueless about True North 'Every mile is two in winter.' Herbert One's mind has changed in five London winters and their half-light, wearing no more than a coat, blood thinner again to behold a January sun's pale reflection, and trees that run black, ragged in last leaves, with rain...
...he financial situation is even murkier in the nation's nineteen thousand parishes...
...So as to keep damp from seeping into our bones as rain drops and the land soaks a city shoe, at nightfall we'll watch branches like new roots reaching through the wind, and later listen, bodies together beside paired empty boots, only for something of the life to come...
...The bishops' conference doesn't know, and even many individual bishops are apparently in the dark...
...The short day grown late reveals you in your gloam: still life of a man with bathtub and sink as seen through dusk-blind glass, pen and ink...
...Zech estimates that two-thirds of parishes nationwide have finance councils, but many of these may exist in name only...
...Reports that surfaced in connection with the sexual-abuse scandal gave anecdotal evidence that canon law is not being observed well or uniformly...
...Darius Victor Snieckus Commonweal I 2 February 13, 2004...
...Others argue that comprehensible disclosure is not all that difficult, and that whatever the hurdles, they must be over-come if the hierarchy is to regain its credibility...
...Fortunately, most bishops have judged it so, and studies indicate that more than 95 percent of parishes have a pastoral council to help the priest set mission priorities and carry them out...
...Although we are only now about to learn the overall costs of clergy sexual abuse in the United States, some two decades after the first wave of such revelations appeared, there is no equivalent snapshot of the state of parish finance councils...
...Finally made bare, the valley beyond appeared, balanced between drained light and shadow on the banks of the hidden, slowturning Avon...
...Parish pastoral councils, which flourished in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, are notmandated by canon law, and in fact exist only where a local bishop "judges it opportune...
...from Saturday Morning IV Through an upstairs window on the southeast side of the house, you could see the last of the tree's maroon leaves had found its own peace impaled among thorns or flat on the lowest ground...
...This is a glaring oversight that undermines the ability of lay people to become involved in their church, and of bishops to reassure the faithful that they are being good stewards...
...Parish finance councils, on the other hand, are mandated by church law (canons 537 and 1284...
...It is an odd situation...
...It would be like saying GM should look exactly like your neighborhood Wal-Mart...
...When it was revealed in July 2002 that a Brooklyn diocese pastor had misappropriated some $1.8 million in parish funds, the diocese's finance chief acknowledged that as many as one in five parishes in the nation's fifth-largest diocese did not have a finance council...
...It is not just having yearly statements, but it has to be a real attempt to have information in place to make it understandable," said Zech, the Villanova economics professor...
Vol. 131 • February 2004 • No. 3
