Can a priest borrow money from his parish to support his hobby?

[simfarm]

What are the rules about priests borrowing money from the parish? Is there something in canon law? We have a young priest who is more interested in being a cowboy, raising horses, and making a name for himself than he is in the actual needs of our small 32-family country parish. I am told he has “borrowed” $3500 so far and it is being taken back out of his pay a little at a time.

I have several issues with this:

• The horses and their barn and pen have no business on church property. It’s a liability and it stinks.
• Parish money should not be loaned or used to support his personal hobby.
• The ultimate disrespect in my opinion is that he penned a bull out in our small parish cemetery. The fence was originally built to keep animals out, not in.
• I’ve written the diocese but to no avail.

Four generations of our family have gone to this parish and it’s heartbreaking to see this out-of-control priest doing whatever he pleases. He seems to think everything is a big joke and his homilies are very self-centered. It’s all about him, all the time. I quit donating months ago as a form of protest. I’m a convert and am seriously considering going back to the Methodists after being a Catholic for over 30 years – it’s tearing me up that bad. Advice? Suggestions?

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

I’m not a canon lawyer, so I can’t help you with the canon law aspects of the question. Since you haven’t been able to get a response from your diocese, I recommend contacting the St. Joseph Foundation, a Catholic canon law apostolate.

What is of concern to me is how you are allowing this priest to destroy your spiritual peace. Nothing he does, no matter how awful, should determine whether or not you remain Catholic. You must be Catholic for Jesus Christ alone, because he died for you and founded the Catholic Church for your salvation. St. Francis de Sales once said that those who give up their faith because of the scandal given by others commit “spiritual suicide.”

Catholic apologist Frank Sheed once said:

We are not baptized into the hierarchy; do not receive the cardinals sacramentally; will not spend an eternity in the beatific vision of the pope. Christ is the point. I, myself, admire the present pope, but even if I criticized him as harshly as some do, even if his successor proved to be as bad as some of those who have gone before, even if I find the Church, as I have to live with it, a pain in the neck, I should still say that nothing that a pope (or a priest) could do or say would make me wish to leave the Church, although I might well wish that they would leave.

Recommended reading:

A Crisis of Saints by Fr. Roger Landry
Problems in the Church by Jimmy Akin