This is the sort of thing that happens when a multimillion dollar corporation has no controls on its activities, investments, and financial standing. No one knows if the diocese is making or loosing money on the project. Any sale in the future is subject to market pressures and the price will reflect it.
There is no reason for this situation to continue as is has for so many years. The Church belongs to the people in the pews, not to the clergy who in fact work for us. We have long be remiss our obligation to manage the physical assets of the Church. There is nothing in the ordinary formation curricula for priests to prepare them for the task of managing a corporation, preparing and enforcing a budget, handling human resource management issues, etc. If it isn’t in the formation programs, it is not there because the Church does not believe that these jobs are properly the task of the clergy. That leave us, brothers and sisters, the folks in the pews. We are the ones the Church believes should be managing the Church’s finances and physical assets. If the article upset you, as it surely should, since such secrecy is highly suspect, then we should be demanding that changes in the management practices of the organization be changed. When the changes come, we must be prepared to take our place in the organization and do the work which is properly ours.
Each diocese needs a business manager, a comptroller, an accountant, a human resource department (which will handle the assignment of priests just as it handles the hiring of other staff), a financial report mechanism that reports honestly to the people whose generosity funds the corporation, and so on. The people taking on the responsibility for these jobs must have the proper academic backgrounds and credentials so that the laity may be assured that a professional job is being done in the management of their funds.
Amateurs have no business running multimillion dollar corporations and we are fools to allow it.
Matthew
