Giving during sex abuse scandal

[AngelusDomini]

As far as I’m aware you can support your parish without the money going to the diocese. If your donation is specifically marked for some part of the parishes expenditure it must be used for that purpose. (E.g. electric bill.)

 

[otrrl]

In my diocese alone, there have been two priests’ faculties removed in the last year or so, one of which pleaded guilty to seven felonies. Yeah, it does get me worked up when the Vatican ignores Vigano (so far) and DiNardo and Gomez come back to the U.S. without the authority to flush out the circumstances of the McCarrick case. O’Malley gets a call to go back to Boston to deal with some seminary problem.

In one statement the Pope talks about the need for transparency and in another he calls for silence.

The source of my facts has largely been Catholic media. People whose qualifications far exceed my own have called the present situation a “crisis” and a “catastrophe.” Archb. Vigneron of Detroit says the USCCB needs to take “concrete actions.” etc.

Yes, the Pope has called for a special synod in February to deal with these problems but that hasn’t accomplished anything yet, has it? That is wh y I said we’re looking at a lot of “nothing” here.

Yes, I will be glad to consider a calm and collected alternate presentation of the “facts.”
By all means !

 

[glorybe]

In not giving to your parish, you’re only punishing innocent people. If the parish continues trying to function in the red, staff members will have to be let go, that would include office staff, maintenance, youth and choir directors, even nuns working at parishes, if there’s a school, teachers would be laid off. Programs and ministries to assist the poor and homeless would have to be discontinued. Personally, I think it would just be another sin added to the pot, not to be part of helping your own parish to function.
The same applies in not donating to the diocese or even the Vatican, like Peter’s Pence, that enables the Holy Father to assist people in crisis situations (natural disasters, etc).

 

[Tis_Bearself]

The US is not the UK. A lot of people who work for parishes are doing it as a paid job here and have been for decades. In many cases the parish hires people from their parish who really need the work, such as single moms or people with a disability or an illness. Also, the amount of hours that people are often expected to work is beyond the level that a volunteer could do, given that a volunteer is likely to have other commitments and isn’t going to want to work volunteer hours that amount to a full-time job.

 

[Brendan_64]

I still don’t get this idea! In the U.K. you’ll only find a few paid staff in the major cathedrals or shrines.

In the parishes I attend (in the UK), to the best of my knowledge (although I’m not sure about the FSSP one I attend on ocassion) it is usual for the priest to have at least a part-time secretary. I belong to a small parish (I think about 300, maybe even slightly less, attending Sunday Mass each week) and we have a paid part-time parish secretary. She also needs to eat.

 

[Brendan_64]

It just seems like unless we physically starve priests that leaders will keep moving predators around and not reporting them to authorities.

Starving a good, holy, hard-working priest, who has done nothing wrong in this matter, in order to get back at his superior (who may or may not have done something wrong in this matter) is surely wrong?

 

[tafan2]

. I am virtually certain that my comments under this topic are critical to ensuring that 30 years from now there will be even less to talk about than there is now

I am virtually certain you are wrong.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Yeah, I must say, anyone being “virtually certain” their comments on here matter any more than yesterday’s discarded newspapers is deluding themselves.

 

[pnewton]

. The “heat” must be kept high to DETER any clerics from even thinking of doing something they will later regret and which will only further harm the Church.

So, apart from the requirements of the Dallas Charter, do you see anything else that needs to be done? Heat is too general, and I hardly think trying to starve good priests is useful. Is cutting charity work a good response? This is what happens without money.

I am going to pass on all the problems I have with your Vigano statements. There is another thread for that. I note that the OP is quite satisfied with what has been done, once he got past the emotion and into facts.

 

[TheLittleLady]

Not to go too far afield from the OP, however, small parishes here in the US usually get by with one staff member or maybe all volunteers. When you get up over 1000 households, serving what may be two different “internal parishes” divided by language (for instance, in my parish a quarter to a third of the households do not speak English. They need a full time staff member simply to assist them.)

Also, Catholic schools in the US exist at the parish level (there are also independent Catholic schools). A parish school does not receive any government funding or staff, the school does not turn away Catholic students because they cannot afford the tuition, so the parish must supplement by paying staff for the school.

Moving to even larger parishes where there may be 5,000 households served, it takes a large parish!

I am not sure how UK parishes work, at a parish our size it takes 10 + hours per week simply to handle sacramental records.

We have a full time Director of Religious Education (because most kids attend public school) for both child and adult faith formation, RCIA, etc.

Full time maintenance and grounds person.

Cleaning has to be hired because no one volunteers to do that anymore.

List goes on and on.

 

[bassmansteiny]

I give to my Catholic Church, when and what I can afford to, live on a very tight fixed budget. I don’t believe it is right for my parish to be neglected because of the sins of preist in another diocese. We need to keep the lights on like anywhere else. IF your parish preist(s) are not involved in the scandal then why punish your preist(s) and parish community?

 

[otrrl]

Raymond Arroyo of EWTN has interviewed people who worked on the lay board which served after the problems in 2002. They said that an independent and unrestricted forensic financial audit needs to be conducted in each diocese to see where victims of clerical abuse were being paid off. I trust these people to have told the truth about what is needed, without any reservations or obstruction by any bishop.

You can see that if the Church does not “police” itself, the state attorneys general will use legal means to do so.

It would be better if the bishops would just release the information, as some already have.

Nobody’s talking about it, but I think that all clerics should submit to psychological evaluation to screen for those who might have tendencies toward sexual abuse.

The USCCB is supposed to take up the matter of a code of conduct for bishops which I seem to recall says something about dealing with negligence in office.

The problem is, all of these are proposals and have not been agreed upon. That is why I say the “heat” must be kept on, echoing the remarks of Prof Janet Smith of Sacred Heart Seminary on the Al Kresta program on EWTN radio.

About withholding money from the Church, my comments were echoing Dr. Ralph Martin and, and if I’m not mistaken, Fr John Riccardo, both also speaking on EWTN radio.

My previous remarks about the bishops bypassing the strictures of canon law are my own, but which are just generalizations of the measures described in this post, none of which are required under current canon law. With an international crisis on its hands, the Church leaders must be prodded into acting, as has happened historically.

Withholding money should only need to be a short-term tactic for busting through the barriers preventing transparency about the clerical sex abuse problem. I sympathize with my critics in this topic who seem so uninformed about it in general. I get several appeals in the mail every day for money to help the poor. I am the Church, too, and I can and do contribute to those causes – as if I was proposing something otherwise !

I just sent $100 to the Augustine Institute to help them develop the Why Believe? studies program for high schoolers.

Obviously I disagree with my critics who think there’s no problem in the USCCB right now.

And, I haven’t even seriously got started on the evil in the Church that P. Francis has addressed several times, the evil of clericalism. All of these problems are connected. Who is he talking to when he says the laity have to take a role in ending clericalism? (surely not those who have criticized me here, I presume)

 

[pnewton]

You can see that if the Church does not “police” itself, the state attorneys general will use legal means to do so.

Isn’t enforcing criminal law the job of the state anyway? That is one thing about this I have never understood. The Church should never be the police, or expect to be the police in criminal matters.

 

[otrrl]

how are you so sure? Fr, Robert DeLand was trusted in the diocese of Saginaw, up until the day he was arrested. It was curious that the bishop said that he didn’t learn of DeLand’s arrest until he heard of it on the local news. In what universe could such a thing happen, that the bishop is among the last to know? If the priest didn’t call the bishop himself, then the person he did call should have called the bishop – no? There’s a lawsuit against the bishop and the diocese for the actions that the priest has pleaded guilty to.

No offense intended but we shouldn’t be naïve about what is going on.

DeLand was the big story, but the diocese also released info that another priest was suspended for credible allegations, too, at the same time. BIG SHOCK in the Diocese of Saginaw. BIG, BIG, BIG.

And, there were aftershocks to the arrest because the police said the bishop was not cooperating with the investigation. So, they executed search warrants at his residence, his computers, the office of the diocese, and the Cathedral itself. And, for full disclosure, there doesn’t seem to have been anything found in those searches, as can be said at this time, but “the investigation continues.”

There’s been a lot of damage control going on in the parishes.

 

[Norseman82]

As an FYI, most of the cover-up (meaning shuttling priests from one place to another) has been by the diocesan bureaucracy; the parish may only be guilty of not informing the parishoners.

Now, if your concern is whether your support is going to be used to support the operation of a parish as opposed to paying lawsuit settlements (which is a concern of mine), you may want to consider being choosy as to where to give your money. For example, a fund to fix the roof or for something for the school may be a way to support the local parish.

 

[otrrl]

I worked in private industry and we had to ‘police’ ourselves to catch problems early, Violations were worse if we didn’t have a clue as to what our problems were and weren’t looking for them.

A restaurant has to train and evaluate somebody who flips burgers, before the health department comes in and issues violations. Who would want to eat there if standards were not set and followed? They could go out of business.

Your comment is irrelevant because previously and even now, our diocese has a complaint line for things like sexual abuse. The police advise otherwise, but the diocese still has a complaint line.

Your criticism is simply argumentative, not reflective of all the published guidelines in dioceses for reporting sexual abuse. If you’re right, they shouldn’t even have to publish such.

 

[Godfollower]

Isn’t enforcing criminal law the job of the state anyway? That is one thing about this I have never understood. The Church should never be the police, or expect to be the police in criminal matters.

That’s certainly true; but, as citizens of the body politic we have a duty to report crimes to the authorities. In the U.S., failing to report a crime of which you have knowledge can be itself a crime (e.g., accessory after the fact, or misprision of a felony). Some members of the Church are mandatory reporters; and we’re all morally obliged not to perpetuate the crime. One of the ways we prevent additional crimes is by participating in the process of removing the offender from society while he serves his time.