In the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, every parish is its own corporation. The five person board of directors for every parish consists of two bishops, the parish priest, and the two lay trustees. Although canonically, the priest is in charge of the parish, the two trustees have the ability to notice if anything is out of sync financially - one of the trustees' signatures is required on all the checks. In reality, you often have trustees who do not take this responsibility seriously, always trust the priest, or are incompetent. There are also some great trustees out there. Though it would be nice if parishes, who nominate and vote for the trustees, realized on a deeper level the serious and positive effects that this position can be for the parish community financially.I think that this is a model that could be adapted to the diocesan level. A board of lay trustees, nominated and chosen by the laity in a diocese, would have full access to financial records. These lay trustees would then be at liberty to disclose any pertinent information to the general Catholic population. This method would have prevented scenarios such as Archbishop Weakland paying off a blackmailer and many U.S. bishops from paying hush money to cover up sexual abuse. And if these heinous actions had happened despite having lay elected trustees, then at least we have more blame to spread around and we could vote in better trustees. As of now, the laity are not allowed to vote in a new bishop. Just a thought...
A Faithful Catholic
5 comments:
While I wouldn't want a lay-board electing a bishop (something I imagine you would support), I do see some merit in this. Particularly because the lay trustees could be focused on specific matters (namely, finance). Let's be honest, there probably aren't that many CPAs wearing collars, but there are a number of lay Catholics who are also CPAs.
Ultimately though, the Bishop must remain the primary authority within the diocese.
F.C. First you say lay trustees for parishes are generally ineffecteive, yet you go on to assert that the same system would somehow work wonders at the diocesan level.
And you read Archbishop's Weakland's memoir yet appear not to recall he said the amount of the Marcouz payoff was set at just below the amount subject to the next level of financial controls that already existed.
At the parish level, with only two trustees, it's a crap shoot as to whether you will have good trustees or not. At the Archdiocesan level, I would hope that there would be trustee board of sorts, with a greater number of people.
As you just said, Weakland took out as much money as he knew he could get away with. With a whole bunch of lay-elected eyes watching, I do not think he could have gotten away with such a large amount.
Unless he was smart (in a devious way) and did it in smaller increments that even a board tasked with oversight would miss.
The archdiocese does have a financial council which is nearly entirely lay and they have access to all the financial records. Also, the CFO is a lay man as well as all his staff. Remember that the lay CFO knew of the Weakland payout and signed the check.
I'm not sure why you and others assert that "lay" boards and lay people in certain positions are supposed to be a magic wand. A lay person can be just as incompetent as a bishop or priest. Same goes for the womenpriests who would like to be ordained - some want to canonize them but anyone who knows many of them is aware that they often aren't playing with a full deck any more than men who are ordained.
What would a "lay" financial board (that already exists) do that is so special?
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