Yes, though Trusteeism is not alien to the Catholic Church. But generally, the more transparency, sunlight, and additional eyes, there are more barriers to theft.
This priest in Iowa seems to look guilty. But even setting that aside, where else would you take a man from a foreign country, foreign legal, banking and accounting systems, and place him with no local supervision over (I'm guessing) a half million dollar revenue and multi-million dollars in assets? A man whose academic training is in Divinity. Forget theft, what about basic competency?
It's not just priests who have been stealing from the parishes, as The Pillar itself has reported, but also volunteers and staff.
Many of the scandals have been isolated thus far, but I could see all sorts of these issues pop up, if someone were to shine a light more systematically.
I have seen new pastors come in who wanted to take a look at how money was being spent and suddenly they were confronted with animosity from parish staff, like they wanted to hide something. I would venture that parish staff get away with a lot of things, and it may not be just outright stealing, but also getting paid and not doing any work or using people they know for catering or work needed to fix the church where the parish is charged more than it should and friends or family of parish employees benefit. I would audit the employment practices at parishes as I suspect the money wasted at many is a greater problem than priests stealing money. Many priests know little about finances and can get fooled by clever staff and volunteers.
I would agree. Priests generally know little about finances. It is simply asking for trouble putting them in charge of parish finances. Your suggestion of an audit is spot on. Separate from the Parish Finance Committee, there could be an audit committee made up of competent men and women of the parish following GAAP.
Which is good. It would be better if the lay faithful of the parish had a right to see the audits. And there still remains the issue of competency of the pastor. Theft is bad but so is mismanagement.
But the dioceses are often the problem. They often have their own prefered businesses which parishes are obligated to work with. For example, I know a pastor who needed an environmental inspector and the diocese told him to hire a guy who charged close to $2000. The priest found an inspector himself online who had equal qualifications but charged the parish a few hundred dollars instead. I have seen a pastor fall into depression because the diocese promoted a company which charged him over a million dollars for renovating his church. He finally let his associate pastor take over who bypassed the diocese and found contractors who did the job for $500,000.
Personally, if (God forbid) I get made a pastor, my first request of my bishop would be permission to have an outside firm audit the books. As I see it, this benefits everyone.
As the new pastor, I would know what the financial situation is that I just inherited.
For the diocese, it would be a clear and independent review of the books.
For the parish, it would allow them to evaluate, year over year, my own competency as a financial steward of the parish's resources.
Fortunately, my diocese has a lot more men champing at the bit to be pastors than parishes to accommodate them, so maybe I can dodge that bullet. My only fear is that I actually have two masters' degrees: one in Divinity and one in Finance. :(
I actually think every seminary should have at least one course on how to run a parish financially. Yes, theology and the spiritual support of the faithful is most important for a priest, but it does not hurt to teach future priests some business skills.
There is merit in that. Alternatively, priests could be enhanced in their pastoral, sacramental and liturgical education as well as expansion of their parish time to devote to this things, and let laypersons/deacons fully trained in finance and administration handle those matters.
The issue is that this isn't quite consistent with our theology. The pastor is the juridic representative and administrator of the parish because we believe that orders confers a charism for ecclesiastical governance and headship -- and you're not really the leader of something if you're not in charge of the money. So that creates complexity.
Deterrence is not one of the principles of punishment in Catholic moral thinking. First we are to protect the public good, then we are to have "medicinal" concern for the soul of the offender. Deterrence uses the offender as a means to send a message to others that crime is not in one's self-interest; it does not treat the offender as an end with dignity as God's child. (If deterrence were a legitimate purpose of punishment, the Catholic arguments against the death penalty would be hard to sustain.) It seems that JD's editorializing on these issues has a theological blind spot: he tends to neglect the good of the offender as a value. In arguing for stiffer penalties, one has to establish that a lighter penalty puts the church in some sort of danger from the offender, or that the harsher penalty is more helpful to the reform of the offender. Stealing from the collection is not like pedophilia, in that it is not a long-term deep-seated compulsion. Offenders can be rehabilitated, presumably, and therefore could be law-abiding citizens going forward. So treating the two cases, stealing and pedophilia, similarly would be a mistake.
In the Church's own law, we speak of punishment as having several purposes. One is to restore justice, one is to reform the offender, but another is to uphold the public moral order and the rule of law by demonstrating consequences for immoral actions.
I don't think it is inconsistent with our theology to believe that deterrence is a legitimate end of sanction -- indeed, no less an authority than Avery Dulles taught that "rehabilitation, defense against the criminal, deterrence, and retribution" can be understood as the "unanimously delineated" ends of punishment in the Catholic tradition.
In fairness to you, JPII seemed to argue about the relative value of punishing for deterrence in contemporary society, and fair enough, such a question is option to prudential judgment.
In either case, I think you are wrong that stealing is not always a "long-term deep-seated compulsion."
Moreover, the demands of justice require for the sake of trust in the integrity of an institution that "reform" not necessitate eligibility for all offices for all people -- that is the reason why the code demands an "unimpaired reputation" for some offices, with not even conditional reference to the justice by which a person might have come to possess a bad reputation.
In either case, though, I agree that treating stealing like pedophilia would be a mistake -- it is a different matter, and should be treated for what it is. But I don't think that precludes collective moral agreements on the part of the bishops with regard to how the matter is handled.
I'm writing this on my phone, so I can't go into all the necessary distinctions. But the basic point is that you can't have 3-4 first principles of punishment. What happens when they come into conflict, as they do in this proposal, or in the Dallas Charter? In both cases, the "publicity" or teaching function of punishment is in conflict with the "medicinal" function of helping the offender. (We are assuming that the public order would be protected in both cases.) Typically, the teaching function is secondary, while the medicinal function is more important--there is rejoicing among the angels in heaven if the offender represents. If we prioritize the publicity function, it is what is known as virtue signaling. The problem with the Dallas Charter (which Cardinal Dulles opposed) is that it prevents the bishops from having the flexibility to choose medicinal punishments, in the name of virtue signalling. This proposal would do the same.
Fair enough. One observation is that when they come into conflict, you make a weighing exercise of prudential judgment about competing goods. Which is an element of juridic and moral reasoning.
The "medicinal" function of punishment is not limited to repentance. Temporal punishment may still be required even where an offender is repentant to address the temporal consequences of their sin. To reform dispositions, habits, and relationships. These go in hand with the "justice" function of punishment (restoring the social order) and "safety" function of punishment (preventing opportunities for repeat offenses until rehabilitative effects can be achieved or demonstrated).
I would also argue that if prioritizing repentance is allowing offenders to escape any meaningful punishment, then there is no punishment to actually carry out a "medicinal," "justice," or "safety" function. Or, if a light punishment did carry it out, then the faithful have no way of knowing that. They have nothing but the personal judgment of their bishop to go off of.
I do understand the concern about flexibility. But civil and canonical penal processes still have opportunities for mercy. Sentences can still be reduced for first-time offenses, good behavior, and a variety of other factors. And as part of a process that is more likely to ensure that the other functions of punishment are met.
241. Nor does this mean calling for forgiveness when it involves renouncing our own rights, confronting corrupt officials, criminals or those who would debase our dignity. We are called to love everyone, without exception; at the same time, loving an oppressor does not mean allowing him to keep oppressing us, or letting him think that what he does is acceptable. On the contrary, true love for an oppressor means seeking ways to make him cease his oppression; it means stripping him of a power that he does not know how to use, and that diminishes his own humanity and that of others. Forgiveness does not entail allowing oppressors to keep trampling on their own dignity and that of others, or letting criminals continue their wrongdoing. Those who suffer injustice have to defend strenuously their own rights and those of their family, precisely because they must preserve the dignity they have received as a loving gift from God. If a criminal has harmed me or a loved one, no one can forbid me from demanding justice and ensuring that this person – or anyone else – will not harm me, or others, again. This is entirely just; forgiveness does not forbid it but actually demands it.
GrantEd, this paragraph from Fratelli Tutti is mostly fine, but contains more moral muddle from Pope Francis.
In the first place I cannot be sure that no one will harm me in future, short of being accompanied by numerous bodyguards wherever I go. And even a President's massive security entourage cannot guarantee permanent safety.
In the second place, the only way to guarantee that a criminal will never commit another crime is to execute him asap. And Pope Francis has flatly ruled out the death penalty.
You could lock him up for life in a maximum security prison. But he could still harm staff and other prisoners, like one British prisoner who killed three prisoners. He is now in a "Silence of the Lambs" isolation unit. And Pope Francis has also ruled out life imprisonment.
I guess you could use a chemical cosh treatment to ensure that he is permanently doped into non violence. But I would bet that Pope Francis will also oppose that on the grounds of infinite human dignity or something....
Pope Francis often fails to speak as clearly as I would like on moral issues, and I am concerned that it leaves too much room for people of bad faith or ignorance to twist his statements in ways that conflict with Church teaching.
However, I disagree that this passage contains a “moral muddle.” It seems like you are only wrestling with how to apply general moral principles in particular circumstances.
"In arguing for stiffer penalties, one has to establish that a lighter penalty puts the church in some sort of danger from the offender, or that the harsher penalty is more helpful to the reform of the offender."
I will let JD correct me if I am wrong, but it did not seem he was calling for *stiffer* penalties for financial crimes. It seemed he was objecting to a widespread failure to pursue penalties that already exist for those crimes in civil or canon law. If so, then the burden is actually reversed: it is the dioceses who are arguing for *lighter* penalties. So they need to establish that a lighter penalty in a given case is more consistent with moral principles than what the law demands.
Modulating publicity to avoid “over-punishing” an offender is not an act of mercy—it’s a distortion of justice. If punishment is to be medicinal, it must be tailored to the offender’s genuine reform, not simply managed for optics. When the teaching function of punishment is sidelined in favor of protecting reputations, punishment loses its true corrective purpose and becomes little more than public relations. This exact dynamic unfolded in the sex abuse crisis, where the focus shifted from holding perpetrators fully accountable to safeguarding institutional image. In doing so, the opportunity for a real, transformative response was compromised, leaving victims further marginalized and justice unfulfilled.
To get an idea of the problem, you need a good faith study of the past problems, a "John Jay" study for parish theft issues. They need to study not only why are priests embezzling money or scamming parishioners, but how are they doing so?
The study should also include thefts by lay people too. This may be as big a problem or even bigger considering the increasing involvement of lay people in important parish administrative functions.
Finally, the Church should start to talk about gambling. Gambling is one of those problems, like fentanyl deaths, which is destroying people left and right but which is totally off the radar. I was at a parish years ago where a nice little old lady from the pews stole hundreds of thousands to support her crippling addiction to the local Indian casino.
Another thought: maybe priests should be paid a bit more. Some important costs like owning a personal car have gone up a lot compared to the 1990s or whenever the current pay scale went into effect. I know priests get "don't worry about it, Father" freebies, but still: it's not wrong to pay them so their needs are met.
Perhaps we need a Dallas charter for$$. Since former Cardinal McCarrickwas selected to drive the Dallas charter because he knew so much about sexual perversion, maybe we can get a bishop or Cardina Becciu (Pillar reader) who has stolen millions from the church to drive that project.
A thoughtful post -- thanks, JD. I would add that it's hard to overstate the connection between the ongoing mishandling of the sexual abuse crisis (and yes, it's still a crisis, with the continuing unaccountability and elevation of McCarrick's biggest, long-term cronies/enablers/beneficiaries/protectors to the cardinalate, not to mention such papal scandals as those involving Rupnik and Zanchetta) and the laxness of standards/enforcement in the financial realm. If I were a priest or a parish employee tempted to steal, how hard do you think it would be for me to rationalize my pathetic resort to self-gratification, in light of the far greater evils and cover-ups perpetrated and tolerated with respect to grave sexual crimes committed by the clergy?
Perhaps a better question: is a DOGE-style audit necessary -- one that provides transparency (and accountability) on how money is actually spent at parishes, dioceses, parish schools? And some of this goes beyond the traditional financial disclosures needed for nonprofit status. As a military family, we've been part of many parishes across the country -- sometimes the waste, fraud and abuse involves non-financial parish resources (like all the materials for children's religious education through Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, lovingly handmade over many years by parishioners, being tossed into the garbage by parish staff or because a new priest didn't like the program -- without any notice to the parishioners. This happened in at *least* five parishes that I know of.) Or the parish who had a new hall paid off in advance, before building, when their bishop (a cardinal known for his financial malfeasance) showed up, took a large portion of the money meant for the hall, and used it for his own purposes. Now the hall with basketball court, rooms for Bible studies, etc. is built, but the parishioners can't use it during the week because the parish is paying the mortgage on it by renting it to a daycare -- and due to "safe practice" policies, only employees of the daycare or the parish school can enter it during weekdays. Homeschooling families are largely barred (which is a large portion of the parish, many of whom donated to build the hall). Or how about school fundraisers that are purportedly to help build a parish school -- and end up being used to pay off the debt for a fancy statue outside the parish church instead? I'm sure the list of examples is endless. I've suggested to my husband we find a way to use blockchain technology to make sure our tithe goes where we want it to go, and the diocese/parish staff tell us it's going... rather than being sneakily used on all sorts of pet projects the parish pastor or the bishop has in mind.
That is quite a story -- thanks for recounting it here. I have one suggestion: keep your donations as "close to home" as possible, which means the parish as opposed to the diocese (and never, EVER the USCCB or Vatican projects like Peter's Pence). The nearer the recipient of your donations, the easier it is to hold that entity accountable. This is a good way to put the principle of subsidiarity into practice. In my personal experience, it doesn't always work perfectly, but it's a good rule of thumb. And it encourages me to donate more to my parish than I would have otherwise, because I'm overall confident that the money is going where it's supposed to go and doing what it's supposed to do.
I do the opposite. There is almost no ability for the lay faithful to hold our parish accountable. The laity have practically no rights as to parish finances. Admittedly, it is more likely on the parish level to hear rumors and see oddities, but any formal or absolute rights are lacking. And I find it unpleasant that my major route to accountability is responding to rumors and gossip rather than facts presented to me.
I'm a benefactor of larger groups such as the Catholic Near East Welfare Association, Xavier University in Louisiana, and a private Catholic foundation. Because they do not come under the church's 'corporation sole' and they receive corporate and other grants, they are transparent, audited, and subject to disclosure standards.
It's not a question of "rights" and "rumors." Try joining the parish council if you're that concerned about accountability in your parish.
I, too, consider it extremely important to donate to soundly run Catholic charitable organizations/schools that are transparent about finances. The one doesn't preclude the other.
I'm not clear what else there is besides rights and rumors. I've served on the parish council at the appointment of the pastor. I'm not currently a member. And I don't think a concern about accountability from the laity should be dismissed.
My great achievement as a parish council member was that, without hurting any feelings and doing it gradually enough it was almost unnoticed, I used my position as Secretary to move it from a monthly salon with the pastor, to an actual meeting, with recorded minutes, an agenda, motions and votes. In hindsight, it seems almost absurd to me this took any careful orchestration rather than being just a natural, normative and expected practice.
Anyway, I agree with your point we should give to soundly run Catholic charitable organizations/schools including parishes. I just don't find that there is more transparency about finances at the parish level than among some larger organizations.
Like any organization where a lot of cash is handled on a weekly basis with collections, we have found in our own diocese there are going to be problems unless there are two things in the parish or school: an active and trained finance council (as mandated by canon law) that has at least quarterly access to the books, and strong controls in place when counting and deposit. It's not just a priest problem. I remember a local case of one lady who stuffed hundreds in her bra each week while counting. The pastor caught her using a hidden camera. It was estimated was that she stole about 300k over 10 years of counting. We also had two religious sisters that stole millions from their school. They had new expensive cars and made regular trips to Vegas to "see the shows". Audits are important, but they usually only uncover problems after the fact. As the article points out, there seems to be a tendency to forgive and forget by local bishops. I think in both cases, the diocese went light on these crimes and let them walk after partially paying back the funds. In any event, theft affects retail, industry, military and government, Protestant congregations, Jewish temples, and probably sadly also happens at the diocesan level too by bishops who redirect funds for certain "projects". Like sex abuse, it is a human problem, not just a Catholic problem.
Excellent comment, Scotius. As noted in a separate comment, I yet again recommend Michael Ryan's 2005 article on thieving from the collection. He makes a few simple recommendations to protect collections. These precautions would probably stop 90% of fraud, though the crooks would probably become more ingenious. Ryan shrewdly notes that many bishops implicitly condone fraud to keep their priests happy.
love the lady who just stuffed the cash into her bra. Sometimes the simplest and crudest methods work best for the longest time. It is when you get too elaborate and clever that you might trip up.
Many wallets have been sealed shut due to scandal. If there were a standard that shows a parish, catholic charity, order, diocese, follow a set of open, transparent, trust-worthy,audit standard with basic, accessible quarterly reports - many wallets, including mine, would open much wider.
Would be wise to have a “banking 101” course for anyone handling money in a parish/diocese, including basic principles like the necessity of division of authority.
I appreciate your point and yes there is wisdom in that, but I think rather than giving the pastor and some of his selected volunteers 'banking 101', most of our parishes have members with college or even advanced degrees in these matters or substantial professional experience. We could do much better.
Thanks so much JD for a much needed article. At the risk of killing you and many readers with boredom, I yet again recommend Michael Ryan's 2005 article on thieving from collections. The thefts went back long before Dallas 2002.
The thefts were obviously clergy, who usually had the greatest opportunity. But totally "trusted' lay people who had been counting the collection for years had often got away with hefty thieving for years.
Yes, familiar names like Bishop Gregory, late of Washington DC, occur again before 2002. Showing about as much enthusiasm for combating mass theft as they have for fighting mass abuse. Of course, the old pelvic urges were a motive for many priests. When you have to pay for mistresses, rent boys, hookers, hard core porn etc, an honest priest's income does not cover it.
We do not seem to have such thefts in the UK. This is definitely not due to any excess of sanctity. It is just that there is less money to steal. A British priest would be hard put to steal enough to buy a small apartment. Unlike the priest in Lansing MI diocese who stole at least 5 million bucks to build a eight bedroom mansion.
I’m gonna beat my favorite drum here: if we continue to treat (and therefore TRAIN) priests like chaplains rather than pastors, mere spiritual supporters rather than true governors, financial problems of all sorts will continue.
In my view, while theft is obviously an issue, it seems far less common than pastors who just poorly manage their parishes into financial straits, whether directly or indirectly.
Many pastors let their campuses fall into ruin over the course of a 12 year pastorate (the unfortunate case of a parish at which I was vicar which I suspect will end up costing the parish large sums it likely wouldn’t have otherwise needed to spend!). Many pastors are reluctant to increase tuition in their parish schools, many pastors are so hands off due to a lack of knowledge or desire to lead that the parish’s priorities are out of whack which also causes expensive problems (i.e. school is doing great and the lawn looks nice but the church should have been renovated 20 years ago!). And if you’ve spent five minutes in a parish you know “deferred maintenance is future debt”.
Any attempts by the bishops in today’s conference will likely take a large chunk out of the pastor’s role and relegate it exclusively to diocesan control systems which almost never have any evangelical imagination, pastoral sense, or spiritual insight. Not to mention that the laity often have substantially less trust in their diocese and bishop than in their parish and priests. This would be a net negative.
I would suggest that we instead force seminaries to train future priests to be pastors who understand the working of accounting, finance, audits, control systems, etc. Put in place common sense controls, better establish policy around the advisory finance councils, and then let the pastors FORM those councils with that aforementioned imagination, sense, and insight. Make the pastors more effective governors and we solve basically every problem. Here’s my favorite drum again: proper governance begets positive evangelical outcomes, every single time.
Training more effective pastors makes for more peaceful relations and less conflict with dioceses, thus building trust between priest and bishop. Training more effective pastors makes for better relations with lay professionals we rely upon for counsel, advice, and oversight. Training more effective pastors makes for more opportunities to sanctify and uplift the difficult work of management and stewardship with clergy and laity alike.
Better parishes, more confident laity, strong leaders. Better outcomes. Every time.
There is much merit in that. My question is what to do until such a goal is realized. I once gave $5k/yr. to my parish
Following a scandal, I stopped all giving and changed my will. If there is a new pastor before the goals you write about are realized, my intention is to give him a $5k line of credit with me. He can call me, make a pitch and I'll fund it or not. But no more Sunday collection baskets.
As members of the Mystical Body of Christ, we, the laity, have come to expect much - very much - from members of the clergy. And well we should. They alone have had the ultimate and awesome power to convert mere bread and wine to the body and blood of Our Sacred Lord, Jesus Christ. If we now find ourselves looking for ways and reasons to excuse their behavior regarding money, sexual peccadillos, petty local recriminations, then we have all lost our way, and will find it incredibly hard to get back on track. Too much discussion and debate on Church matters begins to sound like political debate, either in the U.S. or Europe. That sort of thing is not only irrelevant, but dangerous. There is RIGHT and there is WRONG. That's not up for debate. If we are ordaining young men based upon anything beyond their worthiness to Consecrate the Host and Wine, then we are making calamitous errors. Bring us men of faith, of holiness, of Godliness, and of dignity, and allow the laity to help - not in promulgating doctrine, or Synodizing our faith, but in handling the temporal affairs at the parish and diocese level. And finally, pray. Pray for true leadership inspired by the Holy Spirit, and not by the goals and aspirations of the next fundraiser.
There is too much of a patchwork of "guidelines" when it comes to finances. Working in a parish, we have a set of guidelines from the Diocese but as a helpful set of suggestions, with the exception of the Finance Committee, the rest could be done away with by pastoral fiat as they are solely maintained by the pastor's discretion and little could be done. A Dallas Charter of sorts would be quite helpful to bring about some form of regularity.
We need to seriously consider Trusteeism.
Protestants also have a money theft problem.
Yes, though Trusteeism is not alien to the Catholic Church. But generally, the more transparency, sunlight, and additional eyes, there are more barriers to theft.
This priest in Iowa seems to look guilty. But even setting that aside, where else would you take a man from a foreign country, foreign legal, banking and accounting systems, and place him with no local supervision over (I'm guessing) a half million dollar revenue and multi-million dollars in assets? A man whose academic training is in Divinity. Forget theft, what about basic competency?
It's not just priests who have been stealing from the parishes, as The Pillar itself has reported, but also volunteers and staff.
Many of the scandals have been isolated thus far, but I could see all sorts of these issues pop up, if someone were to shine a light more systematically.
I have seen new pastors come in who wanted to take a look at how money was being spent and suddenly they were confronted with animosity from parish staff, like they wanted to hide something. I would venture that parish staff get away with a lot of things, and it may not be just outright stealing, but also getting paid and not doing any work or using people they know for catering or work needed to fix the church where the parish is charged more than it should and friends or family of parish employees benefit. I would audit the employment practices at parishes as I suspect the money wasted at many is a greater problem than priests stealing money. Many priests know little about finances and can get fooled by clever staff and volunteers.
I would agree. Priests generally know little about finances. It is simply asking for trouble putting them in charge of parish finances. Your suggestion of an audit is spot on. Separate from the Parish Finance Committee, there could be an audit committee made up of competent men and women of the parish following GAAP.
in many-but-not-all cases, dioceses themselves do this, which is how many of the ones being caught have been caught.
Which is good. It would be better if the lay faithful of the parish had a right to see the audits. And there still remains the issue of competency of the pastor. Theft is bad but so is mismanagement.
But the dioceses are often the problem. They often have their own prefered businesses which parishes are obligated to work with. For example, I know a pastor who needed an environmental inspector and the diocese told him to hire a guy who charged close to $2000. The priest found an inspector himself online who had equal qualifications but charged the parish a few hundred dollars instead. I have seen a pastor fall into depression because the diocese promoted a company which charged him over a million dollars for renovating his church. He finally let his associate pastor take over who bypassed the diocese and found contractors who did the job for $500,000.
Personally, if (God forbid) I get made a pastor, my first request of my bishop would be permission to have an outside firm audit the books. As I see it, this benefits everyone.
As the new pastor, I would know what the financial situation is that I just inherited.
For the diocese, it would be a clear and independent review of the books.
For the parish, it would allow them to evaluate, year over year, my own competency as a financial steward of the parish's resources.
Fortunately, my diocese has a lot more men champing at the bit to be pastors than parishes to accommodate them, so maybe I can dodge that bullet. My only fear is that I actually have two masters' degrees: one in Divinity and one in Finance. :(
I actually think every seminary should have at least one course on how to run a parish financially. Yes, theology and the spiritual support of the faithful is most important for a priest, but it does not hurt to teach future priests some business skills.
I believe it should be at least a semester of classes towards the end of ones seminary tour and possibly a practicum.
One class isn't going to sink in with a sea of theology courses.
There is merit in that. Alternatively, priests could be enhanced in their pastoral, sacramental and liturgical education as well as expansion of their parish time to devote to this things, and let laypersons/deacons fully trained in finance and administration handle those matters.
The issue is that this isn't quite consistent with our theology. The pastor is the juridic representative and administrator of the parish because we believe that orders confers a charism for ecclesiastical governance and headship -- and you're not really the leader of something if you're not in charge of the money. So that creates complexity.
There is a program:
https://catholiciu.edu/ecclesial-administration-and-management/
Deterrence is not one of the principles of punishment in Catholic moral thinking. First we are to protect the public good, then we are to have "medicinal" concern for the soul of the offender. Deterrence uses the offender as a means to send a message to others that crime is not in one's self-interest; it does not treat the offender as an end with dignity as God's child. (If deterrence were a legitimate purpose of punishment, the Catholic arguments against the death penalty would be hard to sustain.) It seems that JD's editorializing on these issues has a theological blind spot: he tends to neglect the good of the offender as a value. In arguing for stiffer penalties, one has to establish that a lighter penalty puts the church in some sort of danger from the offender, or that the harsher penalty is more helpful to the reform of the offender. Stealing from the collection is not like pedophilia, in that it is not a long-term deep-seated compulsion. Offenders can be rehabilitated, presumably, and therefore could be law-abiding citizens going forward. So treating the two cases, stealing and pedophilia, similarly would be a mistake.
Father,
In the Church's own law, we speak of punishment as having several purposes. One is to restore justice, one is to reform the offender, but another is to uphold the public moral order and the rule of law by demonstrating consequences for immoral actions.
I don't think it is inconsistent with our theology to believe that deterrence is a legitimate end of sanction -- indeed, no less an authority than Avery Dulles taught that "rehabilitation, defense against the criminal, deterrence, and retribution" can be understood as the "unanimously delineated" ends of punishment in the Catholic tradition.
In fairness to you, JPII seemed to argue about the relative value of punishing for deterrence in contemporary society, and fair enough, such a question is option to prudential judgment.
In either case, I think you are wrong that stealing is not always a "long-term deep-seated compulsion."
Moreover, the demands of justice require for the sake of trust in the integrity of an institution that "reform" not necessitate eligibility for all offices for all people -- that is the reason why the code demands an "unimpaired reputation" for some offices, with not even conditional reference to the justice by which a person might have come to possess a bad reputation.
In either case, though, I agree that treating stealing like pedophilia would be a mistake -- it is a different matter, and should be treated for what it is. But I don't think that precludes collective moral agreements on the part of the bishops with regard to how the matter is handled.
I'm writing this on my phone, so I can't go into all the necessary distinctions. But the basic point is that you can't have 3-4 first principles of punishment. What happens when they come into conflict, as they do in this proposal, or in the Dallas Charter? In both cases, the "publicity" or teaching function of punishment is in conflict with the "medicinal" function of helping the offender. (We are assuming that the public order would be protected in both cases.) Typically, the teaching function is secondary, while the medicinal function is more important--there is rejoicing among the angels in heaven if the offender represents. If we prioritize the publicity function, it is what is known as virtue signaling. The problem with the Dallas Charter (which Cardinal Dulles opposed) is that it prevents the bishops from having the flexibility to choose medicinal punishments, in the name of virtue signalling. This proposal would do the same.
Fair enough. One observation is that when they come into conflict, you make a weighing exercise of prudential judgment about competing goods. Which is an element of juridic and moral reasoning.
The "medicinal" function of punishment is not limited to repentance. Temporal punishment may still be required even where an offender is repentant to address the temporal consequences of their sin. To reform dispositions, habits, and relationships. These go in hand with the "justice" function of punishment (restoring the social order) and "safety" function of punishment (preventing opportunities for repeat offenses until rehabilitative effects can be achieved or demonstrated).
I would also argue that if prioritizing repentance is allowing offenders to escape any meaningful punishment, then there is no punishment to actually carry out a "medicinal," "justice," or "safety" function. Or, if a light punishment did carry it out, then the faithful have no way of knowing that. They have nothing but the personal judgment of their bishop to go off of.
I do understand the concern about flexibility. But civil and canonical penal processes still have opportunities for mercy. Sentences can still be reduced for first-time offenses, good behavior, and a variety of other factors. And as part of a process that is more likely to ensure that the other functions of punishment are met.
From Fratelli Tutti:
241. Nor does this mean calling for forgiveness when it involves renouncing our own rights, confronting corrupt officials, criminals or those who would debase our dignity. We are called to love everyone, without exception; at the same time, loving an oppressor does not mean allowing him to keep oppressing us, or letting him think that what he does is acceptable. On the contrary, true love for an oppressor means seeking ways to make him cease his oppression; it means stripping him of a power that he does not know how to use, and that diminishes his own humanity and that of others. Forgiveness does not entail allowing oppressors to keep trampling on their own dignity and that of others, or letting criminals continue their wrongdoing. Those who suffer injustice have to defend strenuously their own rights and those of their family, precisely because they must preserve the dignity they have received as a loving gift from God. If a criminal has harmed me or a loved one, no one can forbid me from demanding justice and ensuring that this person – or anyone else – will not harm me, or others, again. This is entirely just; forgiveness does not forbid it but actually demands it.
GrantEd, this paragraph from Fratelli Tutti is mostly fine, but contains more moral muddle from Pope Francis.
In the first place I cannot be sure that no one will harm me in future, short of being accompanied by numerous bodyguards wherever I go. And even a President's massive security entourage cannot guarantee permanent safety.
In the second place, the only way to guarantee that a criminal will never commit another crime is to execute him asap. And Pope Francis has flatly ruled out the death penalty.
You could lock him up for life in a maximum security prison. But he could still harm staff and other prisoners, like one British prisoner who killed three prisoners. He is now in a "Silence of the Lambs" isolation unit. And Pope Francis has also ruled out life imprisonment.
I guess you could use a chemical cosh treatment to ensure that he is permanently doped into non violence. But I would bet that Pope Francis will also oppose that on the grounds of infinite human dignity or something....
Pope Francis often fails to speak as clearly as I would like on moral issues, and I am concerned that it leaves too much room for people of bad faith or ignorance to twist his statements in ways that conflict with Church teaching.
However, I disagree that this passage contains a “moral muddle.” It seems like you are only wrestling with how to apply general moral principles in particular circumstances.
"In arguing for stiffer penalties, one has to establish that a lighter penalty puts the church in some sort of danger from the offender, or that the harsher penalty is more helpful to the reform of the offender."
I will let JD correct me if I am wrong, but it did not seem he was calling for *stiffer* penalties for financial crimes. It seemed he was objecting to a widespread failure to pursue penalties that already exist for those crimes in civil or canon law. If so, then the burden is actually reversed: it is the dioceses who are arguing for *lighter* penalties. So they need to establish that a lighter penalty in a given case is more consistent with moral principles than what the law demands.
Modulating publicity to avoid “over-punishing” an offender is not an act of mercy—it’s a distortion of justice. If punishment is to be medicinal, it must be tailored to the offender’s genuine reform, not simply managed for optics. When the teaching function of punishment is sidelined in favor of protecting reputations, punishment loses its true corrective purpose and becomes little more than public relations. This exact dynamic unfolded in the sex abuse crisis, where the focus shifted from holding perpetrators fully accountable to safeguarding institutional image. In doing so, the opportunity for a real, transformative response was compromised, leaving victims further marginalized and justice unfulfilled.
There are people who are kleptomaniacs. So it is possible that one's stealing can be due to a deep-seated compulsion.
To get an idea of the problem, you need a good faith study of the past problems, a "John Jay" study for parish theft issues. They need to study not only why are priests embezzling money or scamming parishioners, but how are they doing so?
The study should also include thefts by lay people too. This may be as big a problem or even bigger considering the increasing involvement of lay people in important parish administrative functions.
Finally, the Church should start to talk about gambling. Gambling is one of those problems, like fentanyl deaths, which is destroying people left and right but which is totally off the radar. I was at a parish years ago where a nice little old lady from the pews stole hundreds of thousands to support her crippling addiction to the local Indian casino.
Here's a look into the whys, at least many of them:
https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/why-priests-steal-researchers-look-to-fraud-triangle-in-parish-life
Another thought: maybe priests should be paid a bit more. Some important costs like owning a personal car have gone up a lot compared to the 1990s or whenever the current pay scale went into effect. I know priests get "don't worry about it, Father" freebies, but still: it's not wrong to pay them so their needs are met.
Another issue to look at is whether bingo fundraisers create or enable gambling habits.
Yeah, a little gambling is one thing, but we're not dealing with the odd poker night among friends, in too many cases.
Perhaps we need a Dallas charter for$$. Since former Cardinal McCarrickwas selected to drive the Dallas charter because he knew so much about sexual perversion, maybe we can get a bishop or Cardina Becciu (Pillar reader) who has stolen millions from the church to drive that project.
A thoughtful post -- thanks, JD. I would add that it's hard to overstate the connection between the ongoing mishandling of the sexual abuse crisis (and yes, it's still a crisis, with the continuing unaccountability and elevation of McCarrick's biggest, long-term cronies/enablers/beneficiaries/protectors to the cardinalate, not to mention such papal scandals as those involving Rupnik and Zanchetta) and the laxness of standards/enforcement in the financial realm. If I were a priest or a parish employee tempted to steal, how hard do you think it would be for me to rationalize my pathetic resort to self-gratification, in light of the far greater evils and cover-ups perpetrated and tolerated with respect to grave sexual crimes committed by the clergy?
Yup.
Perhaps a better question: is a DOGE-style audit necessary -- one that provides transparency (and accountability) on how money is actually spent at parishes, dioceses, parish schools? And some of this goes beyond the traditional financial disclosures needed for nonprofit status. As a military family, we've been part of many parishes across the country -- sometimes the waste, fraud and abuse involves non-financial parish resources (like all the materials for children's religious education through Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, lovingly handmade over many years by parishioners, being tossed into the garbage by parish staff or because a new priest didn't like the program -- without any notice to the parishioners. This happened in at *least* five parishes that I know of.) Or the parish who had a new hall paid off in advance, before building, when their bishop (a cardinal known for his financial malfeasance) showed up, took a large portion of the money meant for the hall, and used it for his own purposes. Now the hall with basketball court, rooms for Bible studies, etc. is built, but the parishioners can't use it during the week because the parish is paying the mortgage on it by renting it to a daycare -- and due to "safe practice" policies, only employees of the daycare or the parish school can enter it during weekdays. Homeschooling families are largely barred (which is a large portion of the parish, many of whom donated to build the hall). Or how about school fundraisers that are purportedly to help build a parish school -- and end up being used to pay off the debt for a fancy statue outside the parish church instead? I'm sure the list of examples is endless. I've suggested to my husband we find a way to use blockchain technology to make sure our tithe goes where we want it to go, and the diocese/parish staff tell us it's going... rather than being sneakily used on all sorts of pet projects the parish pastor or the bishop has in mind.
That is quite a story -- thanks for recounting it here. I have one suggestion: keep your donations as "close to home" as possible, which means the parish as opposed to the diocese (and never, EVER the USCCB or Vatican projects like Peter's Pence). The nearer the recipient of your donations, the easier it is to hold that entity accountable. This is a good way to put the principle of subsidiarity into practice. In my personal experience, it doesn't always work perfectly, but it's a good rule of thumb. And it encourages me to donate more to my parish than I would have otherwise, because I'm overall confident that the money is going where it's supposed to go and doing what it's supposed to do.
I do the opposite. There is almost no ability for the lay faithful to hold our parish accountable. The laity have practically no rights as to parish finances. Admittedly, it is more likely on the parish level to hear rumors and see oddities, but any formal or absolute rights are lacking. And I find it unpleasant that my major route to accountability is responding to rumors and gossip rather than facts presented to me.
I'm a benefactor of larger groups such as the Catholic Near East Welfare Association, Xavier University in Louisiana, and a private Catholic foundation. Because they do not come under the church's 'corporation sole' and they receive corporate and other grants, they are transparent, audited, and subject to disclosure standards.
It's not a question of "rights" and "rumors." Try joining the parish council if you're that concerned about accountability in your parish.
I, too, consider it extremely important to donate to soundly run Catholic charitable organizations/schools that are transparent about finances. The one doesn't preclude the other.
I'm not clear what else there is besides rights and rumors. I've served on the parish council at the appointment of the pastor. I'm not currently a member. And I don't think a concern about accountability from the laity should be dismissed.
My great achievement as a parish council member was that, without hurting any feelings and doing it gradually enough it was almost unnoticed, I used my position as Secretary to move it from a monthly salon with the pastor, to an actual meeting, with recorded minutes, an agenda, motions and votes. In hindsight, it seems almost absurd to me this took any careful orchestration rather than being just a natural, normative and expected practice.
Anyway, I agree with your point we should give to soundly run Catholic charitable organizations/schools including parishes. I just don't find that there is more transparency about finances at the parish level than among some larger organizations.
Like any organization where a lot of cash is handled on a weekly basis with collections, we have found in our own diocese there are going to be problems unless there are two things in the parish or school: an active and trained finance council (as mandated by canon law) that has at least quarterly access to the books, and strong controls in place when counting and deposit. It's not just a priest problem. I remember a local case of one lady who stuffed hundreds in her bra each week while counting. The pastor caught her using a hidden camera. It was estimated was that she stole about 300k over 10 years of counting. We also had two religious sisters that stole millions from their school. They had new expensive cars and made regular trips to Vegas to "see the shows". Audits are important, but they usually only uncover problems after the fact. As the article points out, there seems to be a tendency to forgive and forget by local bishops. I think in both cases, the diocese went light on these crimes and let them walk after partially paying back the funds. In any event, theft affects retail, industry, military and government, Protestant congregations, Jewish temples, and probably sadly also happens at the diocesan level too by bishops who redirect funds for certain "projects". Like sex abuse, it is a human problem, not just a Catholic problem.
Excellent comment, Scotius. As noted in a separate comment, I yet again recommend Michael Ryan's 2005 article on thieving from the collection. He makes a few simple recommendations to protect collections. These precautions would probably stop 90% of fraud, though the crooks would probably become more ingenious. Ryan shrewdly notes that many bishops implicitly condone fraud to keep their priests happy.
love the lady who just stuffed the cash into her bra. Sometimes the simplest and crudest methods work best for the longest time. It is when you get too elaborate and clever that you might trip up.
https://www.bishop-accountability.org/news2005_01_06/2005_06_17_Ryan_TheSecond.htm
Many wallets have been sealed shut due to scandal. If there were a standard that shows a parish, catholic charity, order, diocese, follow a set of open, transparent, trust-worthy,audit standard with basic, accessible quarterly reports - many wallets, including mine, would open much wider.
Would be wise to have a “banking 101” course for anyone handling money in a parish/diocese, including basic principles like the necessity of division of authority.
I appreciate your point and yes there is wisdom in that, but I think rather than giving the pastor and some of his selected volunteers 'banking 101', most of our parishes have members with college or even advanced degrees in these matters or substantial professional experience. We could do much better.
Thanks so much JD for a much needed article. At the risk of killing you and many readers with boredom, I yet again recommend Michael Ryan's 2005 article on thieving from collections. The thefts went back long before Dallas 2002.
https://www.bishop-accountability.org/news2005_01_06/2005_06_17_Ryan_TheSecond.htm
The thefts were obviously clergy, who usually had the greatest opportunity. But totally "trusted' lay people who had been counting the collection for years had often got away with hefty thieving for years.
Yes, familiar names like Bishop Gregory, late of Washington DC, occur again before 2002. Showing about as much enthusiasm for combating mass theft as they have for fighting mass abuse. Of course, the old pelvic urges were a motive for many priests. When you have to pay for mistresses, rent boys, hookers, hard core porn etc, an honest priest's income does not cover it.
We do not seem to have such thefts in the UK. This is definitely not due to any excess of sanctity. It is just that there is less money to steal. A British priest would be hard put to steal enough to buy a small apartment. Unlike the priest in Lansing MI diocese who stole at least 5 million bucks to build a eight bedroom mansion.
DOGE needed: Dicastery Of Government Efficiency. ;-)
To help episcopal conferences.
Another good take by the Pillar, JD.
I’m gonna beat my favorite drum here: if we continue to treat (and therefore TRAIN) priests like chaplains rather than pastors, mere spiritual supporters rather than true governors, financial problems of all sorts will continue.
In my view, while theft is obviously an issue, it seems far less common than pastors who just poorly manage their parishes into financial straits, whether directly or indirectly.
Many pastors let their campuses fall into ruin over the course of a 12 year pastorate (the unfortunate case of a parish at which I was vicar which I suspect will end up costing the parish large sums it likely wouldn’t have otherwise needed to spend!). Many pastors are reluctant to increase tuition in their parish schools, many pastors are so hands off due to a lack of knowledge or desire to lead that the parish’s priorities are out of whack which also causes expensive problems (i.e. school is doing great and the lawn looks nice but the church should have been renovated 20 years ago!). And if you’ve spent five minutes in a parish you know “deferred maintenance is future debt”.
Any attempts by the bishops in today’s conference will likely take a large chunk out of the pastor’s role and relegate it exclusively to diocesan control systems which almost never have any evangelical imagination, pastoral sense, or spiritual insight. Not to mention that the laity often have substantially less trust in their diocese and bishop than in their parish and priests. This would be a net negative.
I would suggest that we instead force seminaries to train future priests to be pastors who understand the working of accounting, finance, audits, control systems, etc. Put in place common sense controls, better establish policy around the advisory finance councils, and then let the pastors FORM those councils with that aforementioned imagination, sense, and insight. Make the pastors more effective governors and we solve basically every problem. Here’s my favorite drum again: proper governance begets positive evangelical outcomes, every single time.
Training more effective pastors makes for more peaceful relations and less conflict with dioceses, thus building trust between priest and bishop. Training more effective pastors makes for better relations with lay professionals we rely upon for counsel, advice, and oversight. Training more effective pastors makes for more opportunities to sanctify and uplift the difficult work of management and stewardship with clergy and laity alike.
Better parishes, more confident laity, strong leaders. Better outcomes. Every time.
There is much merit in that. My question is what to do until such a goal is realized. I once gave $5k/yr. to my parish
Following a scandal, I stopped all giving and changed my will. If there is a new pastor before the goals you write about are realized, my intention is to give him a $5k line of credit with me. He can call me, make a pitch and I'll fund it or not. But no more Sunday collection baskets.
As members of the Mystical Body of Christ, we, the laity, have come to expect much - very much - from members of the clergy. And well we should. They alone have had the ultimate and awesome power to convert mere bread and wine to the body and blood of Our Sacred Lord, Jesus Christ. If we now find ourselves looking for ways and reasons to excuse their behavior regarding money, sexual peccadillos, petty local recriminations, then we have all lost our way, and will find it incredibly hard to get back on track. Too much discussion and debate on Church matters begins to sound like political debate, either in the U.S. or Europe. That sort of thing is not only irrelevant, but dangerous. There is RIGHT and there is WRONG. That's not up for debate. If we are ordaining young men based upon anything beyond their worthiness to Consecrate the Host and Wine, then we are making calamitous errors. Bring us men of faith, of holiness, of Godliness, and of dignity, and allow the laity to help - not in promulgating doctrine, or Synodizing our faith, but in handling the temporal affairs at the parish and diocese level. And finally, pray. Pray for true leadership inspired by the Holy Spirit, and not by the goals and aspirations of the next fundraiser.
There is too much of a patchwork of "guidelines" when it comes to finances. Working in a parish, we have a set of guidelines from the Diocese but as a helpful set of suggestions, with the exception of the Finance Committee, the rest could be done away with by pastoral fiat as they are solely maintained by the pastor's discretion and little could be done. A Dallas Charter of sorts would be quite helpful to bring about some form of regularity.