Several Washington priests say the archdiocesan CFO claimed the extent of the deficit had been previously obscured by “selective presentation” of finances
I agree with your third paragraph but Ed and JD have mentioned on the pod the archdiocese does an excellent job ignoring questions in their comms dept, and it has been somewhat effective post McCarrick fallout to just keep ignoring questions until the news cycle turns over. Gregory said “I will always tell you the truth” but didn’t specify how often he would keep his mouth shut
The upper brass still inexplicably lives in the era of "don't air your dirty laundry, just give the people vague statements and they'll stop asking questions".
Having spent a career analyzing financial statements, I know that there are ways to be correct and transparent, and ways to be correct and obfuscate. Given the 10 years this may have been going on, Wuerl and Gregory have a lot to answer for.
So what do I do as a parishioner of a reasonably prosperous ADW parish? I have been intentionally giving smaller weekly gifts (subject to the ADW tax) to my parish and reasonably generous Easter and Christmas offerings (not subject to the ADW tax). I do this intentionally because I trust the pastor of my parish and I do not trust the Cardinal. I feel I have a right not to give money to a guy who in his last Diocese built himself a 6000 square foot house with diocesan funds (yes I know they sold it after he got caught). But on the other hand I believe I have read it is a mortal sin not to support my parish. Plus I want to support my Parish, I just don't want my money squandered by ADW.
I would love to see a canon lawyer respond to this — is it a mortal sin not to tithe to your parish? I don’t think I had heard that before.
In your shoes, I might consider other ways of sharing my resources with the parish — my time, talent, or service, just maybe not money, or very little money.
I am already in charge of one ministry and volunteer for two others, so I doubt that I could increase volunteering that much. But I am thinking about decreasing my cash contributions and paying for the supplies for my ministry rather than making cash contributions and then submitting an expense voucher. Of course, that only works if ADW doesn't figure out a way to go after in kind contributions.
As a heads-up, the ADW tax is about 5%. If the parish has a school, it is 10%. Much of that money goes to paying priests at/building maintenance of the poorer churches.
We have an annual appeal that is supposed to cover those types of things. I contribute to that as my pastor has promised us it does not go to ADW general funds
> I feel I have a right not to give money to a guy who in his last Diocese built himself a 6000 square foot house with diocesan funds (yes I know they sold it after he got caught).
Everyone is thinking about this from the wrong perspective. Yes, we should be very concerned when someone is a bad steward of resources donated by the lay faithful. The reason we should be concerned is that we care about the bad steward's soul (imagine being on the hook not only for misusing the large amounts that we have given from our surplus and that we don't really miss, but also for misusing the small amounts, which are probably galaxy-sized in God's eyes, that poor widows and/or orphans have given out of their poverty and need.)
Giving a bad steward less money from one's own surplus is not going to resolve the issue (it's not like being a bartender who can cut off someone who looks drunk), because you still have the deeply poor ones who are going to keep giving him miles of very stout rope to hang himself with (why are they doing this? Either because they are impenetrably naive or because of their great faith). If I distrusted the hierarchy in my diocese, I would attack the problem head-on with prayer and fasting and organizing a grassroots "holy hour for the conversion of N.", and, trusting in God to achieve a miracle, I would not bother to make changes to how I give money to my parish.
However, if you would prefer some out-of-the-box but-still-in-the-world thinking, the Catechism (footnote on the precepts) refers to canon law 222
"Can. 222 §1. The Christian faithful are obliged to assist with the needs of the Church so that the Church has what is necessary for divine worship, for the works of the apostolate and of charity, and for the decent support of ministers.
§2. They are also obliged to promote social justice and, mindful of the precept of the Lord, to assist the poor from their own resources."
Therefore if I was living in ADW and wanted to micromanage how my money is spent, I would find the poorest parish in the diocese and give it to them.
I'm not an accountant but... How can the change *both* increase archdiocesan revenue by $3mil ~and~ be "entirely offset" by reductions for other parishes
I _am_ an accountant and will tell you that it almost certainly cannot do any such thing. His eminence is either misunderstanding the situation or is being, let us say, _nuanced_ in his explanation.
A further thought- fund accounting is typically used by not for profit/charitable organizations. It is complicated and analysts need to ask a lot of questions of the CFO to get clarity. Plus you need to know what questions to ask, which most priests, bishops etc. do not know. It’s possible Wuerl and Gregory were just ignorant.
Rank speculation: the new tax on financial bequest will bring in $6M total. The archdiocese will then offset $3M dollars of that through reductions that primarily benefit poorer parishes with the goal that poor parishes see no net change in taxation. Thus all of extra taxes will be "entirely offset" for poor parishes while the weathier parishes plug the funding gap for the archdiocese. That would at least make sense of the statements without bending the truth any more than your average politician.
"chief financial officer" / CFO — I am not sure why we need to secularize the terms for canonical offices. What is wrong with "diocesan finance officer"? "CFO" sounds like the term used for a corporation or NGO.
I would think one of the reasons to use the term is that is does have a specific meaning in civil law particularly regarding fiduciary duty and related matters. It is probably a good and necessary thing.
Having been previously in a diocese that used a cathedraticum (read "income tax") to fund diocesan operations, the manipulation of parish income to minimize the tax was one of the primary things new priests were expected to learn before becoming pastors. The same thing as all the secular junk mail/email that I receive offering "tax planning services."
If a diocese is going with the cathedraticum, I see great value in stating very simply and directly that anything that is deposited into any parish financial accounts is subject to "the tax." Then you don't end up with situations like when I was a kid: The Pastor announced at the end of every homily, "You know, anything that ends up in our second collection to reduce the debt on the new church is not subject to the diocesan tax. I am not telling you to put your weekly envelope in the second collection, but if you happen to make a mistake and your envelope ends up in there ..."
Just eliminate the potential for manipulation. Everyone is on a level playing field. Once a parish accepts that financial manipulation is good in one context, that barrier is greatly lowered to allow for far more nefarious activity.
Many of us laity intentionally only give to the special accounts, precisely to avoid the cathedraticum. If it applied to all accounts, I would give to other ministries in the Church besides my parish.
Or provide useful goods like perishable food for Father which can't be taxed. I didn't even give to my parish for almost 6 months after the November 2018 USCCB fiasco. There are other Catholic organizations one can fund.
I think it would be *fascinating* to run an A/B test in which a diocese announces "donations of types X and Y are taxed and donations of types Z go only to your own parish" and then do some spreadsheets and graphs of how the giving shifted after the announcement.
The other possibility could be to run a test with a holdback: parishes in one half of the diocese have a new scheme, parishes in the other half have the old scheme (it would have to be clearly announced) and then compare how the giving shifted in the two groups of parishes. However there's a greater risk there (since you can't do a blind holdback in this situation) that both would shift due to distrust "they're coming for us next".
I used to work at an internet-related company that, one time, ran an a/b on a small country to see "does it make a difference how many ads we show and how high-quality the ads are" (sometimes you have to demonstrate that not being terrible does increase shareholder value)... talk about distrust and burning goodwill, it takes many months for users to recover from "the ads at this site are terrible and so many" but I think it takes even longer to recover from the kind of goodwill-burning that a religious institution can do. Expectations are lower for a worldly company.
“The audit committee did not include accountants.” Is this because there were no accountants willing to volunteer or an oversight in diocesan management?
Bishops and priests are not business managers by trade so they really do depend on the CFO. You can’t really sue the prior one, I can’t imagine a CFO makes enough money for it to be worth.
I would hope they would pay a CPA - it’s not like there aren’t a gajillion or 144,000 of them in Washington DC. “P” in “CPA” should not be a Pass for the Church.
Is there any publicly available document that states what the rules of the "tax" are, or are you just supposed to come by this on the low from a priest you trust?
Cardinal Gregory does not have a trustworthy past record on financial matters. I am happy I do not reside in his diocese because, while I might be happy to support the parishes where I attend Mass, I would not give Gregory a dime.
1. Having no accountants on an audit committee is laughable. I imagine that they used to but any self respecting accountant declined to continue in the role
2. Anytime you read a set of financial statements, always start with the statement of cash flow. Accrual accounting can paint a different picture than actual cash flow and it’s important to have perspective on cash flow before you look at revenue and expenses
I just took a quick look, but I noticed odd discrepancies between the financial report and the financial statements, especially on revenue. For example, the fin report says that parish assessments were $12.6M, but according to the fin statements, they were $9.9M, or $13.7M if you include education. And similar discrepancies for many other line items of revenue. One explanation I can think of (other than I'm just stupid and missing something obvious) is that the fin report is using some sort of internal/managerial non-GAAP numbers, which I suppose is their perogative, but once you start straying from GAAP, you can manipulate any metric you want into saying whatever you want it to say. Which is how you can end up saying a deficit is worse (or better) than previously thought.
I wonder if this is something that was encouraged recently by the USCCB. Our diocese has just started including in the diocesan tax all the funds collected for USCCB-mandated second collections. So, these don't end up in the parish as they're just passed through, but then the parishes have to pay extra to the diocese because we are generous with the "asks" of the USCCB for charitable purposes. Really troubling.
Tangent: bishops seem to not have a problem closing parishes, but how would they react to the suggestion of closing a diocesan office?
When he was Archbishop of Atlanta, there were decisions that would make you scratch your head. I wrote to him about a few, and received ridiculous responses from staffers. When he was named a Cardinal, it figured. No more $.
Thanks for a great article. It was worth reading for just one priceless quote:
"the chancery doesn’t like [archdiocesan priests] talking to The Pillar.”
Yes, I bet that just about anyone in a senior position anywhere in the Church does not want anyone talking to The Pillar. Keep up the good work!
The comedy continues with the audit committee which did not have any accountants on it. What were the criteria for being on that committee - being bosom pals with Uncle Ted, a forty year record of never, ever rocking the boat?
I also love the bit about the clergy being anxious about their pension fund. Has the pension fund accounting been flexible with the very advanced arithmetic? Er....who am I to judge?
“"The contribution to the fully funded Priest Retirement and Special Health Care Fund will be reduced by 50% while still potentially allowing for increased benefits,” Cardinal Gregory said in his letter."
Being an actuary is one of the highest qualified jobs around - you start your very lengthy training after getting a good maths degree. So any projections and calculations are probably way beyond ordinary mortals to dispute. Any actuaries out there who might correct me? Any independent hard nosed actuaries care to do a pro bono check of Cardinal Gregory's assertion?
If US priests are anything like the UK clergy, a high percentage are rapidly approaching pension age and do not fancy begging in the streets in their golden years. In the case of the UK clergy, any burden of a large number of retired clergy will probably be borne by selling surplus property.
Since other commentators have already covered the main points (McCarrick scandal, no accountants on the Audit Committee, Priests being discouraged from speaking to the Pillar) so I will just commend the Pillar for its coverage. You do an excellent job of presenting the facts, without the bias and snark found in many other news sites. Don't think I would be able to write these stories so professionally, especially when officials from the Diocese are discouraging people from speaking to you. Pillar - your efforts demonstrate the need for a free press, please keep up the great work.
Who pays for Donald Cardinal Wuerl’s flights to Rome - the Archdiocese of Washington DC or the USCCB? Is he a lobbyist? What is his officio role in these one-on-ones with the Holy Father?
Related to this, hasn’t The Pillar previously reported about some sort of fund (with a $3 million balance) that was available for Wuerl’s use? Is there possibly a connection between that fund and the budget deficit in ADW?
Unofficial diplomat is what you’re looking for. It’s not uncommon for ‘retired’ cardinals to function as informal diplomats and envoys. The rapproachment with Cuba under Barack Obama’s presidency was only achievable thanks to McCarrick’s ability to ‘pop over’ to ‘visit his friend Jaime Ortega.’ It’s an underrated but vitally important part of the greatest human intelligence network every made.
Fr. De Rosa actually spoke to the people who provide these funds?!?!? Not a conversation or dialogue but one way communication, but still......He's must be either destined to a small parish in Southern Maryland or quick laization.
I am not well versed in actuarial matters, so I hope that someone can correct me so I don't worry about the retired priests, but could the unexpected increase in their pension fund be the currently very healthy stock market? I hope not because that can fall.
Also we in the ADW are asked to contribute specifically to that fund every October. Are they counting on those contributions to continue and increase while at the same time lying to us, again, about ADW finances? Will the 50% decrease in contributions come from general diocesan funds or our specific contributions which should be restricted, but who knows with these people?
I agree with your third paragraph but Ed and JD have mentioned on the pod the archdiocese does an excellent job ignoring questions in their comms dept, and it has been somewhat effective post McCarrick fallout to just keep ignoring questions until the news cycle turns over. Gregory said “I will always tell you the truth” but didn’t specify how often he would keep his mouth shut
The upper brass still inexplicably lives in the era of "don't air your dirty laundry, just give the people vague statements and they'll stop asking questions".
Having spent a career analyzing financial statements, I know that there are ways to be correct and transparent, and ways to be correct and obfuscate. Given the 10 years this may have been going on, Wuerl and Gregory have a lot to answer for.
Indeed. I always say “numbers don’t lie but they don’t always tells the full story” which is true unless of course, they are lying about the numbers…
Stop giving. Your obligation is to financially support the Church, not your parish. If someone disagrees, have them find it in the precepts list.
So what do I do as a parishioner of a reasonably prosperous ADW parish? I have been intentionally giving smaller weekly gifts (subject to the ADW tax) to my parish and reasonably generous Easter and Christmas offerings (not subject to the ADW tax). I do this intentionally because I trust the pastor of my parish and I do not trust the Cardinal. I feel I have a right not to give money to a guy who in his last Diocese built himself a 6000 square foot house with diocesan funds (yes I know they sold it after he got caught). But on the other hand I believe I have read it is a mortal sin not to support my parish. Plus I want to support my Parish, I just don't want my money squandered by ADW.
I hopefully have not placed myself in a state of mortal sin by praying for Pope Francis’ “poor church for the poor”.
I would love to see a canon lawyer respond to this — is it a mortal sin not to tithe to your parish? I don’t think I had heard that before.
In your shoes, I might consider other ways of sharing my resources with the parish — my time, talent, or service, just maybe not money, or very little money.
I am already in charge of one ministry and volunteer for two others, so I doubt that I could increase volunteering that much. But I am thinking about decreasing my cash contributions and paying for the supplies for my ministry rather than making cash contributions and then submitting an expense voucher. Of course, that only works if ADW doesn't figure out a way to go after in kind contributions.
We are bound to contribute to the support of our pastors under the Fifth Precept of the Church.
As a heads-up, the ADW tax is about 5%. If the parish has a school, it is 10%. Much of that money goes to paying priests at/building maintenance of the poorer churches.
We have an annual appeal that is supposed to cover those types of things. I contribute to that as my pastor has promised us it does not go to ADW general funds
> I feel I have a right not to give money to a guy who in his last Diocese built himself a 6000 square foot house with diocesan funds (yes I know they sold it after he got caught).
Everyone is thinking about this from the wrong perspective. Yes, we should be very concerned when someone is a bad steward of resources donated by the lay faithful. The reason we should be concerned is that we care about the bad steward's soul (imagine being on the hook not only for misusing the large amounts that we have given from our surplus and that we don't really miss, but also for misusing the small amounts, which are probably galaxy-sized in God's eyes, that poor widows and/or orphans have given out of their poverty and need.)
Giving a bad steward less money from one's own surplus is not going to resolve the issue (it's not like being a bartender who can cut off someone who looks drunk), because you still have the deeply poor ones who are going to keep giving him miles of very stout rope to hang himself with (why are they doing this? Either because they are impenetrably naive or because of their great faith). If I distrusted the hierarchy in my diocese, I would attack the problem head-on with prayer and fasting and organizing a grassroots "holy hour for the conversion of N.", and, trusting in God to achieve a miracle, I would not bother to make changes to how I give money to my parish.
However, if you would prefer some out-of-the-box but-still-in-the-world thinking, the Catechism (footnote on the precepts) refers to canon law 222
"Can. 222 §1. The Christian faithful are obliged to assist with the needs of the Church so that the Church has what is necessary for divine worship, for the works of the apostolate and of charity, and for the decent support of ministers.
§2. They are also obliged to promote social justice and, mindful of the precept of the Lord, to assist the poor from their own resources."
Therefore if I was living in ADW and wanted to micromanage how my money is spent, I would find the poorest parish in the diocese and give it to them.
Perhaps we simply cut to the chase and rid the Church of "bad stewards?" Makes sense to me.
I'm not an accountant but... How can the change *both* increase archdiocesan revenue by $3mil ~and~ be "entirely offset" by reductions for other parishes
I _am_ an accountant and will tell you that it almost certainly cannot do any such thing. His eminence is either misunderstanding the situation or is being, let us say, _nuanced_ in his explanation.
The use of fund accounting can complicate financial statements
A further thought- fund accounting is typically used by not for profit/charitable organizations. It is complicated and analysts need to ask a lot of questions of the CFO to get clarity. Plus you need to know what questions to ask, which most priests, bishops etc. do not know. It’s possible Wuerl and Gregory were just ignorant.
Rank speculation: the new tax on financial bequest will bring in $6M total. The archdiocese will then offset $3M dollars of that through reductions that primarily benefit poorer parishes with the goal that poor parishes see no net change in taxation. Thus all of extra taxes will be "entirely offset" for poor parishes while the weathier parishes plug the funding gap for the archdiocese. That would at least make sense of the statements without bending the truth any more than your average politician.
"chief financial officer" / CFO — I am not sure why we need to secularize the terms for canonical offices. What is wrong with "diocesan finance officer"? "CFO" sounds like the term used for a corporation or NGO.
These are the terms used by the diocese. I would prefer they say finance officer!
I would think one of the reasons to use the term is that is does have a specific meaning in civil law particularly regarding fiduciary duty and related matters. It is probably a good and necessary thing.
Having been previously in a diocese that used a cathedraticum (read "income tax") to fund diocesan operations, the manipulation of parish income to minimize the tax was one of the primary things new priests were expected to learn before becoming pastors. The same thing as all the secular junk mail/email that I receive offering "tax planning services."
If a diocese is going with the cathedraticum, I see great value in stating very simply and directly that anything that is deposited into any parish financial accounts is subject to "the tax." Then you don't end up with situations like when I was a kid: The Pastor announced at the end of every homily, "You know, anything that ends up in our second collection to reduce the debt on the new church is not subject to the diocesan tax. I am not telling you to put your weekly envelope in the second collection, but if you happen to make a mistake and your envelope ends up in there ..."
Just eliminate the potential for manipulation. Everyone is on a level playing field. Once a parish accepts that financial manipulation is good in one context, that barrier is greatly lowered to allow for far more nefarious activity.
Many of us laity intentionally only give to the special accounts, precisely to avoid the cathedraticum. If it applied to all accounts, I would give to other ministries in the Church besides my parish.
Or provide useful goods like perishable food for Father which can't be taxed. I didn't even give to my parish for almost 6 months after the November 2018 USCCB fiasco. There are other Catholic organizations one can fund.
I think it would be *fascinating* to run an A/B test in which a diocese announces "donations of types X and Y are taxed and donations of types Z go only to your own parish" and then do some spreadsheets and graphs of how the giving shifted after the announcement.
The other possibility could be to run a test with a holdback: parishes in one half of the diocese have a new scheme, parishes in the other half have the old scheme (it would have to be clearly announced) and then compare how the giving shifted in the two groups of parishes. However there's a greater risk there (since you can't do a blind holdback in this situation) that both would shift due to distrust "they're coming for us next".
I used to work at an internet-related company that, one time, ran an a/b on a small country to see "does it make a difference how many ads we show and how high-quality the ads are" (sometimes you have to demonstrate that not being terrible does increase shareholder value)... talk about distrust and burning goodwill, it takes many months for users to recover from "the ads at this site are terrible and so many" but I think it takes even longer to recover from the kind of goodwill-burning that a religious institution can do. Expectations are lower for a worldly company.
“The audit committee did not include accountants.” Is this because there were no accountants willing to volunteer or an oversight in diocesan management?
Bishops and priests are not business managers by trade so they really do depend on the CFO. You can’t really sue the prior one, I can’t imagine a CFO makes enough money for it to be worth.
I would hope they would pay a CPA - it’s not like there aren’t a gajillion or 144,000 of them in Washington DC. “P” in “CPA” should not be a Pass for the Church.
Is there any publicly available document that states what the rules of the "tax" are, or are you just supposed to come by this on the low from a priest you trust?
Cardinal Gregory does not have a trustworthy past record on financial matters. I am happy I do not reside in his diocese because, while I might be happy to support the parishes where I attend Mass, I would not give Gregory a dime.
The diocese of San Jose, where their CFO has apparently gone now, doesn't exactly have a track record of transparency and thoughtful governance either
I think it's safe to say there are quite a few dioceses with a lack of financial transparency for one reason or another.
1. Having no accountants on an audit committee is laughable. I imagine that they used to but any self respecting accountant declined to continue in the role
2. Anytime you read a set of financial statements, always start with the statement of cash flow. Accrual accounting can paint a different picture than actual cash flow and it’s important to have perspective on cash flow before you look at revenue and expenses
I couldn't agree more with your second point; I've been saying that for years!
I just took a quick look, but I noticed odd discrepancies between the financial report and the financial statements, especially on revenue. For example, the fin report says that parish assessments were $12.6M, but according to the fin statements, they were $9.9M, or $13.7M if you include education. And similar discrepancies for many other line items of revenue. One explanation I can think of (other than I'm just stupid and missing something obvious) is that the fin report is using some sort of internal/managerial non-GAAP numbers, which I suppose is their perogative, but once you start straying from GAAP, you can manipulate any metric you want into saying whatever you want it to say. Which is how you can end up saying a deficit is worse (or better) than previously thought.
I wonder if this is something that was encouraged recently by the USCCB. Our diocese has just started including in the diocesan tax all the funds collected for USCCB-mandated second collections. So, these don't end up in the parish as they're just passed through, but then the parishes have to pay extra to the diocese because we are generous with the "asks" of the USCCB for charitable purposes. Really troubling.
Tangent: bishops seem to not have a problem closing parishes, but how would they react to the suggestion of closing a diocesan office?
Stop giving.
When he was Archbishop of Atlanta, there were decisions that would make you scratch your head. I wrote to him about a few, and received ridiculous responses from staffers. When he was named a Cardinal, it figured. No more $.
“the chancery doesn’t like [archdiocesan priests] talking to The Pillar.”
I'll bet that's true. keep it up guys!
The “ chancery” in many dioceses does not like talking to anyone until all are instructed in the party line
As a sheep in the ADW fold I can’t tell you how much money I would happily donate to know which of our amazing clergy said this 😉😆
Another T-shirt potential?
No, this gets a fancy font and frame to be hung upon Ed’s office wall.
Thanks for a great article. It was worth reading for just one priceless quote:
"the chancery doesn’t like [archdiocesan priests] talking to The Pillar.”
Yes, I bet that just about anyone in a senior position anywhere in the Church does not want anyone talking to The Pillar. Keep up the good work!
The comedy continues with the audit committee which did not have any accountants on it. What were the criteria for being on that committee - being bosom pals with Uncle Ted, a forty year record of never, ever rocking the boat?
I also love the bit about the clergy being anxious about their pension fund. Has the pension fund accounting been flexible with the very advanced arithmetic? Er....who am I to judge?
“"The contribution to the fully funded Priest Retirement and Special Health Care Fund will be reduced by 50% while still potentially allowing for increased benefits,” Cardinal Gregory said in his letter."
Being an actuary is one of the highest qualified jobs around - you start your very lengthy training after getting a good maths degree. So any projections and calculations are probably way beyond ordinary mortals to dispute. Any actuaries out there who might correct me? Any independent hard nosed actuaries care to do a pro bono check of Cardinal Gregory's assertion?
If US priests are anything like the UK clergy, a high percentage are rapidly approaching pension age and do not fancy begging in the streets in their golden years. In the case of the UK clergy, any burden of a large number of retired clergy will probably be borne by selling surplus property.
Since other commentators have already covered the main points (McCarrick scandal, no accountants on the Audit Committee, Priests being discouraged from speaking to the Pillar) so I will just commend the Pillar for its coverage. You do an excellent job of presenting the facts, without the bias and snark found in many other news sites. Don't think I would be able to write these stories so professionally, especially when officials from the Diocese are discouraging people from speaking to you. Pillar - your efforts demonstrate the need for a free press, please keep up the great work.
Who pays for Donald Cardinal Wuerl’s flights to Rome - the Archdiocese of Washington DC or the USCCB? Is he a lobbyist? What is his officio role in these one-on-ones with the Holy Father?
Related to this, hasn’t The Pillar previously reported about some sort of fund (with a $3 million balance) that was available for Wuerl’s use? Is there possibly a connection between that fund and the budget deficit in ADW?
What exactly is his role? Professional ecclesiastical lobbyist???
Unofficial diplomat is what you’re looking for. It’s not uncommon for ‘retired’ cardinals to function as informal diplomats and envoys. The rapproachment with Cuba under Barack Obama’s presidency was only achievable thanks to McCarrick’s ability to ‘pop over’ to ‘visit his friend Jaime Ortega.’ It’s an underrated but vitally important part of the greatest human intelligence network every made.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thepillar/p/season-of-giving-wuerl-reportedly?r=wflz8&utm_medium=ios
Maybe like Ananias & Sapphira in Acts, the G/L entry was $3million and he “gave back” $2 million…
Francis’ “poor church for the poor” 🤦♂️
Fr. De Rosa actually spoke to the people who provide these funds?!?!? Not a conversation or dialogue but one way communication, but still......He's must be either destined to a small parish in Southern Maryland or quick laization.
I am not well versed in actuarial matters, so I hope that someone can correct me so I don't worry about the retired priests, but could the unexpected increase in their pension fund be the currently very healthy stock market? I hope not because that can fall.
Also we in the ADW are asked to contribute specifically to that fund every October. Are they counting on those contributions to continue and increase while at the same time lying to us, again, about ADW finances? Will the 50% decrease in contributions come from general diocesan funds or our specific contributions which should be restricted, but who knows with these people?