INDIA
The Shillong Times
April 4, 2018
By Benjamin Mylliem
I would like to raise a few thoughts regarding the accountability and transparency in the Catholic Church. This in no way reflects the Church as a whole but rather the Church in Jaintia Hills and I will cite what is happening in Jowai Parish which is the cathedral parish of the Jowai Diocese in order to put forward my thoughts. To put things in perspective let me first explain everything in brief. In Jowai parish there are many villages and the church in these villages are known as “balang shnong” e.g. Mihmyntdu, Sohmynting, etc and Jowai town is just a ‘Balang Shnong’ within the Jowai Parish. In each Balang Shnong there is what is called a “Committee Balang” (church Committee) which looks after the spiritual and temporal welfare of the church in that particular village only. All these Committees work under the guidance of the Parish Pastoral Council. The works of these Committees mostly are to choose workers like Rangbah Balang, Bei Balang (male and female leaders of the church), make liturgical programs, take care of the temporal goods of the church, etc. Jowai town also has a Committee Balang and since this article is about accountability and transparency, I will point out its handling of the temporal goods of the church only.
The Committee Balang Jowai was formed with the authority of the parish priest and after years of functioning it has then been able to work in ways as laid down by the Church in the Code of Canon Law. For example, it use to have a budget session every year (can. 1284 §3). After proper audit is done, it gives accounts to the faithful regarding the goods offered by the lay faithful (can. 1287 §2). In this way it has been able to save funds which sustain the needs of the Balang Jowai. But when the present parish priest came in 2015, he surprisingly dissolved this Committee Balang of Jowai without having a proper discussion with the office bearers of the Committee. He convened a meeting with some of the faithful of Jowai town and in that meeting they decided to dissolve the Committee Balang Jowai and later on the April 2, 2016 he wrote a letter to the General Secretary of the Committee telling him that the Committee has been dissolved and that the amount 46 lakh which the Committee had is to be returned to the parish for church construction!
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