UNITED STATES
Church Militant
It’s not working.
May 2, 2018
TRANSCRIPT
The Church in America is doing splendidly — never been better, excelling everywhere, burgeoning at the seams, reason for great hope. Or as New York’s Cdl. Timothy Cardinal Dolan so perfectly laid it out at the press conference back in 2010 when he was elected president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, “It’s not like we’re in a crisis.”
Yes, see, no crisis here, His Eminence even has said so, which begs the question, precisely what does Dolan think actually constitutes a crisis? And further, if there’s no crisis, then why is Cdl. Dolan shaking down the flock in New York for $200 million or the archbishop of Detroit, after having soaked the sheep for $130 million in a recently wrapped up finance campaign, now preparing another campaign for an additional $200 million? Sources close to the archdiocese of Detroit tell Church Militant that some of Abp. Allen Vigneron’s closest allies actually wanted to unveil it this year but top brass thought it might appear too greedy after just wrapping up the previous campaign, uh, you think?
Then there is the still-secret plan in Abp. Jose Gomez’s Los Angeles archdiocese to unleash a half a billion dollar campaign on the unknowing faithful in Southern California — that’s right, a $500 million shakedown of the faithful. In truth, there are many of these massive war chest gathering initiatives going on all over the country — money and power grabs before old Catholics die off and leave their bucks to their children who could give a hoot about the Church and will not share their inheritances with what they see as irrelevant bishops. The Los Angeles half-billion shakedown was revealed to us by sources in the archdiocese who are disgusted with the plans, again, not yet made public. But, wait for it … and when these planned money grabs are eventually made public, they will come adorned with scriptural and mystical sounding names, upbeat sounding themes designed to make you think, well … there’s no crisis. For example, Detroit has a zippy sounding plan called “Unleash the Gospel,” as though it has ever been leashed up to begin within, and if it was leashed in Detroit have those who were responsible for tying it up been kicked out, otherwise, why throw good money after bad?
Practically every diocese in the country is doing two things right now — grabbing money and closing parishes. Often the plans are related to each other and get great marketing names, which stands to reason because local bishops are calling in Madison Avenue-style marketing firms and giving them 10 percent of everything collected to assess the decline, draw up a list of parishes to annihilate and squeeze every dime out of you possible. And, yes, you heard that correctly — 10 percent! When you are collectively dealing with billions of dollars, 10 percent is quite the haul.
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