MINNESOTA
Canonical Consultation
12/13/2014
Jennifer Haselberger
This week, the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis continued its efforts to get itself out of financial hot water by sending a message to all pastors with a suggested text for parish bulletins which offers the Archdiocese’s explanation of how contributions made to parishes are spent. The recommended text (for parishes without schools) is this:
[copy of the document]
As I explained in a previous post, I disagree with the Archdiocese’s claim that ‘less than half a cent of every dollar you give…goes to the Archdiocese to pay expenses related to clergy sexual abuse and other clergy misconduct’. I think that the costs of misconduct are spread fairly broadly throughout the various categories of the pie chart (General & Administrative, you will note, includes the Archbishop’s Office…).
But, I am also concerned about the ways in which the Archdiocese’s legal troubles (and history of bad decision making) are beginning to impact the 91% of contributions that remain with the parishes. I noticed that the description of ‘parish initiatives’ in the suggested bulletin text does not include paying the ‘initial retainer’ or subsequent (and as yet undetermined) legal fees that were discussed at this week’s meeting with Mary Jo Jensen-Carter, the attorney who would like to represent all the parishes in the ‘Archdiocese’s process of obtaining a global settlement of the clergy abuse claims’.
While I was initially hopeful that this would be a positive step forward for parishes, my opinion has since changed. Rather than an initiative of the parishes, it is becoming more and more clear that this effort is really coming from the Chancery. Like the appointment of Tim Healy as President of the Catholic Services Appeal Foundation, the choice of Jensen-Carter, a former paralegal for the law firm of the current Chancellor for Civil Affairs (Joe Kueppers), removes any plausible claim that this is an independent initiative.
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