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COMMENTARY
“Getting it” in
the Bridgeport CT diocese
Dan Sullivan, VOTF Bridgeport
I was particularly troubled by the disclosures about
the financial problems at St Michael's for several
reasons, among them the fact that during the last 20
years in this diocese I have never met another priest
who I thought so well represented the ideal of what
I thought a priest should be. Fr. Moynihan is charismatic,
warm and a wonderful speaker. He always seemed to have
an approach to things that seemed grounded in both
theology and reality. That being said, if he is guilty
of more than poor record keeping, he should be dealt
with on the same basis as anyone else.
But I am also concerned about how much of the retribution
that may be exacted from Fr. Moynihan is designed to
protect the reputation of Bishop Lori and buttress
his chances for further promotion in the hierarchy.
Once again, we have a situation where a significant
amount of money seems to be missing, but at least at
the moment, all that is being reported is improper
or sloppy accounting procedures. It is incomprehensible
to me that when problems were first discovered in early
2004, almost three years ago, a more thorough investigation
was not immediately undertaken and the "reforms" mandated
by the bishop were not monitored to ensure that appropriate
practices were being followed. As President Reagan
said, "Trust, but verify." Bishop Lori's
self-serving assertions of vigilance, complaints about
his workload and allegations that intervening events
(such as sexual abuse lawsuits - his timeline seems
confused, since most of those cases were settled by
the diocese in 2001) precluded him from following up
on this problem portray him as a CEO who is incompetent
at best, and perhaps negligent. As my Mother always
reminded me, "The road to hell is paved with good
intentions!"
The Bishop and his staff can continue to refine their
financial guidelines for parish accounting, but until
they put in place an effective system to monitor those
policies, situations such as those at St Michael’s
in Greenwich and St John’s in Darien, where it
was disclosed in mid-2006 that the pastor there, Fr
Fay, had “inappropriately” and “extravagantly” misspent
some $1.4 million during the last five years of his
fourteen year tenure as pastor, will continue to occur.
But it is not just reforms in financial practices that
are necessary. As long as the culture of secrecy and
silence that was intrinsic to allowing the child sex
abuse scandal to spiral out of control endures, the
Church will continue to experience scandal. Bishops,
clergy and the laity must all adopt a culture of openness
and transparency, and take seriously their responsibility
to hold all accountable to those principles. We can
ill afford to ignore potential warning signs, as evidenced
by the dismissive remark of Bishop Lori’s spokesman,
Joseph McAleer. In spite of the irregularities noted
at St. Michael’s almost three years ago, when
recently confronted with the fact that Fr. Moynihan
had driven at least six expensive Infiniti sedans during
his tenure as pastor, and also owned a $200,000 yacht,
McAleer said “I don’t keep track or take
notice of what priests drive or if they own boats or
not, so you really can’t generalize.”
If that is the attitude of our leaders, we can only
wonder what lessons they have learned from the scandals
of the recent past.
Further information can be found at www.stamfordadvocate.com and at www.bridgeportdiocese.com.
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