|
December 17, 2007
PERSONAL ATTENTION Francis Cardinal George, President U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops 3211 Fourth Street, N.E. Washington, D.C. 20017
Dear Cardinal George:
To begin, I extend my congratulations and best wishes on your election to succeed Bishop Skylstad as President of the USCCB. While I am not a historian, I believe the Catholic Church has never in my lifetime been in a more precarious position than that in which it rests today, and it is encouraging to me to know that your peers chose you, in particular, to represent the Church in America.
By way of introduction, I am the original author of the Sunday collection guidelines implemented by the AD of Chicago in early 2005 via the guideline entitled Management of Sunday Collections. As far as I know, the AD of Chicago is the first U. S. diocese to implement my guidelines, and I congratulate you and your Department of Finance for having the wisdom to recognize the need for such guidelines, and the courage to implement them.
I’m sure the guidelines were met with opposition from a number of clergy and lay persons who either felt insulted by their implications or had a vested interest in keeping the Sunday collection vulnerable. No doubt Rev. Sorvillo had a few choice words for you or your CFO when the guidelines were issued.
Regarding the case of Rev. Sorvillo, however, it is important to note that even after the guidelines were implemented, he was able to carry on his embezzlement due to the lack of one key element of my guidelines that was not carried forward in yours: the requirement that collection bag serial numbers be recorded when they are put out for use by the ushers and later compared against the serial numbers recorded by the counters to ensure that the two are in agreement. My guidelines express that simple yet vital step in a single sentence: “The secretary or other designee will later compare the serial numbers of the opened seals against the serial numbers recorded separately by the person who assigned them for use by the ushers.” It is apparent from the Sorvillo case that our guidelines (mine and yours) need to place greater emphasis on that critical procedure and verification; in all likelihood, other wayward clergy and laity are availing themselves of that vulnerability as I type this letter.
Now, if I haven’t already lost your interest, Eminence, I would like to share with you my concern for the USCCB’s ongoing failure to implement genuinely secure Sunday collection procedures nationwide. This is an issue I have called to the attention of every President from Archbishop Pilarczyk to Bishop Skylstad, sadly, to no avail. If your first impulse at this point is to refer this letter to Bruce Egnew or some other member of the staff who has been preconditioned to reply with the we-are-not-empowered, (we being the USCCB) and the prerogatives-of-each-bishop excuses, I implore you to reconsider.
You have seen first-hand what it takes to protect Sunday collections from the depredations of a determined embezzler, and you know in your heart there is no legitimate reason in the world why the USCCB cannot agree on a universal set of guidelines. To take the position that the autonomy and prerogatives of individual bishops is paramount is to place executive privilege ahead of what can quite reasonably be described as a moral obligation to eliminate a great temptation to sin (Sunday collection theft) and a known source of ongoing sin within the Church itself. And while that prioritization is not foreign to the corporate world, it’s not what one would expect to see in any Christian denomination, and most especially not in the Catholic Church that so proudly traces its lineage to Jesus himself.
Based upon your personal knowledge of the secure procedures in effect within your own Archdiocese, your Eminence, you must recognize nationwide implementation of such procedures would prevent the Mark Sorvillos of the priesthood and the Donato Suffolettos (Buffalo Grove) of the laity from further plundering their parishes’ Sunday collections as they have so brazenly done for so many generations.
Finally, and while the prospect of virtually eliminating the incidence of Sunday collection theft is more than sufficient to justify decisive action at the national level, I would also call your attention to the fact that most church embezzlements are committed, in part, for the purpose of enabling the embezzler to finance some vice or perversion they might not otherwise pursue had the target of their embezzlement not been so vulnerable. Suffoletto’s vice, for example, was gambling, and Sorvillo’s perversion seems to have been the gay lifestyle coupled with extreme narcissism. We both know these men and their predilections are by no means isolated phenomena within our society or the Church. Absent effective concerted action at the USCCB level, I have no doubt their number will only increase.
As I stated in my correspondence with Archbishop Murphy in 1994, and repeated in correspondence with a number of your predecessors, I stand ready to assist in this formidable undertaking in any way you or the Conference may deem helpful. The Church’s credibility and moral standing was critically injured as a result of the predator-priest scandal, and I sincerely believe the nationwide dissemination and implementation of genuinely secure Sunday collection guidelines would go a long way toward restoring the Church’s once premier standing as the face and voice of Christendom.
I wish you a blessed Christmas and a fulfilling New Year in Christ‘s service,
[signed] M. W. Ryan Michael W. Ryan www.ChurchSecurity.info
|
|
At Cardinal George’s suggestion, I sent the following letter to the individual named in his letter but failed to receive even an acknowledgement.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
February 1, 2008
PERSONAL ATTENTIONMr. William G. Weldon, CFO Diocese of Charlotte 1123 South Church Street Charlotte, NC 28203
Dear Mr. Weldon:
I am writing to you at the suggestion of USCCB President Francis Cardinal George who copied you with his letter of January 3 in reply to my letter of December 17 regarding the need for Church-wide procedures for effectively securing the Church's principal source of revenue: the Sunday collection.
According to Cardinal George, you are heading a committee formed for the purpose of developing guidelines for accounting practices and financial services throughout the Church in America. As one who has been studying and promoting Sunday collection security for the past 20 years, I believe I've developed a unique insight insofar as the establishment of effective Sunday collection procedures is concerned. In light of that, and pursuant to Cardinal George's suggestion that I ask to be part of the conversation as it moves forward in shaping new national guidelines, please consider this letter to be both my formal request to participate and my first contribution to the conversation.
Given the unique nature of the Sunday collection, not the least of which is the fact that it takes place in conjunction with a solemn religious service, the use of commercial methods such as cash registers and printed receipts are obviously not feasible. The question then becomes how to best emulate secure commercial methods without infringing upon or tainting the spiritual solemnity of the environment in which the collection is performed. Assuming the objective is to establish a genuinely secure Sunday collection, there is really only one basic protocol that will enable the accomplishment of that objective.
No Sunday collection system can be truly secure, unless and until certain equipment and procedures have been applied to effectively preclude anyone from having lone, unobserved access to those funds. This mantle of protection must begin immediately after the collection is taken up - when the ushers meet to consolidate the collection into a single container - and must remain absolutely unbroken until all monies have been accurately tallied and properly deposited in the parish bank account.
In order to reach that objective, the container into which the funds collected for each Mass or service are consolidated must be of a type that can be closed and positively sealed. The act of sealing must be done immediately after the consolidation. On two-collection Sundays, the sealing of the 1st collection may not be delayed pending completion of the 2nd collection. Further, either the device used to secure the container or the container itself must be serially numbered and must be of a type that cannot be opened and reclosed without reflecting that act. This is necessary so that, from church vestibule to counting room, each person in the chain of custody will, through simple visual examination, be able to determine whether anyone had or could have had access to the funds contained therein.
Detailed written operating procedures must be developed for the collection, consolidation, transport, interim storage, counting and banking operations. The counting procedures must provide for the presence of at least three (3) counters (two are insufficient) before any sealed containers are opened, and establish continuous observation and control over the funds (especially the currency) by at least two (2) persons, from the moment the storage containers are unsealed and opened until the funds have been counted separately by two persons, verified, recorded on a witnessed bank deposit slip, and locked or sealed in a bank deposit bag. The use of rotating teams of counters is highly recommended.
Each week's count must be documented via standardized forms. These forms must be designed so that, when completed, they clearly reflect the serial numbers of the seals or sacks assigned for use by the ushers, the serial numbers of the seals or sacks received and processed by the counters, and whether the required witnessing and count verification procedures were followed. The forms must be reviewed and filed each week by someone not otherwise involved in the counting and banking process.
The above is only a brief outline of the minimum requirements, Mr. Weldon; complete guidelines go into greater detail to preclude any misunderstanding as to what is required to establish and maintain a genuinely secure Sunday collection system. If you would like to obtain a set of detailed guidelines in use at this writing, I recommend you visit the Chicago AD web site and download their procedures; their guidelines are contained in a document entitled Management of Sunday Collections, and are the most comprehensive I've seen. This is in contrast to the guidelines available at your website which, with all due respect, are clearly flawed and insufficient to deter or detect surreptitious theft. In that regard, the only condition worse than having no security whatsoever is having only an appearance or facade of security behind which any thief would be free to carry on their depredations.
Finally, Mr. Weldon, I want to reiterate my great and abiding desire to help the Catholic Church in America accomplish a vital objective that, in all candor, could and should have been accomplished decades ago: the establishment of a genuinely effective level of security for the Church's principal source of revenue. I look forward to hearing from you at such time as you have had an opportunity to consider how my knowledge and experience might best be employed in that aspect of your committee's overall mission to develop guidelines for accounting practices and financial services that will effectively serve the needs of the Church in America in the years ahead.
Sincerely, [signed] M. W. Ryan Michael W. Ryan www.ChurchSecurity.info
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
My follow-up letter to Cardinal George on 7-21-08 (shown below) elicited only a form-letter acknowledgement. As of 11-23-08, no further communication has been received from Cardinal George. This cessation of communication is consistent with past experience in which those USCCB officials who replied to my initial contact (in prose they hoped would put my concerns to rest) then routinely refused to reply to follow-up correspondence in which I pointed out the inadequacy and/or inconsistency of their initial response.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
July 21, 2008
PERSONAL ATTENTION Francis Cardinal George, President U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops 3211 Fourth Street, N.E. Washington, D.C. 20017
Dear Cardinal George:
On December 17, 2007, I wrote you concerning the extreme vulnerability of Sunday collection funds in most dioceses throughout the United States. At that time, I also called your attention to the fact that most church embezzlements are committed, at least in part, for the purpose of enabling the embezzler to afford some vice or perversion they might not otherwise have pursued if the Sunday collection system had been effectively secured.
The nexus between vulnerable Sunday collection funds and the ability of wayward priests (and lay-persons) to fund their aberrant behaviors has thus far been largely ignored by the mainstream media in their coverage of the predator-priest scandal, and I look forward to the day when the media realizes the USCCB has steadfastly refused to effectively address this glaring deficiency in spite of overwhelming evidence that it has been and remains a key factor in the scandal. It’s a classic case of nonfeasance.
In your January 3 reply, you referred me to William G. Weldon, CFO of the Diocese of Charlotte and a member of the DFMC who was (and I presume still is) heading a committee that, in your words, “has begun to create guidelines for accounting practices and financial services in the dioceses in the United States.” As you know from my letter of January 25, I expressed my intention to communicate with Mr. Weldon, and I subsequently did so. As of this date, however, I have yet to receive the courtesy of an acknowledgement let alone a reply.
By his own count, as described in the 2008 Winter edition of the Herald, Mr. Weldon’s Accounting Practices Committee is comprised of fifteen (15) CPAs, not counting three additional CPA advisors from public accounting firms. With that many CPAs reviewing the Church’s accounting systems, one would think they would very quickly zero in on the absolute need to ensure that every dollar that is placed in the collection basket each weekend does, in fact, reach the bank. Instead, however, they focus on minutiae such as Canons 1262 and 1297 regarding fund-raising appeals and the leasing of church property. In comparison to the task of ensuring the safety of the Church’s principal source of revenue, their focus can be likened to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic as it was sinking.
Bottom line, Cardinal George, the Church remains in a downward spiral due, in large measure, to the hierarchy’s shocking refusal to effectively address difficult issues such as Sunday collection security.
Most sincerely,
[signed] M. W. Ryan Michael W. Ryan www.ChurchSecurity.info
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Having concluded I would hear nothing further from Cardinal George, I directed the following letter to the President of the Diocesan Fiscal Management Conference on 8-15-08 seeking to draw his attention to the issue.
August 15, 2008
PERSONAL ATTENTIONRobert J. Cox, President Diocesan Fiscal Management Conference Post Office Box 60210 San Angelo, TX 76906
Dear Mr. Cox:
I am writing this letter to make you aware of a particular issue concerning the Church’s principal source of revenue, and to ask whether you can explain why action that could and should have been taken 50 years ago has yet to be taken. To be more specific, I would like to know why neither the USCCB nor the DFMC have moved to develop and implement uniformly secure procedures for protecting Sunday collection funds nationwide.
The answer most often given by the USCCB is that security of the collections is the exclusive domain of each local bishop, and the USCCB is not empowered to mandate how they will be handled. In saying that, however, they ignore the fact that Canon Law provides a basis for them to obtain authorization to issue guidelines that would apply conference-wide. What they are really saying, therefore, is that they do not wish to uniformly secure the Sunday collections. Anyone who maintains that security over the Church’s principal source of revenue is best left to the discretion of local bishops and their staffs must, to be consistent, also maintain that the corporate offices of retailers such as WalMart, Home Depot, Sears and Circuit City have no business mandating the manner in which individual outlets account for their sales revenue. We both know such a laissez faire policy would constitute sheer folly and, in addition to jeopardizing their very existence, would open the corporate officers to charges of nonfeasance or worse.
Late in 2007, I wrote Cardinal George (in his capacity as President of the USCCB) to express my ongoing concern for this glaring failure to act, and I asked that he make it a priority of his term of office. In his reply, he suggested I correspond with William G. Weldon who he said was heading a committee “to create guidelines for accounting practices and financial services in the dioceses in the United States.” I subsequently wrote to Mr. Weldon but failed to receive even the courtesy of an acknowledgement let alone a reply. I assume he hadn’t had an opportunity to read or fully absorb the DFMC Standards for Ethical Behavior & Professional Conduct.
In any event, Mr. Cox, I can imagine no higher calling for the DFMC than to ensure the existence and application of a uniform, genuinely effective level of security over the Church’s principal source of revenue, the Sunday collection. That obligation seems to have been recognized by the authors of the above referenced Standards in several statements, the most broadly worded of which declares: “We will implement policies and procedures to protect the resources of the Church from fraud, misuse and waste, and to provide accurate and reliable financial reporting.”
I am well aware of the pecking order within the Church, and I know that you have no authority to dictate to the USCCB what they must do. Still, the DFMC is not without any means of persuasion, and I believe a righteous approach by the DFMC Board of Directors, perhaps a type of white paper, would provide the USCCB leadership with an incentive to stop dissembling and do the right thing. In that regard, I have written every USCCB (NCCB/USCC) President since Bishop Pilarczyk but have been singularly unsuccessful in my efforts to cause them to act in this vital matter. It seems they know they would have some very angry pastors on their hands and are fearful of being in any shorter supply of clergy than they already are. That, of course, is no excuse for their nonfeasance.
My efforts to enlist the interest of the DFMC date as far back as 1994 when Rev. Yeager was the Executive Director and, I now realize, the gatekeeper beyond whom nothing of a controversial nature passed. Like Mr. Weldon, Rev. Yeager did not deem my letters worthy of acknowledgement. In his case, however, it appears he was occupied with what, to him, were more important matters. I trust you are not answerable to Rev. Trautman, the Episcopal Moderator. If that were the case, I would have no hope for DFMC action in this matter.
To my knowledge, the Archdiocese of Chicago is the only diocese in the country that has had the courage to implement genuinely effective Sunday collection procedures. Unfortunately, Thomas Brennan, who I believe was the motivating force behind their implementation, has since left the Archdiocese, and I fear the guidelines might end up (if they haven’t already) being widely ignored due to the absence of effective, ongoing follow-up. Those guidelines, incidentally, were closely modeled after guidelines that have been available for the taking at my website for the past 10+ years.
Finally, Mr. Cox, I hope you will take time to absorb the full import of the contents of this letter. There is a great deal more I could say in the matter, but I would suggest you visit my website and examine the documentation, articles and case histories I have made available there. The Church’s continuing failure to implement in the 21st Century what should have been implemented in the 1950s or ‘60s is unconscionable and, in my opinion, renders the hierarchy ultimately responsible for every embezzlement committed as a result of their nonfeasance. Carry that one step further to the sins those embezzlements represent, as well as sins subsequently committed with the aid of those monies, and you can readily see the bishops have cause to be concerned for the safety of their souls. As Jesus himself phrased it, “Woe to the world because of things that cause sin! Such things must come, but woe to the one through whom they come!” [Matthew 18:7]
I look forward to hearing from you at such time as you have had an opportunity to review this matter and decide upon a course of action. If additional information is needed, please advise.
Most sincerely,
[signed] M. W. Ryan Michael W. Ryan www.ChurchSecurity.info
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
As of 3-4-09, no response has been received and, given the interval, none is expected. Nevertheless, I decided to make one final effort to prod the DFMC into action via email, the most recent of which was directed to its Board of Directors on 2-22-09. That email and communications that flowed from it are contained on the next page.
|
|
MENU BAR
|