There are still other reasons why non-performers survive: two departments might be feuding, and it could be useful for one of them to have an incompetent serve as interface with the enemy department, just to add to the frustration. A non-performer might cause problems that would make his or her managers seem more important. Once I went to a job interview where all the managers in a department met with me in a conference room. They listed some of the problems they were having and asked me how I would solve them.
I basically said it sounded like these were smaller problems that had a bigger cause, and I explained how the bigger cause could be addressed. The room fell silent. Finally the big boss spoke up: "I see. He's just going to solve the problem, not waste a lot of time fighting the symptoms day to day." They didn't like that idea at all. After all, if things went smoothly, it might make the half dozen managers in the room seem less important and less necessary. I didn't get the job. The non-performers could heave a sigh of relief.
In my view, the former treasurer at St Mary's was a classic non-performer. She was utterly unsuited to the job, and she wasn't doing any of it. I assume there were other underlying problems that led to things like major bills going unpaid, but I never knew her well enough to speculate on what they might have been. I'm inclined to think, though, that the non-payment of important bills was not deliberate, it was a symptom of underlying problems, whatever they may have been.
As I said yesterday, Fr Kelley and the senior warden had no choice but to secure her resignation in any way they could, tactful or otherwise, and the unpaid bills were an emergency that they didn't fully know about until the former treasurer left. The parish simply didn't have the leeway to keep her in that position, unlike a large corporation, where it's easier to pass the buck and shift blame. On the other hand, when a large corporation can afford not to deal with such a problem, it avoids the bitter conflicts that result from dealing with it.
The former treasurer had solid connections among the anti-Ordinariate minority in the parish, and she was very bitter at Fr Kelley for holding her accountable. Although she left St Mary's for a neighboring Catholic parish, she apparently spent many hours in continuing phone conversations with her friends in the anti-Ordinariate group. She became a useful focus for continuing anti-Kelley sentiment, which was probably a surrogate for what was actually anti-Ordinariate sentiment among that group. This in turn led to a useful narrative that the group wasn't actually anti-Ordinariate; it was just anti-Kelley, and once the Kelley problem was solved, the parish could go into the Ordinariate without any trouble. Anthony Morello's eventual announcement that this wouldn't happen showed the falsity of this narrative.
While I don't think the original problem of unpaid bills was something concocted deliberately as a conspiracy, I do think that the problem as it evolved became very useful for the anti-Ordinariate minority. On one hand, any potential bad consequence of the unpaid bills could be used against Fr Kelley, as it would have happened on his watch -- and the threatened IRS seizure was a perfect example. On the other hand, the former treasurer became a martyr. No matter that Fr Kelley had done the only thing that could have been done and taken the only action he and the senior warden could have taken to solve the problem.
