Finance

A visitor has given me a heads-up on a new Vicar of Finance in Houston. He's clearly a member of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth-Nashotah House inner circle, which isn't necessarily an automatic point against him, but I still have a hard time getting around the idea that this is a complacent bunch who regard their new Catholic responsibilities as less a challenge than a reward. I would have preferred a signal from Bp-Elect Lopes that things may change.

It doesn't make me any more comfortable to read in the Ordinariate's press release,

Now Stockstill can add another title to his CV: Deacon in the Catholic Church.

It seems to me that the problem in Houston all along has been CV-ism: Jeffrey Steenson has always struck me as a careerist who wanted to collect the whole set.

It also makes me uncomfortable that the same visitor forwarded to me Fr Bergman's Christmas Letter to the St Thomas More Parish. The main purpose of the letter is to raise emergency funds.

Due to no fault of our own our parish was not billed for our property and liability insurance coverage in fiscal year 2014-2015. The problems with the firm handling our policy were systemic and affected the entire Ordinariate, and for this reason the insurance for our jurisdiction is now handled out of Houston, and our costs have been cut in half. However, to ensure that we are covered for any claims that might arise from the unbilled period, we must remit a lump sum payment of over $10,000. This invoice that we had not anticipated receiving so suddenly, if ever, is thus the focus of our Christmas appeal this year. . . . This year, though, we shall require much more than we have ever received at Christmas, if we are to meet all our cold-weather expenses – and pay this insurance bill for which we have nothing in the bank. . . . . You may wonder why we did not put anything aside to meet unexpected expenses like the one we now face. The truth is, in nearly eleven years now, we have never put anything aside. We have lived by faith as the Lord has provided for us according to our needs, giving us everything from the employee salaries to the buildings we now inhabit and use to the Glory of God.

I'm a little puzzled here -- someone knowledgeable about St Thomas More's affairs might be able to set me straight. During the brief time I was St Mary of the Angels's treasurer, one of my main responsibilities was to prepare an annual budget. A big line item was always insurance. Whether or not I got the bill, I would have set aside the budgeted amount. It sounds as though prior to FY 2014-15, the amount for St Thomas More would have been something like $10,000.

As treasurer, I would sure have been looking for this bill and wondering why it hadn't come. Not only that, I would have been talking to knowledgeable vestry members and, if possible, treasurers at other parishes in the diocese to figure out what was up. But notwithstanding, there would have been $10,000 in the bank to pay the check when the time came, because that was in the budget. So it's very hard for me to interpret Fr Bergman's statement that "in nearly eleven years now, we have never put anything aside." Does that mean they operate without a budget? It's hard to avoid that conclusion.

It sounds to me, from what I can gather from Fr Bergman's letter, that people both in Scranton and Houston were clueless, and there was an emergency that shouldn't have been one. (More than once, though, I've learned from hard experience that you can get in trouble by asking too many questions about where the insurance bill is. This may be a sign of real organizational dysfunction.)

So Dcn Stockstill has been de facto business manager in Houston, from all I can gather, since 2013, and a member of the inner clique. Somehow, on his watch, the insurance bill went south. If I were Bp-Elect Lopes, I'd want to hear more. Heck, I'd like to hear more. Fr Bergman? Dcn Stockstill?