Different Animals

A visitor who is clearly well-informed about the Archdiocese of San Antonio sent me two e-mails yesterday expressing concern that by trying to draw an equivalence between St Mary of the Angels and Our Lady of the Atonement, I may be misstating the relative size and importance of the OLA parish.

I have been following your blog and it seems to me that you are conflating the financial issues of St. Mary of the Angels and Our Lady of Atonement. To me, the situations are not at all similar. Here’s why:

OLA had already been given permission to join the OCSP before they began construction on the new high school building. In fact, this is part of the reason they delayed the start of construction for several years (they were to have originally to have completed the high school building so that the class of 2015 would graduate in the new building), so that they would not be encumbered or possibly have to pay back debt to the archdiocese or forfeit any of their buildings/property. It was Fr. Phillips who withdrew the OLA petition to the OCSP the first time for whatever his reasons were.

The second time around, when Fr. Phillips decided to pull the trigger, OLA had already begun construction on the high school (as of today, the building is not yet completed but is substantially underway). As you are probably aware, Catholic dioceses are self-insured and self-funded. OLA, as a pastoral provision parish, had to apply for a loan/building plan to be approved by the archdiocese which required at least 50% of the funding for the project before construction can begin. When the high school construction began, OLA did not have 100% of the funds to complete the high school so it had to have received a loan or at least some kind of financing arrangement with the archdiocese. That makes OLA simply walking away from the archdiocese in the middle of a construction project a little trickier than simply forfeiting a continued cathedraticum which seems to be the case with St. Mary of the Angels.

I do not know what kind of financial arrangements were made by OLA nor how they were resolved by the pontifical declaration to dissolve the Pastoral Provision, but I do know that overall, the OLA parish is pretty small potatoes in the archdiocese of San Antonio. As a comparison, Our Lady of Guadalupe in Helotes has over 8,000 families. I would be surprised if OLA has 800 families. Perhaps I’m wrong, but then again…

So, not to be overly picky, but I don’t see the two situations as similar at all.

One detail stood out: OLA "had to apply for a loan/building plan to be approved by the archdiocese which required at least 50% of the funding for the project before construction can begin." Clearly the property improvements in San Antonio were subjected to more detailed and stringent requirements than anything that seems to have been done in Calgary. I'm increasingly concerned that Bp Lopes seems to be encouraging rather small communities to overextend themselves in acquiring property without having the sort of diocesan resources that could effectively fund, control, or supervise this.

The visitor continued in a second e-mail:

I was later considering the financial situation of OLA and I wondered exactly how did OLA stack up against other parishes in the San Antonio archdiocese. So I looked. I have attached a link for you to a web page for statistics of the 2016 Archbishop’s Appeal.

As you look at some of the other parishes’ numbers and Atonement’s numbers, please know that the amount each parish is assigned as a goal is directly related to the cathedraticum each parish pays to the archdiocese annually.

Looking at OLA, you can determine that their original goal was $37,137.00 but that they had a few hefty donors to bump them up to the $85,791.49 that they actually collected. By reviewing the list of parishes that had the highest participation rates, Atonement is not listed so they had to have a participation rate less than 40%.

The goal of the appeal was 4.5 million dollars so Our Lady of Atonement’s expected share = $37,137.00 / $4,500,000 or 0.825% of the total appeal meaning OLA’s expected tithe on an annual basis is less than one percent of cathedraticum income for the Archdiocese of San Antonio.

Is it alarming to lose a guaranteed source of income by losing a parish to the OCSP? Sure, but with numbers less than 1%, I’m pretty sure the Archdiocese can make that up or give that up with very little heartburn. So it seems to me that the pushback from the archdiocese was something more than financial. Just sayin’…

Another detail that stands out here is that the archbishop's appeal statistics for the Archdiocese of San Antonio are public, while as far as I'm aware, those for the OCSP are not. One one hand, this makes it possible to evaluate the financial standing of parishes in the archdiocese, but the same information for the OCSP is secret -- from my point of view, not a good sign.

I would point out once again that Abp Hepworth, Fr Kelley, and the vestry are reaching a point where they will need to determine the best use for some very significant resources. I'm beginning to question whether the OCSP is in a position to make responsible use of them.