Quick OLA Update

I'm on my way out of the house to cover the pretrial conference downtown, but it's worth noting that I've heard from more OLA parishioners who say that, at minimum, they were strongly encouraged to write checks for the archbishop's appeal to the parish, not the archdiocese. I'll provide details later.

Can anyone provide insight into what advantage, if any, would accrue to the parish for doing this? I can imagine that if the parish collected pledge payments during the year and wrote only one check (per accounts) to the archdiocese, presumably at the end of the year, the parish had the use of the money, not the archdiocese, during this time. It would also be possible for Fr Phillips to manipulate the total, as may have been done for 2016.

Any additional insights into this, how normal or unusual it may be, and how it may have benefited Fr Phillips, would be greatly appreciated.