Questions That Won't Go Away

As I've said here before, like Edward G. Robinson's claIms manager Keyes in Double Indemnity, "I've got a little man". There are just too many questions that stay in my mind about the version of St Thomas More's finances that Fr Bergman gives in his explanations to the parish. Here are the two that trouble me most, and that ought to trouble Bp Lopes:

What is the precise problem at the Guild Building?

Here's the explanation in Fr Bergman's general appeal:

[F]or two years now the Parish has been on track to be the beneficiary of a significant new income stream: the re-opening – thanks to generous benefactors – of a Catholic bookstore and coffee shop in downtown Scranton whose projected income figures were very promising; all proceeds were to support our Parish and School. Sadly, through no fault whatsoever of our benefactors nor the Parish, the project has ground to an abrupt halt and is likely headed for the courts.

Here's the version in Fr Bergman's Pentecost parish newsletter:

For the last two years we believed that financial relief was going to come through the proceeds we would receive from our project downtown, namely the opening of a gift store and coffee shop in the old Guild Building. While we as a parish invested only what was required to have a business incorporated in the state of Pennsylvania, amounting to less than $2,500, our benefactors invested hundreds of thousands of dollars hoping to get u up and running at some point last year. They have now taken a bath, as the project is unfinished, the general contractor is off the job, and the space cannot be rented out to help pay down the mortgage.

The project is suspended indefinitely while legal matters wait to be sorted out. . .

Fr Bergrman's versions refer to vague problems involving the "benefactors" and the Guild Building. This led me to think there may have been overall problems with the acquisition of the building itself, which could have led to potential legal issues. The "benefactors" involved are the Evanish family, who purchased the building from the Catholic Diocese of Scranton in 2014 and proposed allowing the parish to use the ground floor for its bookstore. In vain I searched the web for any reference to issues arising from the purchase, or perhaps zoning or city planning problems arising from the purchase.

News articles relating to the sale indicate the Evanish family intended to use the upper floors for their dental practice, and Fr Bergman's versions allowed me to think problems with the building itself or its acquisition were what caused the Evanishes to "take a bath". However, Horizon Dental, the Evanish firm, is fully up and running in its Guild Building location at 400 Wyoming Avenue.

This leads me to think that the unspecified problem that threatens legal complications is related only to the modification of the ground-floor space for the bookstore. Whatever it is, all we know is it has come about "through no fault whatsoever" of the parish. So whose fault is it? It's worth pointing out that Fr Bergman is fond of avoiding blame in his public statements. Take his Christmas 2015 appeal for funds, which I covered here in this post.

Due to no fault of our own our parish was not billed for our property and liability insurance coverage in fiscal year 2014-2015.

This in turn leads to a contradiction in Fr Bergman's versions of whether the parish has reserves. In the Christmas 2015 appeal, he says

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.

while in the May 2016 appeal he says,

Though for a while we have managed to expend and then rebuild our reserve, in recent months we have exhausted our reserve and have now reached a point at which our expenses consistently and significantly exceed our income.

So the parish has never had a reserve, or it did, but now it's gone. It's hard to avoid thinking Fr Bergman says whatever suits him at the time, and that's inappropriate for matters that are this serious. That bothers me. I've got a little man.

How much money are we actually talking about here?

All Fr Bergman tells us is that

We have stalled in our ability to send payments to the generous individuals who loaned us funds ($150,000+) for the renovation of our buildings.

Elsewhere, there are vague references to an income shortfall or thousands of dollars in unpaid bills, but there is no specific accounting. In his Pentecost letter, Fr Bergman says

the amount of money we send to the Ordinariate Chancery in Houston seems like a lot – we’ll send about $34,000 this year

It isn't clear if this amount represents the Cathedraticum, which would be 10% of parish income, or whether, as a visitor suggests, it might also include "the $12,000 the parish was asked to give to the Bishop's Appeal". If $34,000 represents the Cathedraticum alone, that would put its overall income at $340,000, a respectable amount for even a diocesan parish. This is probably not the case.

On the other hand, I'm not sure if Fr Bergman actually knows the parish's real income, given the overall lack of budgeting we see. If the contribution includes the Bishop's Appeal, this would be covered mainly by separate payments from parishioners and shouldn't be lumped in with the Cathedraticum. I would say that the $34,000 figure is largely a strategy to promise Houston this amount, providing some lucky gift or bequest turns up -- otherwise, it's completely empty and designed primarily to keep the heat off Fr Bergman for some period.

The lack of any actual enumeration of the parish's income shortfall, the lack of any enumeration of the parish's actual debts, and the lack of any strategy to correct the problem are all disturbing.

They should be disturbing to Bp Lopes. In the real world, an employee who got a company into a financial or potential legal hole like this would be, at minimum, put on some sort of leave while the legal and audit departments had a close look at what was happening. So far, I don't think Houston's response is adequate.