Just wondering if you heard that Our Lady of the Atonement will file for bankruptcy. School enrollment is low and I guess donations are down. If this parish and school are supposed to be the model for the Ordinariate, how did this happen? I think this Anglican-to-Catholic experiment is not working out. They should just come in to The Church like all the other converts. Of course they might have to hold their noses at first.About a week ago I heard from a visitor who asked if I'd received a copy of the parish annual report. The visitor implied it was bad news, but provided no other detail.
I'm posting this sooner than my usual schedule in hopes other visitors may be able to provide more information. A web search provides no other information.
UPDATE: A copy of the annual report is here. The report from the business manager included within it makes it plain that the parish is not meeting its current expenses from revenue, but so far, I don't see the term "bankruptcy". In addition, a letter from Fr Lewis transmitting the report says only,
Dear Friend of Our Lady of the Atonement Catholic Church and The Atonement Academy, We have completed our parish’s very first annual report, “Moving Forward Together,” a report that reflects upon the previous year and also looks forward to the continued development and growth of both our Catholic church and our Catholic, classical school. You may click here to directly access the report on our website.While the report does outline deficit operations with no clear path to solvency, the financial reports are buried in back, and Fr Lewis's letter, quite bland, reflects no particular urgency and speaks only of "continued development and growth". If anyone has more information, particularly specifics on a plan to file for bankruptcy, I'll be most grateful to learn of it.I hope each of you will review the Annual Report 2018 2019 carefully, and I also hope you will find i n those pages a parish, church and school that incorporates Catholic faith and values in every possible way and that also responds to its community with transparency and dependability. Our heritage and traditions are vital to our future, and so too are th e parishioners and school families that have brought to 2019 2020 with great hope for the future! We pray to continue to be deserving of your support.
May God bless you for your continued support of Our Lady of The Atonement Catholic parish our church and our school. We must “Move Forward Together!”
UPDATE: A web search is mostly unhelpful in locating exactly what a Catholic parish bankruptcy means. However, this article in The American Conservative offers some indirect insight:
The diocese of San Diego, for instance, reported to the bankruptcy court that it had over 500 accounts. But these were merely entries in a “Parish, School Diocese Loan Trust Account”, maintained in a single bank account at Union Bank of California.What I believe is the case at Our Lady of the Atonement is that when it was in the Archdiocese of San Antonio, it could benefit from this sort of pooling within the school account. When OLA left the archdiocese for the ordinariate, it may have lost the ability to fudge its accounts this way, but in addition, it had taken out new loans from the archdiocese for school construction that remains incomplete. It's easy to think Abp Garcia-Siller may not be in a mood to let OLA remain delinquent indefinitely.Such pooling saves on administrative costs and allows dioceses to use a surplus in one area to cover shortfalls in another, often a legitimate course of action. But it has presented problems when it comes to working out which assets belong to whom in bankruptcy proceedings.
Input from knowledgeable parties will be most gratefully accepted.
