Rod Dreher continues his relentless exposure of the deep corruption in the Roman Catholic Church.
In his latest installment, The Cancer of the Cover-Up Mentality, Dreher reports on the unsolved 1969 murder of the young nun, Sister Cathy Cesnik.
In his August 11th entry, The Church's Coming Catastrophe, we find in Update 2 good advice from a priest on what is to be done:
4. Can the laity effect change now?
Yes, they can. Here’s how they do it. It’s very simple. Stop giving money to any bishop’s campaign or national collection until Rome starts an investigation into the McCarrick situation.
1. When you tithe to your parish designate on your check or envelope that the money is reserved and to go to your building or maintenance fund.
What the bishops did to protect the diocesan and parish assets is they made each of the parishes their own corporations (not sure if all dioceses did this). In doing so it makes it much easier to donate directly to the individual corporation. If you simply donate in the collection plate and do not designate then the diocese will tax that money, but if you designate your gift and restrict it only to be used by the parish the diocese cannot legally touch it. But (to my knowledge) you must designate it to a particular function of the parish like a maintenance fund or even a particular ministry. Ask your pastor how to do this.
2. Stop giving to the bishop’s annual appeal. Send the request envelope back and state why you are not giving.
3. Stop giving to the second collections unless they go to your parish specifically (those are designated gifts). All of those second collections are national or diocesan. You may want to give to some that you really believe in, but if they go to diocesan offices (many do) then don’t give.
Consider how many ways bishops get your money:
- They tax the parish between 6% and 13% from the collection plateThere is the annual bishop’s appeal
There are numerous Sunday second collections that go to diocesan offices
Bishops will also start large scale capital campaigns. If you look at where the money goes a large portion will often go to sustaining chancery services.
If you starve the bishops of cash they will change or you will render their influence far less effectual on the individual parishes. I think what we need to see is parishes with “good” priests and congregations having more power. Essentially the way to do that is to render the bishop as irrelevant as possible upon your parish.