Transparency and Accountability
April 20, 2006, 5:31 am
Posted by Robert P. Imbelli
“Transparency” and “accountability” have been the watchwords of many, both laity and clergy, who yearn for authentic renewal in the church. Cardinal Sean O’Malley is leading the Archdiocese of Boston to unprecedented financial disclosures that offer promise for the future.
Today’s Boston Globe gives extensive coverage to the matter.
Two initial impressions from those present at yesterday’s meeting with the priests of the Archdiocese.
Gratitude for the generosity and competence of the lay people involved in the audit and studies; and a sense of a newly energized Cardinal ready to draw upon the spiritual and material resources of a troubled, but gifted local church.
It is my experience that many who insist on transparency and accountability from their Church or government, often dread it within their homes and families.
It makes one wonder why it should be so.
Andre, I’m not sure I get your point. We need our church and our government to be transparent and accountable since humans run those bodies. The only reason people did not insist in prior times is because one would be killed or punished for requesting this. We are talking about the public good.
We hope to be accountable and transparent in our families. But it surely is not common that those who demand such in public are lacking in private, despite your experience.
At any rate, thanks to Robert for blogging this. No question O’Malley deserves credit for his action. And VOTF acknowledged that as it shoud. http://www.votf.org/Press/pressrelease/041906.html
“No question O’Malley deserves credit for his action”? How much credit? Would the archdiocese have been ready to make its financial state public if the lay people in their simplicity had continued to pay as before? Isn’t this sudden burst of candor designed to do nothing so much as put the laity in a mood to give again, as if they should be grateful to have learned what they had every moral right to be told reguarly all along? And what of Cardinal Law? After his disgraceful performance in Boston, after which, had he any shame, he should have retired to a monastery, instead he was honored with a position of importance in Rome. It is too late for John Paul to apologize to the people of Boston for this appointment . It is not to late for the Cardinal to apologize to the people of Boston for having accepted it.
A footnote on Joe’s comments on Cardinal Law, who not only got appointed Archpriest of St. Mary Major in Rome, but as of last April, served on:
• Congregation for Eastern Churches
• Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments
• Congregation for Bishops
• Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples
• Congregation for the Clergy
• Congregation for Consecrated Life and the Societies of Apostolic Life
• Congregation for Catholic Education
• Council for the Family
John Allen in NCR commented on the importance of these appointments:
“Ironically, while his appointment to St. Mary Major triggered a wave of criticism in the United States, his membership in these Vatican offices has been almost entirely overlooked, even though it is far more consequential in terms of church politics. As a member of the Congregation for Bishops, for example, Law is in a position to influence the appointment of bishops to the American church. On the Congregation for Education, Law will help guide policy on the apostolic visitation of American seminaries, which was triggered by the very crisis of which Law has become the leading symbol.”
http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/update/conclave/pt041105c.htm