An Open Letter to US Dioceses

The Annual Appeal was launched in our diocese this weekend, as it has been or will be in many other dioceses, with a sound-tracked video at every Mass and a step-by-step walk-through of the completion of pledge cards. While I sympathize with the committee that came up with that tedious line-by-line approach, it doesn’t wear well on adults.

Instead, maybe give us an honest accounting of where our money has gone, the steps taken to protect and report it, and a picture of the accounting best practices that assure us the money is spent as intended. Maybe that, instead of, “On the first line, write your name. We’ll wait.”

Maybe tell us about the engagement of independent auditors to oversee the implementation of proper internal controls and the production of attested financial statements. An audit is so effective a tool that when Cardinal George Pell, as Prefect of the Vatican Secretariat for the Economy, contracted with PriceWaterhouseCoopers to audit the Vatican accounts, false charges were advanced to force him back to Australia. Needless to say, the audit was cancelled, Pell was whisked away from Rome to a sham trial, and he was effectively neutralized as a financial reformer.

No substantial business with stakeholders could dream of not having an audit; it’s the only way the public can be assured that a business is doing what it says on the label. No public company can opt out of an annual audit; it’s in SEC regulations, to protect stockholders.

Why should dioceses be any different? They should be held to a higher standard not a lower, given that they act in the name of Christ. But an audit takes carte blanche away from diocesan employees who are not accustomed to outside scrutiny.

In the past, we’ve trusted the oversight of bishops and the proficiency and good intentions of chancery staff. That is no longer a prudent strategy, if it ever was. Blind trust with no accountability may actually encourage shoddy behavior.

In truth, how many bishops take personal responsibility for the funds contributed? Many have inherited a command structure in the chancery that actively precludes any possibility of personal agency. “For goodness’ sake, don’t rock the boat, Your Excellency. People won’t like you.”

So, practically speaking, we’re not even blindly trusting a bishop when we give to appeals with no transparency; we’re blindly trusting lay employees who may not be identifiable behind the protective curtain of the diocesan business office.

Here in Tyler, Texas, some of us still wonder why no one in the chancery spoke up for our bishop when he was removed without process. Presented with an appeal relying on trust for those same people, we still wonder. While that is a concern unique to Tyler, it speaks to the assumption that the faithful will blindly hand over money to people who are disconnected from the issues that most deeply concern us.

We have been given no hard information about the financial decision-making and oversight processes, just mention of the seminarians and Catholic Charities, as if that establishes the case.

In our diocese, we can contribute separately to a fund for seminarians. We can contribute separately to the college campus ministry or to the St. Vincent de Paul Society. We can, in effect, bypass the Annual Appeal without neglecting the causes we care about.

That leaves Catholic Charities. Early in 2025, it was confirmed what many of us suspected already, that Catholic Charities was facilitating human and drug trafficking at the Southern border. When an appeal is presented that benefits Catholic Charities, we immediately call to mind the 300,000+ minor children who disappeared into the interior of the country with no protection; the fentanyl highway; the fees that human smugglers demand, so high that a period of indenture (slavery) is required; and the undocumented millions of dollars that were made during the Biden invasion from sex commerce at the border.

I’m not saying the bishops are guilty, but if they ask for money, they should, by golly, address these concerns in some plausible way beyond, “We didn’t do it.”

There were huge grants to Catholic Charities from Biden’s executive agencies, over $2.3 billion during his administration. Catholic Charities of Fort Worth, alone, increased its annual revenue from $32 million to $289 million during the Biden years, with $270 million coming from the government. What would account for an 800 percent increase in funding?

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