Saturday, August 26, 2006

Show Us the Money, Bishop Sklba

Provincial Emails catches another interesting fish:

It also left the question about what Bishop Sklba, who continues as Auxiliary Bishop, learned from the experience [the $450K payout of Archdiocesan funds to a grifter/friend of Abp. Weakland.] It appears he learned nothing, according to this "Herald of Hope" column in our Catholic Herald on the recent meeting of the Catholic Biblical Association.

I was re-elected to my third term as chair of the board of trustees ... a minor task which simply requires a five-minute stand up report on the health of the investments of the society.

As a trustee he has what the law calls a fiduciary duty to oversee the activities of the association. A bishop, whose very title I understand comes from the Greek word for overseeing, has at least as high a duty to the people of his diocese. Yet here he is making a joke of his duties as chairman of a board of trustees. It might make for an interesting line of questions in his next deposition.

But that's not the fun part, even though terms like Sarbanes-Oxley come to mind (perhaps inapplicable here...) THIS is the fun part:

While our Archdiocese might be headed for bankruptcy, the CBA is not.

We have a substantial nest egg, generated from royalties to the association because of the generous work of our members in producing and revising the New American Bible.

That's the Bible translation required to be used at Mass in the U.S.

Perhaps the Catholic Biblical Association should tell US Catholics exactly how they are spending our money...aside from the snippy little letters they send which express "concerns" about authoritative documents from the Congregation for Divine Worship.

You could ask them, I suppose:

Dianne Bergant, C.S.A., President
Francis J. Moloney, S.D.B., Vice President
Joseph Jensen, O.S.B., Executive Secretary
Lawrence E. Boadt, C.S.P., Treasurer
Richard J. Dillon, General Editor, CBQ
Christopher T. Begg, General Editor, OTA
Mark Stratton Smith, General Editor, CBQMS
Most Rev. Richard J. Sklba, Chair, Board of Trustees
Dennis C. Duling, Consultor
Corrine Patton, Consultor
Amy-Jill Levine, Consultor
Karen A. Barta, Consultor

Stuff like "How much is there?" "What are the uses of funds?" "Do you document the expenses?" and "Can you substantiate a NEED for the funds? What might that NEED be?"

Perhaps it's not our business, eh?

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