False Problems?

Frederick W. Gluck’s article, Crisis Management in the Church (12/1), is flawed by several statements that are not supported by the available data.

The church’s traditional sources of revenues are drying up. Some weeks ago I finished writing a report that analyzed contributions to Sunday collections and diocesan annual appeals in the years 2001 and 2002. I found that Catholic household giving in the Sunday collections increased from $5.573 billion in 2001 to $5.846 billion for 2002, an increase of $273 million or 4.9 percent. This increase happened in the midst of high unemployment, a recession and the painful and lengthy revelation of the sexual abuse tragedy.

Catholic giving to diocesan annual appeals declined from $650 million in 2001 to about $635 million for 2002. About half of that national drop happened in Boston. The decline in the other 175 geographic dioceses averaged a more modest 1.1 percent, not surprising in a troubled economy.

The church’s ability to recruit has declined dramatically over the last 40 years. I happened to be working on church staffing data recently and found that the number of professional parish ministers increased from 54,055 in 1995 to 63,065 for 2002.

In addition, the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, at Georgetown University, has reported that there are approximately 35,000 students in graduate programs of religious studies and religious education.

I think that we need to find some negative numbers before we can rightly declare a staffing crisis.

A number of other statements in the article mystified me. Mr. Gluck stated, for example, that the plant is rapidly becoming obsolete. Perhaps so, but I would like to see the data supporting such a statement. I am familiar with the current rebuilding program in Chicago, where the archdiocese raised in excess of $200 million to repair its buildings.

While discussions of management issues in the church can be fascinating, we should be careful that we are discussing solutions for problems that do in fact exist.

Joseph Claude Harris

Church Management

I appreciate the observations of Frederick W. Gluck in Crisis Management in the Church (12/1). There are, however, some special circumstances that should be kept in mind in discussing management policies in the church.

First, church members and clergy are volunteers, and they cannot be managed by the same principles as those applied to salaried employees.

Second, shortly after the Second Vatican Council, a number of religious orders made use of management firms to attempt to plan their future ministry, but the results of careful planning by consultants unfamiliar with the church brought great disturbance to parishes and schools that were left out of the planning process. (They were often consulted, but with no real input).

Third, the theology of the church, which supports both our present hierarchical structure and the special character of the clergy, militates against the kind of accountability that good corporate management sees as necessary.

Finally, a national conference of bishops, according to Canon Law, cannot make the strong public commitment to managerial change that Mr. Gluck suggests. There is only one C.E.O. of the church, and he resides abroad and will not share his authority with the U.S. bishops.

I hope, nonetheless, that the church in the United States can begin to take steps toward better management in this difficult time. There are many initiatives that could contribute to a turnaround.

(Msgr.) Frank Mouch