Render Unto Rome_ The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church - Jason Berry [1]
Every Sunday, Rose Mary Piper put a $10 check in the collection basket, a practice ingrained with time. Peter gave cash. The worldview Peter Borré carried from his navy years turned on just authority. You went to church, prayed for those you loved, asked forgiveness for your sins, and donated money because it was the right thing to do. Until the scandal rocked Boston neither of them thought much about church finances, how a given dollar broke down—what percentage went to parish costs, what part for the parochial school and to help the poor; how much to the bishop, how much to Rome. You gave money and let the priest and bishop handle it. The Catholic Church was holy, true, apostolic, and wealthy enough to help many of those truly in need.
The revolution in Peter Borrés’s life began in 2004, when the Boston archdiocese imposed a sweeping closure plan on parish churches some months after a legal settlement with 552 clergy abuse victims. Cardinal Law covered up for child molesters, brooded Rosie Piper, and now they sell churches! Peter Borré, who led a comfortable life, was also offended, but he soon acquired a cold curiosity about the money. As Borré would learn, many American Catholics were riled about just stewardship: how bishops manage the finances. Huge legal settlements caused by bishops who recycled pedophiles, churches closed against the people’s will, continuing reports of priests or lay staffers who stole parish funds—all fed a deep sense of betrayal. In 2010 an upsurge of clergy abuse cases showed bad decisions by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger long before he became pope. As Benedict XVI met with victims and apologized, he nevertheless seemed detached, in a surreal way, from the obvious need for structural reform.
Since the harrowing struggle of Benedict XV during World War I, the role of the pope has enlarged, dramatically, from that of a supreme religious leader to that of an international advocate for peace. Following the Great War, a succession of popes emerged as moral statesmen on the global stage, slowly distancing themselves from a history of anti-Semitic views within the church and calling for dialogue and diplomacy over armed conflict, particularly in the nuclear age. The evolution of the papacy as a force for peace took a major step in 1958, when John XXIII, who as papal nuncio in Istanbul during the war had helped save Jews, abolished the phrase “treacherous Jews” from the Good Friday liturgy. He greeted a delegation of American Jews with an echo of the Old Testament account of Joseph in Egypt: “I am Joseph, your brother.”1
His successor, Paul VI, made a point of often saying, “If you want peace, work for justice.”2 Even Pius XII—the focus of an ongoing debate among historians and Jewish leaders about his reticence during World War II toward condemning Hitler and the Nazis—was revered in postwar years as a voice of peace. Pius’s questioned legacy results not just from revisionist historians. Ironically, John Paul II raised the expectations for a church more honest about itself in his call for “the purification of the memory.”3 A champion of human rights in the political sphere, John Paul in his many apologies for past church sins cited “sufferings inflicted upon Jews,”4 though he mentioned no pope by name.
In his last dozen years, John Paul damaged his own legacy on human rights by failing to appropriately acknowledge the victims of clergy child abusers and to act forcefully on the clear signs of a criminal sexual underground in clerical culture. Benedict XVI inherited a Vatican tribunal system averse to punishing bishops who were sex offenders or complicit in concealing them. By failing to show resolve as a ruler and bring the worst bishops to justice, Benedict has invited scrutiny of the Vatican’s legal system, such as it is. Vatican offices have largely rubber-stamped bishops’ financial decisions. How