Render Unto Rome_ The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church - Jason Berry [203]
Creating a commission to clean up the Vatican Bank, like the punishment of Maciel and takeover of the Legion, suggests a pope gaining confidence with his powers. The powers are supreme. How far should he go? To let the likes of Cardinal Sodano simply age and slip away is a passive sign that justice is a ritual of half measures. The pope cannot be an authentic voice for peace, affirm the dignity of human life, and preach the values of a greener planet if people see that Vatican justice is a farce. Will justice sink beneath the weight of popes forever bound to the hubris of apostolic succession? Questions hang; a hungry people wait.
The miracle is that the Eucharist endures.
NOTES
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The many interviews for this book involved countless follow-up calls and e-mails; to have listed each interview as a citation was impractical. Most direct quotations are not cited as footnotes. I have kept background sources, who spoke with assurance of anonymity, to a minimum; but investigative reporting, particularly at the Vatican and in high levels of the Catholic Church, relies on some sources with careers to protect, hence their insistence on not being identified. The notes list a small number of interviews that were germane to specific points like a published citation. Many of the news articles and documents cited in this book can be found in the online library archive www.bishopaccountability.org.
PROLOGUE: PRINCES OF THE REALM
1. Hans Küng, The Catholic Church: A Short History (New York, 2001), p. 181.
2. Message of Pope Paul VI, Celebration of the Day of Peace, January 1, 1972, www.vatican.va.
3. Luigi Accattoli, When a Pope Asks for Forgiveness: The Mea Culpa’s of John Paul II (Boston, 1998), p. 96.
4. Ibid., p. 118.
5. James Gollin, Worldly Goods (New York, 1971), p. 492.
6. Sam Dillon and Leslie Wayne, “Scandals in the Church: The Money,” New York Times, June 13, 2002.
7. Ibid.
8. Brian Ross, “Archbishop Settles Sex Assault Claim,” Good Morning America, May 23, 2002.
9. Tom Heinan, “Rome Endowments to Honor Weakland,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, November 22, 1997.
10. Rembert G. Weakland, A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church: Memoirs of a Catholic Archbishop (Grand Rapids, MI, 2009), p. 341. Weakland’s account of the legal settlement with Paul Marcoux—whom I interviewed as part of the ABC News investigation—is a study in self-pity, riddled with inaccuracies.
11. James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago, 1987), p. 214.
12. Douglas MacMillan, “A Business Plan for the Catholic Church,” Business-Week, September 30, 2008.
13. The Catholic Church in America—Meeting Real Needs in Your Neighborhood (Washington, DC: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2002), pp. 13–14.
14. Harris provided his opinion in a telephone interview after extensive dialogue on his interpretation of data.
15. Harris utilized the data from Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA). He explains: “Estimates for the total parish Offertory collection for the years 2002 through 2006 were calculated as follows. CARA annually collected Offertory collection data from members of the International Catholic Stewardship Council (ICSC). In addition to estimates for the Offertory collection, ICSC members also provided estimates of the number of households by diocese. The response rate for these data requests was approximately 65 percent. The data were organized according to a structure of seven geographic regions: Northeast, South Atlantic, South, Great Lakes, Midwest, Mountain, and Pacific. We first developed an average household donation by diocese for every responding diocese. The regional average statistic was then multiplied by the number of households in a diocese that did not report Offertory collection data. The reported data and the calculated data were added together to form an estimated total Offertory collection