JUNE 3, 2007

I have in my hands a letter from "The Bishop's Curia" which contains the following paragraph:

"I observe that some pastors have arbitrarily and boldly presumed to charge the parish treasury large amounts of money paid to a lay parish secretary. This is definitely unlawful and cannot be tolerated. All secretarial work must be done by the pastors and their assistants. If help is obtained, a pro-rata charge should be levied on the personal funds of the parish priests, who neglect their work. I am surprised at this recent departure from traditional parish management at a time when our priests are well paid, and when the parish treasury is already heavily burdened by a liberal allowance for salaries of priests, food and domestic services."

What a bombshell! The bishop of Pittsburgh demands that all clerical work be done by the priests and not by professional clerical staff. And if the priests seek help, they are to pay for it out of their own personal funds, since they are over-paid already!

Fortunately, the Bishop of Pittsburgh who wrote these words was Bishop Hugh Boyle - who is long dead now - and the date he wrote it was May, 1948 - almost 60 years ago.

Today, we know that such expectations are hopelessly antiquated and pragmatically impossible. To run a parish calls for skills of word processing, accounting, filing, scheduling, inventorying, and management of computers, copiers, phone and messaging systems, record keeping and correspondence. It takes a professional clerical staff who are trained in office management and accounting, especially in a large, active and complex parish like ours, if there is any hope to keep organized and running efficiently. And they must be paid a just wage from the budget of the parish to do so.

We are quite fortunate here at St. John of God to have a competent clerical staff made up of our own parishioners, who not only have professional dedication to their work, but ministerially always have the best interests of the parish at heart.

Mary Ann Jones, whose title is Director of Finances, deals with all the financial matters such as banking, bill paying, diocesan reporting, budgeting, etc. She administers the mandated Quicken program for the diocese. She also manages the Bingo and various fund raising events such as the recent Ladies High Tea and the Mardi Gras Dance.

From Monday through Friday, the parish secretary, Jan Lipa, is on duty. Her job is to answer phones and doors, assist parishioners who come to the office for such things as Mass requests and registration. She publishes the weekly bulletin, and manages our parish data base using the program Parish Data System. This means she posts the account of all envelop offerings, keeps current on names and addresses, records the sacraments, handles the mail and messages and generally tries to keep the priests organized so that we can preach and administer the sacraments.

Our two cemeteries are ably managed by our “cemeterian” Karen Vinci-Stack. She takes care of all grave sales and scheduling of burials, as well as purchasing, dealing with undertakers and grieving families, and overseeing the maintenance crew. She performs a similar financial function to Mary Ann in terms of bill paying, payroll, etc., and some tasks similar to Jan’s as far as record keeping is concerned. In addition, she serves as our “computer geek” for all of the parish ministries.

We welcome the professional and personal expertise of these fine office personnel, and are most proud that they are simultaneously our fellow parishioners whom we see regularly at Mass and the social functions of the parish, as well as around the neighborhood. It is a bonus!

Bishop Boyle allowed priests to employ "domestic services" such as cooks, housekeepers and laundresses. We do not employ such services here. He forbade using clerical staff, which in this day and age we find to be a necessity. He must be turning over in his grave. What a shame for him!