Central Dolan contemplates selling NY chancery in biting letter of the alphabet to priests

New York Key Timothy Dolan smiles after jubilant a Mass for young adults Dec. 7, 2016, at St. Patrick'south Cathedral in New York City. (CNS/Gregory A. Shemitz)

New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan has informed his clergy he is considering moving his archdiocese's headquarters out of the edifice it now occupies in midtown Manhattan in a bid to save money and to correct what he says is an "unfair and inaccurate perception of the archdiocese as some bloated, money-grabbing corporation."

The cardinal revealed the possible motion in a highly charged letter to his priests and deacons in late November in which he also takes the clergy to task for complaining well-nigh how the archdiocese collects money from its parishes and exhorts them to challenge parishioners to donate more frequently and abundantly.

Throughout the iv-folio letter, obtained past NCR, Dolan takes a biting tone, lamenting that his priests reportedly either mutter about the archdiocese interfering in their parishes' affairs or that his administration is not doing enough to support their item favored areas of ministry.

Pushing his priests to encourage their parishioners to give more money to the archdiocese, the key asks at one bespeak: "Why are we afraid to urge our people to sacrificial generosity?"

"The Evangelicals sure need stewardship!" he exhorts. "The Mormons sure do! Our Jewish Synagogues do! Planned Parenthood sure pushes its donors! The secular causes sure do!"

At another betoken in the certificate, titled Pastores Dabo Vobis ("I volition give them shepherds,") the key identifies that one "overarching problem" he is facing is "a mistrust of, and animosity towards, the archdiocese."

To combat that mistrust and the supposed public misperception of the archdiocese's financial health, Dolan says he is evaluating moving the archdiocesan chancery out of its current location at 1011 1st Avenue.

"We are seriously looking into smaller quarters," he writes. "1011 needs repair, and it's a good time to relieve the money and assist with a new prototype by moving into smaller, simpler quarters."

Several New York archdiocesan priests contacted past NCR deferred from commenting on the letter of the alphabet or the possible chancery movement, citing a desire to respect the archdiocese'southward controlling process.

Joseph Zwilling, the director of the office of communications for the archdiocese, said in a phone phone call Midweek that the idea of moving the chancery has been under discussion for a number of years, dating dorsum to before Dolan became archbishop in 2009.

Zwilling said the building, which was built in the 1970s, needs a fair corporeality of repair.

"We are at present considering the possibility and null has been decided at this betoken," he said. "This is something that obviously we would hash out with the finance council of the archdiocese, and we would seek their input as to the all-time way to go on, whether information technology would make sense to sell the property or to charter it."

Zwilling too said that when Dolan writes in his letter of a sense of mistrust of the archdiocese he is referring to a "natural inclination on the part of people to arraign the archdiocese."

"The archdiocese does want to expand its ministries and its outreach," he said. "But then anytime we talk nearly the demand to fundraise or the need to economize, people are e'er looking at the diocese and saying, 'All you lot care virtually is money.' "

"It's a hard hurdle to overcome, getting people to realize if we're going to be able to proceed to serve the people as they demand to be served ... nosotros exercise demand to discover ways to support that piece of work," said Zwilling.

Ane expert in Catholic fundraising and stewardship efforts said he was non surprised that Dolan was considering leasing or selling the archdiocesan chancery edifice — which would likely list at a heaven-high price in New York's real estate market — but said the tone of the cardinal'south letter had surprised him.

"The tone caught me off-baby-sit a little bit," said Charles Zech, the faculty director of the Center for Church Direction and Business organization Ethics at Villanova University. "I idea information technology was pretty sarcastic."

"I recall he'due south actually trying to make a point hither," said Zech, who has as well written several books on parish and diocesan financial structures and trends. "Maybe he's ... tried to educate the priests in the past and it didn't work, and so he thought maybe a different tone might be improve attracting their attending."

Dolan grabs attention in the letter of the alphabet with bolded and underlined statements, and with open questions directed to his priests. "How does this 'bloated, money-grabbing archdiocese' GET its money?" he asks at one point, earlier outlining a one-half-dozen of the archdiocese's revenue streams.

"When I listen to yous and your people, I usually hear you praise the archdiocese for its many initiatives, simply likewise asking us to do fifty-fifty more for what nosotros already got going, and to add more causes and needs the archdiocese should subsidize," the key tells his priests. "So I hear you claim, 'You lot enquire u.s.a. for money besides much!' "

Dolan peculiarly grumbles near a group of pastors in the archdiocese who he says operate parishes that take acceptable income and complain when the archdiocese asks for money.

"This minority will argue the money is theirs!" he writes. "They demand it! It belongs to the parish! It's unjust to give it away to the archdiocese! Our people tin't stand the archdiocese! Get out us solitary!"

The cardinal pits that supposed group against "the bulk of pastors who rejoice in this archdiocesan custom of the fifty% extraordinary tax on parishes with big income across the Dominicus offertory, because then this bounty tin can exist shared."

Imagining the response of parishes without adequate income, Dolan writes: " 'Why,' they ask, 'should these parishes, mostly Manhattan ones, go on all this coin to fix-upward rectories, decorate churches, pay choirs and staffs, when I can't even repair the boiler for lack of funds!' "

Another practiced in Catholic fundraising said he thought that the cardinal might have been trying to answer to a shift in mentality amidst priests in contempo decades to prefer more financial autonomy from their bishops.

"It seems to me that office of this letter is speaking to that outcome, and perhaps not in the all-time course only speaking to it nonetheless," said Richard Burke, senior executive consultant for Catholic School Management, which provides dioceses and bishops with advice on issues surrounding Catholic schools.

Besides mistrust of the archdiocese, Dolan identifies two other overarching problems in the letter of the alphabet.

The key presents the first problem as a question: "I keep asking, are we Catholics, or Congregationalists?"

"A Congregationalist will identify the Church with his own parish, or her own charitable, personal cause," he writes. "All money is local, and stays correct here. 'Dolan, go get your own money! This is our own!' "

"A Cosmic realizes the Church is always beyond us, universal, without boundaries," he continues. "Yep, nosotros have an understandable, commendable personal fidelity to our parish, just every bit Catholics, we also love our archdiocese and the worldwide Church."

Dolan says the second trouble is beingness agape to "challenge our people to stewardship."

"These are folks who give to all kinds of causes, political candidates, their colleges, boy and girl scouts, parks, fighting cancer, dog shelters, and I'one thousand glad they do all that," writes the cardinal.

"But why then are we timid about challenging them to fulfill their biblical duty to support, to the betoken of sacrifice, the Church — parish, archdiocese, and wider Church?" he asks.

Zech said that if he were writing the letter of the alphabet he might have addressed it also to the laity of the New York archdiocese, and then they could improve sympathize the need to donate to the church building.

"1 of the big problems that the Catholic church building faces is we have actually low givers," he said, citing statistics that a typical Catholic household contributes only nearly one.i pct of its income to the church building.

The Villanova professor also said that the New York archdiocese takes a lower amount of the money people requite to its parishes than other dioceses typically practise. In the letter, Dolan identifies his archdiocese's tax charge per unit on parish donations as eight percent.

Calling that number "really depression," Zech said "that really struck me as something that should exist emphasized to the priests."

Burke said he might have advised Dolan that instead of writing the letter to his priests he could have met with them in regional groupings to suggest them of the state of affairs facing the archdiocese.

"I think that would have gone much further to giving him a favorable response and letting his priests know that he was with them," said Shush.

"In that location are many that are going to run into this letter as a chastisement," he said. "Some are only going to throw information technology abroad. Others will use it as a ground for further negative discussion about their bishop."

The championship of Dolan's letter, Pastores Dabo Vobis, is besides the title of a 1992 apostolic exhortation by Pope John Paul II following the 1990 Synod of Bishops, which focused on priestly germination in the modernistic era.

Dolan ends the letter past telling his priests: "We're in it together, brothers."

"I'grand not complaining ... I'm challenging!" he writes. "I'm not griping ... I'k grateful."

[Joshua J. McElwee isNCR Vatican correspondent. His email address is jmcelwee@ncronline.org. Follow him on Twitter: @joshjmac.]

Below is Dolan's letter,Pastores Dabo Vobis

Pastores Dabo Vobis letter, Cardinal Timothy Dolan xi-23-xvi by National Catholic Reporter on Scribd

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