The headline from an article in the latest e-edition of the Catholic Courier is “Diocese, parishes strive for transparency”

That caught my attention, so I read on. Here are various quotes of interest, all seeming to suggest that the Diocese of Rochester is boasting about its transparency when it comes to letting you know where your donations go:

“This really shows that the diocese views transparency as non-negotiable”

“She added that demonstrating accountability helps build trust with the faithful and increases their tendency to donate”

““Transparency allows people to feel more comfortable. If they know their money is going to be spent on something of value, they’ll be more likely to contribute,” he said. “People are really good at filling a need if they feel it’s a genuine, legitimate need.””

Ok, I can’t stop laughing. Perhaps they would like to explain where the transparency is with regard to the CMA allocations. Here is how the CMA allocations page looks today (no information on how much money is going to each recipient):

And here is how it looked quite some time ago (percentages in tact):

Sure, they still tell you where the money is going, but they no longer tell you how much of your money is going to each recipient. Again, this is probably because it looks really bad that more money is going to CMA overhead than our Catholic schools (which are receiving a pathetic 5% according to the CMA allocations in the second image). So when a person goes to check out the allocations page today, they’ll see that Catholic schools is listed among other causes and think to themselves, “Oh, how nice! I must support our Catholic schools. I’m going to write a check right now.” Yeah, but little do they know that only 5% of that check will go to Catholic schools, while 6% goes to… who knows what… postage, flyers, mailings, CMA music videos?

So much for transparency.

Tags: Bishop Clark, Keeping the Spirit Alive, Progressive Drivel

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 31st, 2009 at 12:43 PM . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.