Now we’re getting to something.

Yet another friend called back and he suggested I was chasing the wrong rabbit. He really wanted me to look at some of the things going on in the parishes so that I might get a sense of what the Diocese was “up against”. Up against? Why did he say it that way? The first thing is (and I don’t care if he’s reading this!) that good financial work means not getting distracted. Any time you are looking at an institution’s numbers and they tell you “don’t look here, look over there” you have to go back and really look “here”, that is, the first place you started.

Sometimes finance types try to be like magicians–they wave one hand to keep your eyes occupied while the other is deftly hiding something. So with due respect to my brother in Christ, I’m going to keep looking in the place I started. Which is funny because I haven’t really found anything special despite this call.