Alright, lets step outside the Catholics of Pleasanton and head about 30 minutes from there down I-580 to the Chancery offices on the shores of Lake Merritt. There you will find the Cathedral of Christ the Light and our debt; I mention them in the same sentence because both control our future here in Dioecesis Quercopolitana. Today I will cover two aspects of our situation that relate to the Cathedral and the debt. First will be the history that led us to the decisions the Bishops made, and the second is how the way a diocese is incorporated can have a direct impact on the way decisions are made on your behalf.

An Extremely Abridged History Lesson

What we think of as the Diocese of Oakland has its roots in 1962 with the Cathedral of St. Francis de Sales being established as our mother church and the installation of Bishop Begin as our first Bishop. Ironically as we shall see, Bishop Begin chose to refurbish the existing St. Francis de Sales rather than build a new Cathedral. He set the tone for stewardship at that point. My how that view changed. Essentially there have been two earthquakes over the past 53 years in Oakland which have materially damaged our Diocese, one literal and one figurative.

The literal earthquake occurred at 5:04 pm on October 17, 1989 and was centered just outside of Santa Cruz California. Called the “Loma Prieta” earthquake, it was a magnitude 6.9 and in addition to killing 63 people and being covered live on national television due to it occurring during a World Series broadcast, it severely damaged the Cathedral of St. Francis de Sales. Repair estimates showed the cathedral would cost $8M to fix, which was deemed (at the time) too costly. The Cathedral of St. Francis de Sales was torn down in 1993. This seems to be a decision of Bishop Cummins that honored the frugal and humble spirit of Bishop Begin’s original decision not to build a new Cathedral in back in 1962.

12 years later that $8M repair bill looked like a bargain for the laity of the Oakland Diocese. In 2005 then Bishop Vigneron determined that a new $131M cathedral was in fact, not costly at all. This means that the Bishops of Oakland decided in a span of little more than a decade that $8M was too much to spend and that $131M was just about right. The final cost of the Cathedral has since gone up to $190M. For those who remember, there was an extremely vigorous debate as to whether or not to build.  Bishop Vigneron, as we shall see, had final say.

The second and figurative earthquake was years in developing: the child molestation scandal. Our diocese, while not the only one to shield and move around abusive priests and failing to protect our children, seems to have had a particularly bad record (which I will not go into here) culminating in $60M being paid out in settlements to victims in cases dating back to the 1970’s. Bishops Cummins and Vigneron oversaw the settlements and about half of the amount paid came from insurance the diocese carried. The other half came from our own church assets. Neither Bishop was held personally liable for the transfers of the molesting priests that factored so heavily in this egregious problem.

In addition to all this, there is no mention of the cost of what must be an ornate and very expensive rotating door apparently installed on the Bishop’s office at the Chancery. To date we have had the following men occupy that office:

The Most Rev. Floyd Lawrence Begin for 15 years
The Most Rev. John Stephen Cummins for 36 years
The Most Rev. Allen Henry Vigneron for 6 years
Rev. Daniel Danielson (interim admin) for 9 months
The Most Rev. Salvatore Cordileone for 3 years
The Most Rev. Alexander Brunett for 1 year
The Most Rev. Michael C. Barber, SJ (2013–present)

I note the men here, because the first six of them are directly responsible for the current state of our Diocesan finances. Heavy emphasis must of course fall on Bishops Cummins and Vigneron as they signed off on approximately $220M ($190M Cathedral + $30M in settlements–I am netting out insurance here) in expenditures during their tenure. Bishop Cordileone must have seen where this was headed and begged for the quick exit, not before taking out a $114M loan for all of us though.

A Corporation Sole

As I have mentioned in a previous post, the Diocese is organized as a corporation sole. This vests sole legal and fiduciary authority in the Bishop. Here is a good a description as any as to how a Corporation Sole works especially when we compare it against what most of us think as “corporations” these days:

“The distinction between an aggregate and sole corporation, growing out of the different modes of constitution and forms of action, is striking and obvious. A bishop or parsons acting in a corporate capacity and holding property to him and his successor in right of office, has no need of a corporate name, he performs all legal acts under his own seal, in his own name and name of office; his own will alone regulates his acts, needs no treasurer, for he has no personal property except the rents and proceeds for the corporate estate, and these he takes to his own use when received. By-laws are unnecessary, for he regulates his own action, by his own will and judgment, like any other individual acting in his own right. These examples are sufficient to clarify the legal distinctions between the two classes of corporations.” ….. (The Massachusetts Supreme Court, in the case of The Overseers of the Poor of the City of Boston v. David Sears 39 Mass (2Pick) 122 at 128 (1839)”)

You would be forgiven for thinking that I am over emphasizing the independent nature of the expenditures of the Bishops in Oakland; that whole groups of people are involved in such decisions. And whole teams are, but it is also very fair to say that sole authority means sole responsibility. Please understand, the Diocese of Oakland is organized this way but this is in no way unique. Oakland is doing it the way most churches do. And lest we think this is a Catholic “thing”, many churches are organized this way, even the Mormons. Corporations Sole are in fact a very, very old corporate structure, so this is nothing new either.

But because organizing as a Corporation Sole is “common” amongst ecclesiastic institutions and  doesn’t make it right. Just because a tool is available doesn’t mean it is the best one. A corporation sole may be good for the Bishop, but it is not necessarily good for the laity. Because if you are a Bishop and your employees are harming children and you want to build a Cathedral with money you don’t have, you don’t have to really consult with anyone to get it done. A CEO in a run-of-the-mill C corporation would have to answer to his shareholders; a corporation Sole can regard its shareholders and its customers (because in a church they are one in the same) with impunity bordering on malfeasance. That is essentially what you have when you decide to spend money to build a Cathedral already knowing that you have seriously hurt children in your care. What single “corporation” in America breaks ground on new headquarters a full three years before settling the most horrible lawsuits imaginable against it? What kind of hubris does making a decision like that take?

With this background, tomorrow we will take on the mortgaging of the Oakland Diocesan treasure as a means to finance these decisions. In the meantime it is worth meditating on repentance.

The truly repentant don’t build a garden, they fix what they have and honor a people they have harmed. The truly repentant leave a vacant lot where a damaged cathedral once stood and pray for forgiveness. They look at their people and and say, “forgive us, please.”