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Welcome to a browse of

an eyebrow-raising study

exploring financial accountability & transparency today
on 1000+ UK Catholic parish & diocesan websites

  
     
 

 

with some forward-thinking suggestions

that bishops may appreciate

(mindful of 26 November 2023, maybe)

 
 

such as updating their Canon 1287.2 public thank-yous

to parishioners and other 'offerers of goods' today

(and maybe let'em say Yea or Nay to changes)

  
   

OpenBooks is about a puzzling data - seen from working through websites.

In a time when everyone has embraced most aspects of IT - social meida.  Yet one is missing - the fnancial reports that since November Canon Law ha reuirred patrish priests to make. Few are seen paroish webistes. Also rare are miniutes.  And there's little by way of record of the parish. So OpenBooks presents the data - and make suggstions that bishops have in their gift to make if they want to enhance transparency and reinfroce accountabiity.

The Porject is avauabke as a three-part report, and key information is on this website.

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Some questions before you start to browse
It'll introduce you to Webful Blindness, Cliqueralism,

 
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Is OpenBooks in academic or ecclestiastical language and style? 
Not really. One model is the first Catholic President of the USA, whose office around 1962 - maybe an input to Vatican II - was said to have this note: “My own old-fashioned belief is that every Presidential message should be a model of grace, lucidity and taste in expression.  At the very least, each message should be in English, clear and trenchant in its style, logical in its structure, and devoid of gobbledygook”.

 
Ohio Mr. Republican Senator Robert Taft Widow Martha B Taft autograph-photo set! | eBay Is the Report full of statistics?
No. Most of the data comes as quotes from diocesan, parish or academic websites. Sometimes these also produced numbers. And there are also quotes to enlighten the reader or enliven the read, such as Mrs Robert Taft in the USA who said "I always find statistics are hard to swallow and impossible to digest. The only one I can remember is that if all the people who go to sleep in church laid end to end they would be a lot more comfortable."
  

Is everything in the Project on-line?  Not quite.  There are a few references to publications such as this letter by Fr Michael Garnett, Cajamarca, Peru, Letter in The Tablet 6 July 2019.
“The old bishop under whom I worked for twenty years and who was both a civil and a canon lawyer said Law, especially Canon Law, doesn’t work at over 2000 metres above sea level.’"

NB At 1474 metres, Ben Nevis is the highest point of the UK.

And Fr Alex Thomas provided this letter in The Guardian - introducing Cliqueralism

There are also five emails cited from five senior members of the Church. They include "I cannot begin to fathom why anyone would want to wrtite an article about Canon 1287.2"