{"id":5275,"date":"2006-10-16T08:27:22","date_gmt":"2006-10-16T08:27:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/money-troubles-across-the-sea.html"},"modified":"2006-10-16T08:27:22","modified_gmt":"2006-10-16T08:27:22","slug":"money-troubles-across-the-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/money-troubles-across-the-sea.html","title":{"rendered":"Money troubles across the sea"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Telegraph article about some problems:<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
\n
\n

The Vatican has demanded financial details from every Roman Catholic diocese in England and Wales after Church bureaucrats left a bishop \u00a310.2 million in debt.<\/p>\n

Archbishop Faustino Sainz Munoz, the Pope’s ambassador to Britain, has asked local bishops for evidence to show that their accounts conform with Church and secular law.<\/p>\n

Rome’s intervention comes after the Bishop of Lancaster, the Rt Rev Patrick O’Donoghue, was forced to apologise to churchgoers in March after he discovered that his central administration was "eating up" money belonging to parishes and trust funds without permission.<\/p>\n

\n
Much of the money had been spent on ambitious projects, such as an inter-faith centre in Preston, and on staff salaries.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The Vatican now wants to ensure that this does not happen again. Archbishop Sainz Munoz said in a letter to the bishops \u2014 leaked to the Catholic magazine The Tablet \u2014 that the Vatican wished to be informed of "the financial structures and of the situation obtaining in every diocese".<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

And yet…more problems!<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

All new faith schools will have to offer up to a quarter of places to non-believers in a move ministers believe will promote integration and ease growing fears that British society is splintering on religious and race grounds.<\/p>\n

Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, is expected this week to announce the plans in changes to the Education and Inspection Bill.<\/p>\n

The move follows warnings from David Davis, the shadow home secretary, that the country was slipping into a system of "voluntary apartheid" in which there was a danger of creating "a series of closed societies within our open society."<\/p>\n

The Church of England has already announced it will set aside a quarter of places at its new schools for people outside the Church.<\/p>\n

However, under Mr Johnson’s plans Roman Catholic, Jewish and Muslim institutions will be asked to do the same. Where local authorities choose not to invoke the powers, there will be a facility for individuals to appeal to the Education Secretary.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A reader remarks:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

As I am sure you know, the UK has an extensive system of (partially) state-funded faith-schools that are allowed to select pupils on the basis of the religion. Theoretically in response to fears of community fragmentation, both major parties in the UK are now demanding that<\/em> faith-schools set aside a significant percentage of places for children of other faiths or for children from secular families. Of course, this demand is being articulated in politically correct generalities but the political parties are clearly stoking a fear of Muslim faith-schools which will then be used to drive broader acceptance of the legislation. There are a couple of ways to take this. First, one can see it as an example of political correctness gone<\/em> mad, precipitating what amounts to the destruction of the Catholic, Anglican, and Jewish state education systems out of a fear of directly confronting real or imagined pathologies peculiar to the rather tiny number of Muslim faith schools. Second, one can see it as an example of the dangers of giving essentially secular states with no love for religion in general the power to curb Muslim religious practices. As you have implied, I think, a number of times with regard to the apparent weakness of the Vatican\u2019s stance on the Muslim world, expressions of anger against Islam can be easily morphed into an across the board attack on religious life and communities. The secular West (particularly outside the US and some Latin countries) is no friend of the Catholic Church and will happily use anger directed at Islam (however legitimate that anger might be in itself) as a tool to damage the Church.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Update:<\/u><\/strong> Joanne Bogle on the schools issue:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Meanwhile, our Bishops, who thought they had reached some understanding with the Govt on the question of Catholi schools, seem to have been double-crossed. It does seem that any new "faith school" (ie a Catholic or C of E school) will have to allocate a quarter of places to non-church applicants, if neccessary turning away practising Church members. And the matter of giving full legal force to all over-16 year olds to boycott any religious worship in school looks set to be part of the new law….<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Telegraph article about some problems: The Vatican has demanded financial details from every Roman Catholic diocese in England and Wales after Church bureaucrats left a bishop \u00a310.2 million in debt. Archbishop Faustino Sainz Munoz, the Pope’s ambassador to Britain, has asked local bishops for evidence to show that their accounts conform with Church and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nMoney troubles across the sea - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/money-troubles-across-the-sea.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Money troubles across the sea - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A Telegraph article about some problems: The Vatican has demanded financial details from every Roman Catholic diocese in England and Wales after Church bureaucrats left a bishop \u00a310.2 million in debt. Archbishop Faustino Sainz Munoz, the Pope’s ambassador to Britain, has asked local bishops for evidence to show that their accounts conform with Church and…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/money-troubles-across-the-sea.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-10-16T08:27:22+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Money troubles across the sea - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/money-troubles-across-the-sea.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Money troubles across the sea - Via Media","og_description":"A Telegraph article about some problems: The Vatican has demanded financial details from every Roman Catholic diocese in England and Wales after Church bureaucrats left a bishop \u00a310.2 million in debt. Archbishop Faustino Sainz Munoz, the Pope’s ambassador to Britain, has asked local bishops for evidence to show that their accounts conform with Church and…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/money-troubles-across-the-sea.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-10-16T08:27:22+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/money-troubles-across-the-sea.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/money-troubles-across-the-sea.html","name":"Money troubles across the sea - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-10-16T08:27:22+00:00","dateModified":"2006-10-16T08:27:22+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/money-troubles-across-the-sea.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/money-troubles-across-the-sea.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/money-troubles-across-the-sea.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Money troubles across the sea"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5275\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}