What is this, a church for ANTS?
How can I be expected to catechize my children if they can’t even fit inside the BUILDING.
“I invented the piano key necktie! I INVENTED IT! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE, DEREK! YOU’VE DONE NOTHING! NOTHING!”
-Nicholas DiMarzio, bishop emeritus of Brooklyn
This morning, Notre Dame’s Church Life Journal ran a piece by former Madison diocesan employee Matt Regner titled “Maybe We Need Fewer Church Professionals?”, the kind of title that you can read out loud to yourself in increasingly higher and squeakier voices throughout your day. To say it up front, I largely agree with the gist of what Regner is saying in his piece: the financial realities of the Catholic church are going to lead us to a world where parishes are going to have fewer lay employees on the payroll, so in our synodal church, lay people need to be empowered and equipped to be good Christians that can engage with the non-parish-employee world and model the love of Christ in every relationship we have:
“...what I learned about the Immaculate Conception or the hypostatic union has little impact on how or whether I evangelize my coworkers. Instead, they care about our stock price, how well the Green Bay Packers played the other night, and the latest viral TikTok video. Now, it would be easy to dismiss these things as “worldly,” and to be honest, I am not naturally interested in them. Yet, our vocation is to “seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs . . . [and order] them according to the plan of God.”…my interest in these affairs will allow me to relate to my coworkers, affording new opportunities to love and serve them, gradually imbuing those relationships with the grace of Christ by virtue of my own closeness to him. As I said at the beginning of this article, such work requires great patience and perseverance. Even though none of us would call the financial distress facing the Church a good thing, yet perhaps it is precisely what we need to reorient ourselves. The more that the laity take up their mission of sanctifying the temporal order—through small acts of love at home, by a spirit of joyful service at work, in the generous attention they give to those people that God has put in their life—the more the Church will be transformed, albeit slowly and painfully.”
Great! I’m on board! That’s not why I’m writing about Regner’s essay. I’m writing about Regner’s essay because of how he chose to frame up the church’s financial situation near the top of the piece:
“One of my favorite scenes from the 2001 comedy movie, Zoolander, is when Will Ferrell’s character, Mugatu, points out the obvious fact that Derek Zoolander, a male model played by Ben Stiller, has only one “look.” Magnum, Blue Steel, Le Tigre—they all feature the same pursed lips and intense stare. Near the end of the movie, exasperated, Mugatu cries out, “They’re the same face! Doesn’t anyone notice this?! I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!” Much less amusing than this scene, however, is its startling relevance to the financial state of the Church.”
When I saw this reference to Ben Stiller’s comedic masterpiece Zoolander, the film that Paramount released on September 28 2001 so that we could all learn to laugh again, did I immediately start standing up and clapping like a sea lion while barking out “MILLENNIALS ARE FINALLY BACK”? No, because I already did that when Nelly Furtado did her Tiny Desk concert last year1 and Millennials have been back ever since. In any event: the point that Regner is trying to make is that many dioceses and parishes are in apocalyptic financial situations, and we just kind of try not to think about that very much even though it has already had a severe impact on our church, and Regner feels like Mugatu, the only guy who’s ever noticed that this obvious thing is actually happening. And look: if you’re going to frame up the church’s financial situation as “this big obvious thing that everyone else is ignoring and I’m going to talk about”, and then you in turn ignore a related big obvious thing while you talk about it, then I get to make fun of you on my stupid blog. I’m sorry, that’s how this works.
What big obvious thing did Regner miss in his eugoogely for the church’s finances? I mean, there are a lot of words here, surely this is as thorough an analysis as you can get:
“Although there has been some reporting on financial scandal and insolvency at the level of the Vatican, I have rarely heard it discussed at the parish or diocesan level. It is the topic that we all prefer to avoid, trusting that somehow everything will work out. Yet, in addition to the widespread merging of parishes across the country (and talk even of diocesan mergers), more and more religious institutions are filing for bankruptcy. Call it by whatever name you want; in every corner of the Church, we are facing the same issue. Religious disaffiliation, which, in part, kickstarted the conversation on the importance of evangelization, continues to grow, with some projections suggesting that Christians could comprise less than 50% of the population by 2070 (down from 90% in 1972). As a consequence, the Church is approaching a fiscal cliff as Baby Boomers die off and are replaced by the less religious Millennials. One analysis suggests a potential shortfall of $5 billion in overall giving (down from ~$12 billion to ~$7 billion) in the next twenty to thirty years. Moreover, rural communities continue to dwindle and age, meaning that, at a certain point, someone will have to make the difficult decision to close those parishes as the community dies off and the money dries up. In other words, the writing on the wall is clear: unless we hit an unexpected financial windfall, the Church will have much less money in the future. Taking into account all of the deferred maintenance that must be addressed, ongoing operational costs, and legitimate need for renovation, that leaves little money for staff.”
Wow, maintenance, old buildings, bankruptcy filings, aging populations, giving shortfalls, those all sound really serious. What else could possibly be affecting the church’s finances in this era? It’s tough to imagine anything Regner could have missed, but just as a test case, let me see if there’s anything I can find in the archdiocese of Los Angeles; certainly they have favorable demographic trends and they’re a big city with a lot of money, I guess the only thing I would want to check is if they’ve had any other enormous unprecedented expenses lately, like say maybe less than a year ago:
“Victims of clergy sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles have announced a settlement of nearly $900 million. It is the largest payout ever to stem from the Catholic Church's abuse crisis…given the cost of earlier settlements, we know abuse claims have cost the Diocese of LA more than $1.5 billion over the last couple of decades…One of the key components of this settlement is mandatory release of archdiocese files about their known offenders, and that includes offenders that have not been known up until now.”
Huh. I personally think it’s kind of weird to write a piece saying that the church’s finances are really bad and include “old buildings” as a reason and not include “historic out of court settlements for a sexual abuse scandal that has been in the news for a quarter-century”. I can't read Regner's mind (because I'm not bulimic), so maybe he actually did look into all this and it just got cut for space, but I feel comfortable assuming that a widespread cover up of child abuse probably affected the arch of LA’s financial situation at least as much as replacing old HVAC systems in the schools. Like, if the leadership of the arch hadn’t covered up child abuse, that specific archdiocese would have an additional billion and a half dollars in their account, and they don't have that billion and a half dollars because of decisions they made. To say something over and over in an increasingly high-pitched voice: maybe that should have been a significant part of Regner's essay?
Regner also calls out the worrying trend of dioceses filing for bankruptcy, which is, of course, a real thing that’s happening and another sign of our church’s dire financial situation. Just earlier this year, the arch of San Francisco filed for bankruptcy…explicitly because of the abuse settlements they had to pay out. And in May 2023, the diocese of Oakland filed for bankruptcy…explicitly because of the abuse settlements they had to pay out. In April 2024, the diocese of Sacramento filed for bankruptcy…explicitly because of the abuse settlements they had to pay out. In June 2024, the diocese of San Diego filed for bankruptcy…explicitly because of the abuse settlements they had to pay out. To be fair, these particular filings happened in quick succession due to California’s changes in statute of limitation laws, but rest assured that between 2004 and 2025, forty-one American dioceses filed for bankruptcy, and basically each of the filings starts with “we have to file for bankruptcy because of abuse case settlements”. Regner laments the bankruptcy filings and does not mention clergy abuse in any context anywhere in his piece, not even to say “obviously that has an impact as well, but it's beyond the scope of my essay”! Which, in the end, leaves you with the essay equivalent of saying that Sting is your personal hero because “the music he's created over the years, I don't really listen to it, but the fact that he's making it, I respect that.”
Last week, the diocese of Newark settled two sexual abuse lawsuits brought against Nicholas DiMarzio, who was alleged to have abused two child victims in the mid-to-late seventies. Later in his career, DiMarzio went on to climb the hierarchical ladder, becoming a pastor, USCCB director of migration and refugee services, executive director of Newark Catholic Community Services, auxiliary bishop of Newark, bishop of Camden, and finally bishop of Brooklyn for 18 years before retiring. DiMarzio maintains that he has never sexually abused anyone, ever, and accused the plaintiffs of deliberately lying in order to smear him. The Vatican’s investigation into these allegations was led by DiMarzio’s metropolitan bishop Timothy Dolan, who referred to DiMarzio as his “good friend” and let him stay in office during the investigation; Dolan’s investigation found no evidence of wrongdoing and the two of them presumably still go out regularly for orange mocha frappucinos. Presumably, DiMarzio was available to testify under oath in this case, and current and former diocesan officials could have also testified under oath about who knew what about any allegations, and the Newark diocese presumably has personnel records that they could submit in open court as evidence to prove that everything was above board; those records have to be somewhere in the computer (IN the COMPUTER?). But - and we’ll never know the reasons why - the Newark diocese decided that testifying and submitting all of that would have been way worse for the church than just paying the two plaintiffs six-figure settlements even though everyone maintains that absolutely nothing wrong has ever happened.
It is appallingly obvious that the ongoing abuse crisis is something that affects the church’s finances. Sex abuse and the accompanying coverups are obviously horrifying, and they erode the church’s moral witness and authority, but to put it in terms that even Dolan and DiMarzio can understand: sex abuse scandals are expensive. “How did the church’s finances get like this” there were literally two high-profile six-figure settlements paid out six days ago in which the church refused to admit any wrongdoing or put anything into the public record. Timothy Dolan is currently fighting with his insurance company, and if he loses the fight, you can add New York to the list of dioceses declaring bankruptcy. Even if you put aside the obvious financial impact: do you think shit like this happening, all of the time, gets the younger generations really excited to go to church? Do you think that this could maybe be a contributing factor in why people have been walking away and giving less? Or does religious disaffiliation just kind of happen in a vacuum, completely separate from any causal factors? I’m sorry, but leaving the abuse crisis out of any analysis of the church’s financial future makes your essay worthless. It makes me wonder if you had a wack attack or have been smoking peyote for six straight days. Earth to Regner. You think you’re too cool for school, but I’ve got a news flash for you, Walter Cronkite: you aren’t. Ex-squeeze me, but have you ever heard of styling gel. Dere-lick my balls.
Again, I agree with Regner on a lot of things; I certainly agree that more essays on Catholicism should contain Zoolander references. I agree that we lay people have a special obligation to engage with those around us as they are and the world around us as it is, and that there is so much we can do outside of the shriveling diocesan structures of the church. I also agree that families should be catechizing their children through their everyday living and not just outsourcing religious education to parish employees who may not be there tomorrow; unfortunately, because of decisions the Catholic church has made and keeps making, part of that catechesis now has to include “you are not allowed to be alone with a priest”, and it turns out that that may have a bigger effect on my relationship to Catholicism than my generation being generally “less religious”. Look, I think Regner's heart is in the right place. But I also think Regner is the kind of guy who would hear that a parish priest had been abruptly removed from public ministry and just conclude that he must have been injured in a freak gasoline fight accident. I hope that Regner lives out his lay mission and has a positive impact on the people around him, but when I read his writing on the church, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
By the way, Bob Boilen’s desk was larger than any desk I’ve ever had at any office job, so come on with that name.