Looking back at the weekly messages of Father Paul Counce, first published in The Carpenter, our weekly Parish Bulletin
Published: July 17, 2016
Last week was a difficult one for our city, and indeed for other places in our country, first as lives were lost in unnecessa ry acts of violence, and then as lots of under standable but still angry emotions intruded to upset many thousands more. In my homily last weekend I urged us all not to forget “the basics” of loving God and neighbor, for this means we will never value anything of this world over human life, and will always strive to take steps that aid those in need.
Of course, much more needs to be done. Prayer is needed, but if we don’t do more than that we can rightly be accused of laziness and hypocrisy. Persons of every economic class, race, language group and political affiliation need to put aside entrenched preconceptions and preconditions that prevent progress. Real efforts at being people of justice, tolerance, and willingness to engage in difficult dialogue – and change when necessary – are what are called-for. And there needs to be an end to belligerent and inflammatory language: close-mindedness produces no solutions and instead only marks out the speaker as one more problem that needs fixing. I hope our Parish family, which prides itself on being diverse and just in everything possible, can help over time to provide some answers and not just multiply the questions.
Just before our entire city’s attention was diverted, the attention of our Parish Office was naturally fixed on the end of the 2015-2016 fiscal year. Although all of the final accounting steps haven’t quite been finished – our final an nual financial report to you will be published here as usual – I’m happy again to report good news. For the second straight year we’ve managed to end the year without having to withdraw savings to stay “on budget” with our operations. This was an exceedingly rare occurrence for many, many years, and it feels good now to be making this more routine!
This is all the more impressive since last year saw a num ber of very costly unbudgeted maintenance expen ses crop up: the Cathedral building’s exterior was completely waterproofed and painted, our “post-new-Hall landscaping” was completed, air-conditioners in both rectory and office buildings needed replacement, and part of a previous diocesan gift to our Hall renovation project was turned into a debt for us instead. All of this meant more than a quarter of a million dollars of unplanned expenses last year, but the generosity of our parishioners and friends was equal to the challenge. Thank you for your generosity! I only wish I could shout it from the housetops more loudly!
Another administrative project which we navigated quite successfully was an audit of our Parish’s fiscal operations. Somewhat surprisingly, this step hadn’t been asked by the diocese for over 20 years. Our Director of Administration, Mrs. Sheila Juneau, and I were confident that our procedures to ensure the safety and accuracy in accounting for the temporal goods of the Parish are sound, and this was certainly proven to be true. Not a penny was unaccounted for or miscategorized. The good stewardship of the blessings that God has given to our parishioners and friends is reflected in our good stewardship of them as they are shared.
Mrs. Karen Benoit, the diocesan comptroller who supervised the audit, was effusive in her praise. Please allow me a bit of pride in providing a few quotes from her report: “The staff and volunteers of the parish are to be commended for their hard work and wonderful dedication to the Parish…Bank reconciliations were neat, orderly and timely prepared…The Parish has good count procedures, including doublechecks and verifications of the funds being counted…A sampling of disbursements reviewed from the checking accounts were properly supported, orderly, marked as paid, etc. Records were neat and orderly…a solid filing system is in place.” The Cathedral Parish’s management and accounting of its monies and other temporal goods have been a model for other Parishes in the diocese for years now, and this was certainly reaffirmed as true.
Did the audit produce some recommendations to improve our operations? Sure, but these were minor. Over the years some funds were earmarked for special projects but also held separately for these purposes. But as a general rule the diocesan Finance Office frowns on “separate” bank accounts and prefers a single parochial operational checking account, with excess and dedicated funds maintained either with the diocese or the Baton Rouge Area Foundation. We will be looking at these secondary accounts (for example, our charity account, and various fundraising and organizational accounts) to see which are truly necessary and useful. Some of our reporting and “who has handled cash” forms needed to be updated to provide more complete information about collections, amounts and individuals, in order to limit risk to those staff and volunteers. Finally, additional doublechecking and verifications of stewardship, while maintaining the confidentiality of Church records and the privacy of our donors, are never a bad idea in order to make it more clear that all is handled properly. All of these challenges are, in the end, pleasant tasks to undertake!
In the Lord,
