Governance and Structural Problem in the Archdiocese of Boston

Please see important updates to the governance and structural changes Cardinal O'Malley is implementing in Boston.

I wholeheartedly agree with this assessment of my friends and colleagues at Boston Catholic Insider.

Rumors are also flying again that these folks would work on combined fund-raising across a new entity, combining fund-raising across what are separate corporate entities, Catholic Foundation, Catholic Schools, Catholic Charities, and the Clergy Fund.....If this is true, then it suggests an even graver crisis of governance in Boston than we thought previously, and a surrender of fund-raising to Jack Connors’ cronies. Fr. Erikson, the Vicar General, to whom this position supposedly reports would be rendered even more mute and ineffective, and it makes Chancellor McDonough even more powerful.   That surrender of all fund-raising to Connors and his cronies would put the Cardinal Archbishop in a position of being captive to Jack’s money, and effectively put the Cardinal’s and all archdiocesan decision-making under the control of Connors.  Do the expressions “shadow archdiocese” or “shadow archbishop” come to mind for anyone?  Connors had previously been referred to by the Boston Globe as the “pope of Catholic power brokers.”