Will The Real Archbishop Please Stand Up?

When I was a teenager, there was a game show on television called To Tell the Truth.

This central character is accompanied by two impostors who pretended to be the central character. The celebrity panelists question the three contestants; the impostors are allowed to lie but the central character is sworn "to tell the truth". After questioning, the panel attempts to identify which of the three challengers is telling the truth and is thus the central character.

After a round of questions, each of the panelists would take a guess. Then the host would say "Will the real _______ please stand up." Sometimes, for giggles, the impostors would make like they were going to stand up until finally, the central character would stand.

I thought about the show after reading the post at Boston Catholic Insider today, "Cardinal reaffirms pension plan".

After letters went out and several rounds of meetings took place to coerce employees to absorb the financial misfeasance for the archdiocese by forfeiting close to 40% of their pension, the Cardinal made a statement in the Pilot saying he is committed, to his dying breath, to care for the thousands of employees who have given their lives in service of the Church. He says anyone who felt pressured into taking their money will be able to reverse that decision. The diocese is financially healthy, he said. All of the fiscal challenges have been resolved.

This comes a day or two after the Cardinal sent his lawyers to arbitration with the Daughters of St. Paul and refuse to give them their own money back. It is completely inconsistent what the Cardinal has been doing and saying for the past month. In terms of painting a financial picture that is healthy, this contradicts about a year's worth of PR about the diocese being in terrible financial shape.

Are we to assume that the Cardinal was ignorant that his staff was screwing retirees? He didn't know that his administration held 40 meetings to tell retirees that the Cardinal was not committed to funding their pensions?

When statements or letters get presented saying the Cardinal said or signed this or that, nobody really believes the Cardinal is even aware of the situation. After a release of a letter or directive on a situation and people ask him about it, The Cardinal acts like he is hearing it for the first time.

Either the man has a serious case of amnesia or the group of people in the Chancery who are running things is penning things and orders and signing his name to them without his authorization or even knowledge.

At times, these statements completely contradict something he purportedly ordered or said.

Here's a good example.

Cardinal Sean put out his statement last May saying the Denver policy would be carefully studied and considered, but Fr. Bryan Hehir said a day later on WBUR that the Denver policy didn’t matter at all to the Cardinal–the Boston Archdiocese was already admitting children of gay parents and would continue doing so, just with a formal policy. One of the these two gentlemen was lying. Based on the outcome policy, it would appear that it was the Cardinal.

Nobody knows who or what is running the Archdiocese or what statements and actions are really by the hand of the Archbishop.

Very, very creepy.

Very creepy.

Former Boston Archdiocescan Chancellor David Smith Asks Attorney General and Secretary of State to Investigate, Pension Victims' Abuse Group Forming

Earlier today, former Boston Chancellor David Smith (2001-2006) asked Attorney General Martha Coakley, Secretary of State Bill Galvin and the IRS to investigate the Archdiocescan pension plan.

Terry Donilon's personality is starting to shine:

Terrence C. Donilon, a spokesman for the archdiocese, reacted angrily to Smith's criticisms.

"It's outrageous -- when David Smith was chancellor, we were running annual deficits and we are now running a balanced budget,'' Donilon said. "If he wants to get into a give and take about his performance as chancellor, which included serving as a trustee of the plan, I'm sure a lot of people would like to do that. But we have prepared a good plan to address the lay pension plan for the future."

Lots of expertise in modeling Christ at 66 Brooks Drive.

I hope this didn't lure these humble and repentant men away from planning ceremonial lamentations and washing of the feet to circulate nastygrams.

A balanced budget?

Who do they think they're working for, Congress?

Let's cut to the chase: When Smith handed it over, the pension was more than fully funded:

The church's pension plan, which was more than fully funded in 2007

They have a good plan.

Here it is:

They're paying 10 Chancery cronies 3 million dollars and 'balancing the budget' by ripping off employees of their pensions. Employees who spent years taking low salaries because they wanted to serve Christ's Church and His people.

Do they think this is something to crow about?

Nobody is impressed that the growing circle of friends of Jack Connors making 300,000
+ is "balancing the budget" by robbing people of their pensions.

The Globe repeated the independent advice they got from a pension specialist who said it's a terrible idea unless hospice is at your house and you're dying:

The move is intended to allow the church to reduce its liability and wind down the fund earlier. But a pension specialist interviewed by the Globe last year said the deal is a bad one for employees, unless they have been diagnosed with a terminal illness and know they won't be around to accept the monthly payments when they retire.

There's evidently some virtue in deceiving people so they can voluntarily screw employees out of their pension rather than mandating it:

Donilon said the lump sum offer was voluntary.

"The options were presented to people, and it's been done with a good deal of thought and professional input, and with the sole purpose of serving the beneficiaries to the best of our abilities," he said.

There was a good deal of "thought" and professional input all right.

When they told the employees to grab their money and run - because the faster the wizards spend it, the greater the likelihood of bankrupting the pension - they "thought" more people would take the money if they forgot to tell them their pension plan was guaranteed.

Here's the devastating statement from David Smith.

I am here today because almost 10,000 people, most of whom worked for years at low wages in service to the Catholic Church in Boston, have their retirement pensions endangered by a reckless attempt by the Archdiocese to shirk their financial commitments by changing the previous “defined benefit” plan with guaranteed benefits to a “take your share of whatever happens to be left” offering. Conflicted trustees are doing this through coercion and deceit, and by withholding information needed to evaluate their offer.....

Curiously, absent from their presentations on funded status is any reference to the obligations of the Trustees to invoice the participating institutions as needed to meet Plan liabilities, the liquidity of many of the participating employers or the obligation of these employers to fund the Plan as directed by the Trustees. For example, paragraph 19.3 of the pension plan says:

“Each employer shall periodically make contributions which … are sufficient on an actuarial basis approved by the plan’s actuary to fund the costs of the plan arising with respect to the participants…”...

In summary we have:

Coercion
Deceit
Shifting of funds set aside for by one corporation to benefit another
Conflicts of interest
Selective offers
Breach of promise to fund liabilities of closed parishes
Material non-disclosure
10,000 or so victims of pension abuse
The tax status of the beneficiaries at risk

The Secretary of the Commonwealth and/or the Attorney General share responsibility to address these breaches of public trust and to protect the best interests of these citizens of the Commonwealth. I urge them to take control of this plan away from those with conflicts of interest who have broken the trust of the beneficiaries and have acted wrongly, and to appoint an independent trustee to correct this situation and protect the 10,000 people at risk.

Please read Smith's statement in its entirety.


I'm sure the diocese was hoping to quickly settle with the Daughters of St. Paul so that their financial records would never be on the receiving end of a subpoena for discovery.

In this morning's post, I spoke about Cardinal O'Malley timing his letter gushing about Chancellor Jim McDonough to send the message he was setting his face like flint.

That letter may actually turn out to be a very embarrassing indictment of Cardinal O'Malley and his administration.

Smith also said he plans to meet today with a group he has provocatively dubbed "Boston Pension Abuse Victims.'

Like all people who abuse power and the people they are entrusted, they're full steam ahead on the road to their destruction. Sadly, they don't even know it.

Bon Voyage gentlemen.

Don't miss the excellent coverage of this story at BCI.

Boston Archdiocese Employees Say Thanks for Offering Us Wooden Nickels, See You in Court

Daughters of St. Paul Sue the Archdiocese of Boston.

The Daughters of St. Paul are very meek, so this is big news here in Boston.

During December 2010, a Complaint for Equitable Relief and an Accounting was brought against the Plan’s Trustees by the Daughters of St. Paul, a participating entity in the Plan. The entity is seeking a transfer of the assets and liabilities allocable to it relative to its current and former employees who have been participants in the Plan. Prior to agreement to the transfer of assets and assumption of liabilities by a new plan to be created by the participating entity, the Trustees of the Plan have sought assurances from the participating entity that will provide sufficient protection of pension plan benefits to the respective participants. It is the Trustees’ estimate that the nature of the legal action, which primarily seeks equitable action as opposed to monetary damages, will not materially and adversely impact the Plan. The Trustees hope to engage in discussions promptly to try to reach closure regarding the transfer of the pension plan assets of the Trust to the Daughters of St. Paul, on conditions, at a value, and with accounting and actuarial information satisfactory to both parties.

Sources indicate to us that the Daughters tried to solve this problem by meeting with various archdiocesan officials, but the archdiocese was uncooperative and confrontational in the negotiations.

The meek and humble capuchin show knows just how to keep its distance from the robberies in progress.

There's a lot of subterfuge about the coercion going on by Archdiocescan officials upon diocesan employees to take pennies on the dollar on their pension. It's a very hot-button issue, so stay tuned to BCI for what has the potential to be the overturning of the moneychangers tables at 66 Brooks Drive.