UNITED STATES
National
By DENNIS CODAY
The church’s most reliable donors -- parishioners in the pews weekly -- continue to call for greater financial accountability and transparency from their parishes and dioceses, and they want more lay input into church financial matters, according to an annual survey of Catholic donor attitudes.
Yet fewer than half say they know what happens to their contributions, the report found.
Furthermore, for the third year the vast majority of survey respondents say the clergy sexual abuse scandal affects them when deciding whether and how much they should give to the church.
Sixty percent of respondents worry that the cost of clergy sexual abuse impedes the church’s ability to fulfill its mission.
“We’ve done this for three years now. We’ve seen that the call of accountability is growing among Catholic parishioners,” Francis Butler, president of the association that commissioned the study, told NCR.
Posted by kshaw at January 25, 2005 02:25 PM