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	College to Train Parishioners in Church Management By Stephanie Reitz Chicago Tribune December 27, 2009 http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-ct-parishfinances-co,0,1890417.story HARTFORD, Conn. - With the number of ordained priests declining nationwide, a Connecticut college is launching a master's degree program to train lay persons to become parish administrators. Holy Apostles College and Seminary in Cromwell recently received the state Board of Governors for Higher Education's unanimous approval to offer the degree, a master of arts in pastoral studies. It will be the first of its kind in Connecticut, where about 1.3 million of the state's 3.5 million residents are Catholic. It also has special significance in the state, where financial scandals involving priests led to an ill-fated legislative effort last spring to give lay members more control over parish finances. That proposal drew more than 3,500 angry Catholics to the Capitol for a protest rally. Catholic leaders say they have never resisted giving more administrative and financial control to lay members of parishes -- but they wanted it to come from the churches and religious community, not by legislative fiat. At Holy Apostles, the degree program is aimed toward a range of students: new seminarians, ordained deacons, even people retiring from jobs in the secular world and planning encore careers helping their churches. Similar degree programs are in place at Boston College, Seton Hall University, Loyola University in Chicago, the University of Dallas and some other Catholic colleges. The Holy Apostles classes will start in fall 2010 if faculty recruitment and curriculum planning goes as scheduled. "More and more of these programs are cropping up around the country, and we felt it was time for us to offer this knowledge in a more formal way," said James Papillo, an ordained deacon and Holy Apostles' vice president of administrative affairs. "Certainly more and more the priests are looking to members of the laity to take on some of the actual day-to-day work of parish administration, but there's no diminishing the importance or the responsibility that the clergy have," he said. Holy Apostles, which was founded as a seminary in 1956, expanded in 1972 to include degree programs for men and women who are not seminarians. The new master's program will be offered in classes at the Cromwell campus and online, and is expected to draw about 25 part- and full-time students by its third year. Lay parishioners have taken more leadership roles in parishes, particularly since the reforms of Vatican II and since the number of priests has been declining. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops says there are about 41,500 diocesan and religious-order priests in the United States. It's been declining as fewer people follow vocations to the priesthood, and as longtime priests retire and die. The Very Rev. Douglas Mosey, president and rector of Holy Apostles, said that means today's priests have more duties than ever before, many of which could be delegated to qualified lay members. "The fact of preparing lay men and women to take on more important roles in administration is certainly important to the life of the church," Mosey told the higher education board. In addition to administration, students in Holy Apostles' degree program will be able to get specialized training in pastoral ministry and religious education. All of the students will take core classes in the church's social teachings, the norms of the Catholic doctrine and other topics. Those who specialize in parish administration also will take classes in administration and management, financial practices and the law as it relates to parishes. That has been a touchy subject in Connecticut after recent financial and legal scandals involving priests in some parishes, and a legislative move to give parishioners more control. Last spring's General Assembly proposal would have changed a little-known 1866 law that sets out rules for religious corporations, which include individual Roman Catholic churches. It was withdrawn before a public hearing could be scheduled, but remains a sore point for many Catholics who viewed it as a legislative effort to control how they practice their faith. It came after a group of parishioners, upset about recent cases of priests accused of embezzling money from parishes in Darien and Greenwich, asked lawmakers to raise a bill requiring more lay people on these boards. In December 2007, the Rev. Michael Jude Fay of Darien was sentenced to 37 months in prison for stealing about $1.3 million from his parish to support a luxurious lifestyle. Last year, the former pastor of St. Michael the Archangel Parish in Greenwich, the Rev. Michael Moynihan, was forced to resign from the church amid allegations of financial mismanagement, including claims he kept two bank accounts secret from the diocese. An audit showed $400,000 was missing.
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