Of rectories, the Catholic church and the ‘bling’ watch

By Rodger Jones
Dallas Morning News
February 25, 2014

http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/2014/02/of-rectories-the-catholic-church-and-the-bling-watch.html/?nclick_check=1

My church, the Catholic church, has made enough hash of itself in recent years without its bishops getting caught up in the hypocrisy of amassing the trappings of wealth.

Case in point is Archbishop of Newark, N.J., John J. Myers, who’s putting a 3,500-square-foot addition on his vacation home, which is soon to be his retirement home. Shoot, his house’s addition is twice as big as my ’50s house in Richardson. (That’s a statement of perspective, not envy.)

The New Jersey bishop is not even in the same league as the so-called Bishop of Bling, the German cleric who was suspended by Pope Francis last year for his lavish spending.

You wonder whether these guys read the newspaper or have Internet access. Pope Francis has made more than a little news with his denunciation of clergy who want to live like princes. That’s precisely the point of a professor who studies, of all things, the spending habits of bishops and who was quoted by the Christian Post. Excerpt:

“Archbishop Myers obviously is not paying any attention to the pope,” noted Charles Zech, faculty director of the Center for Church Management and Business Ethics at Villanova University’s business school who has studied bishops’ spending.

“The pope is calling on clergy to live a simpler lifestyle and to be in touch with their people. This is extreme, way beyond what you’d expect to happen. I can’t believe the parishioners of Newark are going to allow this to happen,” said Zech.