Catholics Need to See Accountability

By Tim Rohr
Pacific Daily News
February 28, 2015

http://www.guampdn.com/article/20150301/OPINION02/303010011/Catholics-need-see-accountability


Each Lent the Catholics of Guam are asked to contribute to a special "appeal." Traditionally, most of the funds collected during the appeal were used to help finance the formation of priests for this diocese who were normally sent to seminaries in the states.

In 2002, with the establishment of Redemptoris Mater Seminary, or RMS, in Yona, Guam Catholics were led to believe that this was a seminary for Guam and that our men would no longer have to be sent to seminaries in the states. Appeal funds began to flow directly to RMS.

Over the years, it occurred to some that there was something suspicious about RMS. Not only were there hardly any local men there, the place was teeming with seminarians who had been brought to Guam by the archbishop from several other countries.

Guam Catholics are used to having clergy from other countries assist our archdiocese, but these men at RMS were not clergy. They were untrained aspirants to the priesthood who required years of education and financial support -- our financial support.

So whereas Guam Catholics in the past had been asked to support a few of our local men in off-island seminaries, they were now being asked to support as many as 40 or more men, few of whom were local.

Guam Catholics continued to contribute to the seminary, thinking all the while that RMS was a diocesan seminary for the Archdiocese of Agana. But in 2013, we learned that it wasn't.

The Fr. Paul Gofigan firing fiasco blew the lid off the otherwise quiet but simmering war that had been raging for years between local diocesan priests and what can only be described as a strategic neocatechumenal takeover of the whole island, with RMS and its platoons of presbyters-in-waiting, the head of the snake.

An investigation into RMS revealed that its articles of incorporation mandated that it form men only according to the "life and practice of the Neocatechumenal Way."

The "life and practice of the neocatechumenal way" is demonstrably different than the "life and practice" of the traditional diocesan priesthood. In fact, the Neocatecumenal Way was founded as a reaction to what its founders believed to be a failed diocesan-parish model of the church.

Guam Catholics had given hundreds of thousands, if not millions, (of dollars) over a decade and a half to what they believed was a "real" diocesan seminary. And by 2013, when the ruse was uncovered, they had already been learning the hard way that priests formed in "the life and practice of the Neocatechumenal Way" were in fact "demonstrably different" than the diocesan priests they had grown up with (e.g. Msgr. James Benavente, Fr. Paul Gofigan, Fr. Mike Crisostomo, Fr. Jeff San Nicolas, etc.).

Realizing the ruse was up, Archbishop Apuron hurriedly "erected" a second seminary, St. John Paul II Seminary in Malojloj. However, in designating this seminary specifically "diocesan," he admitted that RMS was in fact not diocesan, when we were told for 15 years that it was.

Where does money go?

All of this mess has resulted in a backlash from local Catholics wanting to know the truth about where their money is going.

A couple weeks ago, the Concerned Catholics of Guam submitted a letter to Archbishop Apuron, asking him to be forthcoming about the destination of the appeal funds.

There was no answer from the archbishop. Instead, he recruited a few of the local boys that are at the so-called "diocesan" seminary, and sent them out with prepared scripts to beg for money for the appeal, obviously believing that a fresh young local face was more likely to get the manamko' to open up their checkbooks.

The problem is that all the money for the appeal, regardless of who asks for it, goes to the archbishop. And, as he has already demonstrated, he will do whatever he wants with it without regard for accountability or the intentions of those who give it.

The bottom line for Guam's Catholics must be: No accountability -- no money. No matter who asks for it.