Consultation of the Clergy about the Archdiocesan Curia

Dear Father,

Could you please answer the seven questions below and return your responses, as soon as possible, to me by email () or at Archdiocesan Offices, 100 Strathearn Rd, EDINBURGHEH9 1BB. All responses will be kept in strict confidence.

  1. What is your opinion of the Archdiocesan Curia?
  2. What functions do you believe the Archdiocese should provide centrally?
  3. What should the Archdiocese not provide centrally?
  4. What functions could be better provided at local level?
  5. How would you like to see central Archdiocesan structures changed, improved, reformed?
  6. In order to help meet our obligations to the Aged and Infirm Clergy Fund and the Ecclesiastical Students’ Fund, we anticipate a major fundraising campaign. What is your opinion of this?
  7. Is there anything further that you would like to say?

Monsignor Patrick Burke VG

Chair of the Strategic Review Group

5 February 2015

St Catherine’s 2 Captain’s Row Edinburgh EH16 6QP

Dear Patrick

Thank you for the email sent from the Chancery on your behalf.

You announce a second “consultation” in the Archdiocese following on the Archbishop's letter of 10 January to Deans which he asked to be widely circulated.

The starting point, the process and the purpose of both “consultations” appear to me to be deficient.They would indicate a raison d'etre of the Archdiocesan Mission to be based on numbers both in terms of finance and personnel.

The questionnaire seems to me to be poorly thought out.

A cynic might think that this is indicative of a process being gone through to justify a decision which has already been made thereby bypassing genuine consultation.

You take great care to underline the fact that the process will be totally confidential. I am left wondering why I should welcome confidentiality: I am prepared to make my views available to anyone who might be interested.

Again a cynic might imagine that the process is secret rather than confidential.

This would allow the whole exercise to be unaccountable.

If our views on these matters are of any importance, then a consultation period of eight days is quite inadequate.

However the questions have been set and I have given them due thought.

I reserve the right to make public my response so that others may see what is being fed in to the process and I shall encourage others to do the same.

Question 1

Please could you give a list of the people who make up the Curia along with their job descriptions, so that I can try to give an appraisal for each one ?

Question 2.

These have been clearly spelt out in the exhaustive consultation taken throughout the Diocese under the umbrella of “Now is the Favourable Time.”

Question 3

Control. It should be at the service of the local church

Question 4

These are many and would be determined by how the local church was resourced and empowered by the officials of the Curia

Question 5

I don’t have sufficient time to list these and meet the deadline of 13 February2014 (?)

Question 6

I am wondering if the date of this letter really ought to be 1st April.

Are we to believe that the primary focus of our mission is about caring for sick and retired priests and resourcing ecclesiastical students ?

While these are important they are not the highlight of our Mission statement.

Or are they ? Have I missed one of the Holy Father’s statements on this matter ?

Question 7

Again there is not sufficient time to give an adequate critique of this “Questionnaire”

It seems to me that the purpose of this exercise is to engineer a way of pruning the number of staff currently working in the “Curia.” To my mind the solution is simple.

Send all priests currently employed there to do the work for which they are ordained:

to serve the people in pastoral settings.

You invite any questions we may have.

1.Who are the members of the SRG to whom we are to entrust our views? What are

their terms of reference?

2. Why has such a restrictive time-line been imposed ?

3. Strategic Review Group. The name implies that there is a strategy

Could we be told what the strategy is ?

4. Is the strategy what the Archbishop has said he will outline in a forthcoming letter to the Diocese by way of a Pastoral vision ?

In conclusion may I say that I welcome the initiative of a consultation on the place and function of the Curia. Some would say that it is long overdue. To have credibility the process will need to be seen to be open and accountable.

I look forward to seeing an analysis of the SRG’s findings and their proposed way forward.

Sincerely

Mike Fallon

11 February 2015