Opening the Books

While most Protestant denominations make it a standard practice to issue yearly statements of their financial assets, the Roman Catholic Church has not --a fact that has led to endless, and largely bootless, speculation about what it really does own.* Now, the Most Rev. Robert E. Tracy of Baton Rouge has lifted the greenback curtain slightly by publishing the first detailed financial statement ever issued by a U.S. Roman Catholic diocese.

The picture was impressive. Although one of the nation's smaller sees (membership: 491,434), Baton Rouge has boosted its net assets an average of $3.4 million a year since 1962, largely as the result of parish-based tithing programs and a successful diocesan development fund. Overall, Baton Rouge's assets total $44.2 million, of which $38.4 million consists of buildings and real estate. The diocesan debt is a modest $3.4 million, which is being retired at the rate of 11% a year.

"Communications have many significant dimensions in the life of a diocese, and one of the most important is the state of diocesan finances," said Bishop Tracy, who plans to issue updated balance sheets from time to time. "It is necessary that both priests and people have a clear picture of this matter if they are to furnish substantia1 support to the diocese with any amount of enthusiasm."

* In a recent issue of Playboy, for example Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike blithely wrote that the Jesuits owned a controlling interes in Creole Petroleum Corp., a Venezuelan subsidiary of Standard Oil of New Jersey, which owns 95% of Creole's stock.

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