The Thief, His Sister, The Bishop and The Whistleblower, Part 5
The June 21, 2017 Letter to the Vicar
“People say that I’m O.K./ That there’ll be a better day.” Fr. Mangano shares the story of the vision through which he was called to ordination.
They asked for water, and their bishop gave them vinegar on a reed.
It is clear that parishioners at St. Joseph Church in Babylon who complained to their diocese about Charles Mangano were people of strong faith who, prior to being disregarded and disrespected by the diocese and bishop, had actually expected something of both. These signatories devoted incredible amounts of time, energy and diligence to collaborating in an effort to cleanse their temple. At each turn they sought to handle things in the most appropriate way, working through appropriate channels, addressing the powers that be in reverential tone. Over and over again and their pleas to remove Mangano were ignored or dismissed. This, as Mangano pillaged at will.
The parishioners at St. Joseph who brought their concerns to Barres never expected to get everything they asked for, but they expected to be heard. Mangano may have robbed these parishioners of a fortune, but it was John O. Barres, the Diocese of Rockville Centre bishop, who robbed them of their faith in their diocese. They had expected to be cared for. They had expected a modicum of pastorality. Instead they got instead a noxious dose of clericalism. They asked for water, and their bishop gave them vinegar on a reed.
A “sad and disturbing display”
When first they began to voice concerns, the people seeking to purge their temple of their “thief priest,” those who wrote had fully expected to be heard. Instead, for their troubles, they found themselves humiliated, scorned, and threatened with bodily harm. One parishioner’s tires were slashed. Another’s family was threatened by a Mangano proxy. By his reticence, Barres lent his imprimatur to this thuggish conduct.
When Mangano began to threaten the squeaky wheels with physical harm, Barres said nothing. When Mangano’s superfan slashed a parishioner’s tires, Barres did nothing. When Mangano used his pulpit and an Ascension Thursday Mass to stage a tantrum in which he characterized his own parishioners as “evil people.” The venal Barres kept the silence. The following is an excerpt from the June 21, 2017 letter:
Fr. Charles homily on ascension Thursday was a rant against the information on the site. ‘Evil people created this website and evil will divide the parish” ... “I paid for my Easter vestments” was his only rebuke to the expenditures referred to on the website. It was a sad and disturbing display… The information on the website were the exact facts and figures that we had been gathering and sending to the diocese for months.”
A “sad and disturbing display” indeed.
Those who have followed Barres in the news are unlikely to be surprised by his indifference to Catholics in the pews. (I write at length about John O. Barres in earlier installments of this series.) John O. Barres recently went to court to force rape vcitims to bring cases under their own name. Barres is named in the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report. He likely embraces some variation on the Opus Dei ethos of “no scruples” (To see how this works, study at Bill Barr.) an “ends justify the means” approach to bringing secular law in line with religious law.
Neither the character of Christ nor the needs of individual Catholics in the pews figure in much to those who have committed themselves to (what they see as the greater good of ) bringing secular law in line with Catholic law. They’re saving the world from damnation. It is in the service of this aim that Barres’s particular strain of Roman Catholicism has sought — and succeeded, in the United States, at infiltrating elite schools, financial institutions, government (the Supreme Court of the United states), GOP think tanks, Catholic media, and the institutional Catholic Church itself. Opus Dei adherents often see predatory capitalism and unrestrained acquisition of wealth as means for obtaining political power, and political power is necessary to their dominionist goals.
This determination to put money before Christ goes a long way towards explaining so much that is doctrinal.
In the case of Mangano and Barres, the cost-benefit analysis would likely have informed Barress manner of responding to the parishioners at St. Joseph’s, and may have led the bishop to conclude that it was better to ignore the whistleblowers at St. Joseph’s and let Mangano pilfer amok until Barres could find a safe place to stash Mangano (as an associate, and not a pastor). The parishioners who complained about Mangano neither deserved nor required an immediate response. They were just parishioners.
I have been blogging for a long time about the Catholic Church, and often, the way money works within the institutional church winds up a focus. I have come to believe that protecting the assets of the Catholic Church at any all cost/s is the top priority for most United States bishops. Not only that, but it seems to me that a willingness to accept protecting the cash as the priority is requisite for being consecrated (made a bishop).
This determination to put money before Christ goes a long way towards explaining so much that is doctrinal. Scandals are expensive. Economics underpins the inhumane teaching related to gender and sexuality. Baptisms yield money. The promulgation of bigotry protects the money while keeping the fold increasing. The whole episcopacy is shaped with the goal of holding on to wealth and wielding power in mind. This view of things goes back to the Medieval Catholic Church. It may be that fidelity to Christ of the Beatitudes is a luxury today’s bishops believe they just cannot afford.
Many Catholics in the pews still cling to this idea that they can contribute to their “good” parishes without enriching their dishonest bishops.
Many Catholics in the pews still cling to this idea that they can contribute to their “good” parishes without enriching their dishonest bishops. But its diocese owns everything a parish has. In a sense, technically speaking, it was the Diocese of Rockville Centre from which Mangano stole. Barres made all of his decisions in the knowledge that under ecclesiastical law Roman Catholic parishioners don’t really have any say in how their money is used, because it’s not their money. Pastors really just manage diocesan dollars. People in the pews donate to the Lord, not their parishes, and the closest people to the Lord are priests. Hands of a priest. It was really the Diocese of Rockville Centre whose pockets the sticky-fingered Mangano was picking.
About ten years ago I coined and started to use the #BoycottTheBasket hashtag, and since then nearly every criticism I have ever received regarding this little campaign has involved characterizing me as “a Protestant” (As if what I take as a compliment could serve as an insult!) Conservative Catholic blowhards often point to the exhortation to withhold tithes for political reasons as a tactic Martin Luther employed during the Reformations. (Luther was right about some things and wrong about others.) Folks classifying me as Protestant in these moments hold the belief that Catholics should be willing to tithe without any semblance of representation, and that to withhold contributions for any reason other than abject poverty is heretical. The role of Roman Catholic parishioners, they believe, is to give, and the role of Roman Catholic bishops is to take.
This dynamic hearkens back to feudal times, systems and economics. In his superb new bookThe Truth at the Heart of the Lie, James Carroll informs his audience that some of the very words seminarians speak/swear as they are ordained are expressions vassals spoke while pledging fealty to their lords. These oaths, like the Canon Code itself, have their roots in medieval/feudal economic systems.
Ordinary bishops have one superior, and he, being the pope, tends to be a busy man. What this means is that the manchildren in miters operate without little oversight. Bishops have to behave in publicly abominable ways to be removed. The bishop of Brooklyn Nicholas DiMarzio who has been protecting child rapists for decades, is currently under investigation by the vatican for two sets of child rapes 45 plus years ago, but was never removed from ministry. The pope declined to even accept the resignation he tendered almost three years ago! DiMarzio is still around children. McCarrick pimped, abused and raped amok for decades before they got him, despite that lots of prelates in Rome and in the United States knew about his misconduct. Malone in Buffalo kept a log of rapist priests he chose not to report, Bransfield in West Virginia allegedly used parishioners’ money to buy a mansion, wine, charter flights, exotic flora, sex workers, and to bribe fellow bishops (among them William Lori and Tim Dolan) before he was put out to pasture.
What the St. Joseph (Babylon) whistleblowers didn’t know until they learned it the hard way is that it’s impossible to cleanse a temple when the bishop prefers that it remain dirty.
Barres’s transgressions, presiding over a cover up of clergy child r*pe perpetrators in his diocese, using bankruptcy to stall or foreclose upon an clergy child rape investigation in his diocese, and compounding the suffering of survivors brave enough to come forward in courts of law, are considered “small potatoes” in United States Bishop-world. What the St. Joseph (Babylon) whistleblowers didn’t know until they learned it the hard way is that it’s impossible to cleanse a temple when the bishop prefers that it remain dirty.
I infer from the correspondence I received that some time between May 2017 and January 2017, that Mangano was directed by the vicar or diocese to limit his spending, and instructed to begin submitting requests for large expenditures to the diocese in the prescribed manner. The monsignor (Richard Henning) who, according to the March 15, 2021 National Catholic Reporter article on this situation, conducted an internal audit of Mangano somehow found “no malfeasance.” Shortly thereafter, he found himself promoted to auxiliary bishop.
Barres finally removed Mangano, but failed to hold him responsible for his actions, declined to compel the cleric to make restitution, and was as quick to wash his hands of the “thief priest” as he was to sign off on a decree through which he would punish Deacon Stephen Yusko (for whistleblowing) by initiating the laicization process. Defrocking as a penalty, because cruelty is the point. What would Jesus do? Not that.
It is important to bear in mind while understanding the misconduct of Mangano and Barres that the former was not using this cash to open soup kitchens. Mangano fired longtime employees and domestics. Mangano’s excesses left three long-time parish employees jobless. He dismissed three workers who cooked and cleaned in the rectory, each of whom had been employed at St. Joseph for more than a decade. He moved outreach ministries into a dilapidated and possibly unsafe convent in order to claim space for his family/ entourage, “music ministry” and other vanity projects. Mangano used this investment account to create an apartment for his parents, adorn his altar and sanctuary with gold lavishments, and to clear and renovate office space out of which he could begin to run his Mater Dei “music ministry.”
Was Father Mangano’s spending spree at St. Joseph’s a compulsive’s last ditch attempt to reboot his nosediving career? Is that what turned Father Mangano into a Captain Queeg in a Roman collar?
Mater Dei appears to lack a board of directors/trustees, has no discernible presence on any of the websites that evaluate the legitimacy of charitable organizations; and some might say it has the hinky outward appearance of a tax shelter. I would be surprised to find that Mater Dei makes any legitimate profit at all. Do church ladies actually buy CDs? Any audience Mangano might have once attracted is probably aging out and dwindling fast. Did Laurie and Charles Mangano really give the tens of thousands of dollars they claim to have given to charitable institutions? Can they prove this? Have being phased out of the Catholic Faith Network and booted from Spotify rendered Mangano feeling jittery about his next chapter? Was Father Mangano’s spending spree at St. Joseph’s a compulsive’s last ditch attempt to reboot his nosediving career? Is that what turned Father Mangano into a Captain Queeg in a Roman collar?
When questioned on his elaborate costly projects, Mangano, I am told, sometimes exclaimed, “Don’t worry. I got a donor.” After dismissing personnel who cooked and cleaned in his rectory, Mangano installed a (volunteer!) cleaning ministry (a most Opus Dei-flavored move. Opus Dei has a ministry made up chiefly of women who clean their office spaces for Christ.)
The Vicar conceded that a problem existed, but Mangano continued to put his “hands of a priest” in the St. Joseph’s parish cookie jar at will.
I read and reread several pieces of correspondence drafted by parishioners from the Parish of St. Joseph this past weekend. The most painful to read is the aforementioned June 21, 2017 letter which was follow up to an earlier (January 2017) one addressed to Rev. Andrzej Zglejszewski. Zglejszewski was serving, at the time, as the Vicar of the Western Vicariate in the Diocese of Rockville Centre. The authors/signatories note, graciously, in the letter, their awareness that the Zglejszewski, had only recently assumed the handling of the St. Joseph’s matter, and go on to express their escalating discouragement over the diocese’s lack of response and “our repeated conversations to curtail his spending, going back to the first Finance Committee meeting in October of 2016, and … every meeting thereafter…”
The parishioners seeking a remedy through their diocese discovered a pattern of fiscal misconduct almost immediately after Mangano took occupancy at the Parish of St, Joseph. According to documentation I cited in earlier section of this story, Mangano arrived at St. Joseph’s after leaving his previous parish with a $900K deficit. (I could not help wondering when first I read this whether his appointment to St. Joseph’s had been in any way influenced by the bishop’s knowledge that Saint Joseph’s had this $1.2 million investment account. Did the Rockville Centre Diocese know they were installing a compulsive spender at St. Joseph’s?) According to the June 21st letter, the parish sent the first notice of the Mangano problem to the diocese in September of 2016. Four months later, Mangano was still squandering amok, as parishioners continued to awaiting a proper response from their diocese.
Some time after 2016 the Vicar wrote back, admitting that “Fr. Charles Mangano did not follow diocesan policy with regard to capital expenditures.” The Vicar conceded that a problem existed, but Mangano continued to put his “hands of a priest” in the St. Joseph’s parish cookie jar at will. The June 21st letter characterizes Mangano’s spending after being advised by the diocese.
Please understand our skepticism when it comes to putting our faith in Fr. Mangano actually adhering to the limits placed on him … as recently as our May meeting were still identifying additional expenditures in the tens of thousands of dollars.
The June 21 letter also notes Mangano’s parents’ and secretary’s spending nights in the rectory, and concerns about the environmental safety of the old convent to which social justice ministry offices were moved in order to make room for Mangano’s personal entourage, elaborate vestments and Mater Dei music ministry operation.
“Fr. Charles is a bully. While hiding behind his collar, he abuses the hard-working people who do not worship him, employers as well as volunteers.'“
This letter informs the Vicar of the existence of a website (SaveStJosephs.com) launched about one month earlier by means of which St. Joseph’s parishioners sought to air and share their concerns about Mangano. The authors of the letter offered to provide the diocese with its content, which they had removed following threats from someone claiming to be acting on behalf of Mangano.
“… I am a private investigator hired by Charles Mangano and you had better take down the website or harm will come to your family” … Shortly thereafter, these same author/s received a phone call from Fr. Mangano informing them that “perhaps they should take a break from their ministries… because they would not be welcome to work in the rectory.”
To quote a response from a long-time parishioner … “Fr. Charles is a bully. While hiding behind his collar, he abuses the hard-working people who do not worship him, employers as well as volunteers. There are presently no staff left on the staff at St. Joseph’s that are happy with the way they are being treated. Many have quit and many were fired.
The authors of the letter June 21, 2017 implore the addressee to:
reach out to our priests and employees privately and learn how damaging the environment that Fr. Mangano has created really is affecting the staff, or what’s left of them.
The letter makes mention of the matter of Mangano’s enforcement of the “no whispering or closing of any office doors by anyone except Fr. Mangano” rule he had imposed (in the rectory). One chilling section cites the failure of one priest, in whom the authors of the letter confided, to honor the petitioning parishioners’ request for confidentiality, which in this case exposed them to Magano’s potentially vengeful wrath.
Again we ask you and the diocese to keep our identities confidential. None of us wants to be next on Fr. Charles’s telephone ‘hit list’ or worse!
The letter ends thus:
we at St. Joseph Parish are claiming financial and emotional abuse. In our January 2017 letter we prayed the Diocese would help us. We have had a preliminary meeting with the media and we will not hesitate to pursue that avenue if you choose to disregard our request for relief.
What would Jesus do? Maybe he’d pick up his whip and beat that bishop.
The authors of the July 21, 2017 letter copied Bishop John O. Barres on the letter. It took Barres two years to do anything and when he finally did it wasn't nearly enough. Maybe Barres was too busy cover up for clergy child rapists and attending to the particulars of his Bankruptcy claim. What would Jesus do? Maybe he’d pick up his whip and beat that bishop.
MMS
May 10, 2021
Cambridge, MA
Read Part 1, The Thief, His Sister, The Bishop and The Whistleblower
Read Part 2, The Thief, His Sister, The Bishop and The Whistleblower
Read Part 3, The Thief, His Sister, The Bishop and The Whistleblower
Read Part 4, The Thief, His Sister, The Bishop and The Whistleblower
Read Part 5, The Thief, His Sister, The Bishop and The Whistleblower