…only Preston Sturges’ version would be classier.

Two stories, the Palm Beach Post

Whatley and special agent John Marinello of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement were assigned the case in June 2005.

Whatley interviewed several former St. Vincent church employees, one of whom told him that Guinan had an "intimate" relationship with his former bookkeeper at St. Patrick’s Church and gave her nearly $50,000 between March and December 2004.

The money was used in part to pay her American Express bills and her son’s tuition at Cardinal Newman High School, according to a police report.

Another employee told Whatley that she and her mother received greeting cards containing $1,500 cash from Skehan after she refused to help the diocese with the investigation. Skehan told her he was proud of her and that the diocese was corrupt, according to the report. He also offered to pay her legal fees "if ever needed."

An accounting firm hired by the diocese to conduct a forensic audit revealed that during Skehan and Guinan’s tenures at St. Vincent, more than $8.6 million was misappropriated from the church to "slush funds" controlled by Skehan and Guinan, records show.

and the Sun-Sentinel:

The investigation into the church finances dates to September 2003, when Skehan retired and Guinan was named to replace him. According to diocesan financial administrator Denis Hamel, Guinan, along with a St. Vincent bookkeeper identified as the priest’s girlfriend, tried to block a routine audit done to coincide with the change in leadership.

Both priests, Irish-born and friends for about 30 years, are accused of directing staffers to make bank deposits in amounts of less than $10,000 to avoid notice and detection. Former bookkeepers described to police a scheme in which the priests often set up new bank accounts or wrote checks for non-existent construction projections to cover up their thefts.

Although Skehan retired as pastor of St. Vincent three years ago, he continued to have access to church accounts until January, police said.

Guinan resigned as pastor at St. Vincent in September 2005 as the diocese was trying to remove him, according to diocese spokeswoman Alexis Walkenstein. "Our internal investigation merged with the criminal investigation," she said. "We were on top of this in advance of the criminal investigation. We were conducting a careful, serious probe."

Note the lay staff’s cooperation, which is not surprising. It would be very difficult for all of these various accounts and such to be set up without the accounting staff’s knowledge and cooperation.  (And note in the PBP story, the most recent example of financial shenanigans before this in the Palm Beach diocese involved a layman who embezzled about 400,000.)

To be quite honest, and throw something out there that will undoubtedly get folks riled up, the sub-current of the conversations about this case, conversations burning up phone lines and email transits, is this case as the last, most vivid gasp of the reign of the kingdom-building Irish priests in Florida.

Without Irish priests, there would be no Catholic structure in Florida – they came over in droves in the 50’s and 60’s, and every medium-to large sized community in Florida, particularly along the eastern side, has their mega-parish built up by Irish priests. I’ve known many of them, and some of them are truly amazing men, a small contigent having, for example, been part of the Holy Ghost Fathers, serving in Africa before they came over this mission territory.

But there was a particular type of clerical culture bred. It was a culture in which the pastor was king – this did not mean he was anti-laity or opposed to having a lay staff or "conservative" ideologically. Not at all. Florida is not exactly known for being a hotbed of "traditional" Catholicism. It meant that in the end, the parish was his – he built it, it’s his to use.  It was a culture that involved lots of golf, vibrant social life in the rectory,  frequent trips to Ireland (why not?), and financial largesse to one’s friends.

And of course, the laity eat it up and do their part to enable it. They appreciate their large, busy parish, are happy with their school. They trust. They are flattered when drawn into Father’s inner circle. They also view their priests with this weird combination of awe and pity, both of which thrust the priest way up there on a pedestal as either "Wonderful Father X" who could do no wrong or "Poor Father X" who needs to be given space and perhaps permission to act in a way we would never accept from, say a married lay businessman because, you know, he’s given so much up for his vocation, and is so lonely.

Any subculture exists at its own risk, and can be easily turned in on itself. We have spoken much of clerical culture over the past few years, and pointed out that the self-protective instincts within that culture are no different from the same instincts that exists within the law, the medical profession, the military, teaching, or even a family. It is nothing unique to priests, and it is nothing unique to Irish priests.

(The shorthand in Florida – and perhaps elsewhere – for the categories of priests were FBI – Foreign Born Irish and CIA – Conceived in America.)

All I’m saying is that the dominance of Irish priests who made up the core of the Florida priesthood from the 50’s on, had to take on some sort of subcultural aspect, and it did. Those of us who have worked in it have seen it close up. It has its great qualities – a celebratory spirit, a determination to work hard and build up something concrete, and, yes, a generosity. But it has a downside, as well, and one that we see doesn’t just involve clerics, but involves many more people in a parish culture in which, in the absence of diocesan controls and audits, much damage can be done.

It’s a subculture in which secrets are rampant. It’s a subculture which joins forces with another subculture – the actively homosexual clerical subculture – and the two, which actually and actively despise each other, weave an intricate, perverse bond of secrecy in which everyone tacitly agrees to keep everyone’s secrets  – so the party can go on.