For years, folks have been saying that the next big RC scandal would be financial. Today, the NYTimes reported on a study from some Villanova University researchers hinting at the wide scope of the problem:

A survey by researchers at Villanova University has found that 85 percent of Roman Catholic dioceses that responded had discovered embezzlement of church money in the last five years, with 11 percent reporting that more than $500,000 had been stolen.

The Catholic Church has some of the most rigorous financial guidelines of any denomination, specialists in church ethics said, but the survey found that the guidelines were often ignored in parishes. And when no one is looking, the cash that goes into the collection plate does not always get deposited into the church’s bank account.

I would actually question the first sentence of the second paragraph. There are no "Catholic Church" financial guidelines, since it handled on a diocese-by-diocese basis, and honestly, the rest of the article lends no support to that sentence. I really don’t know what it means. Yes, on paper, every parish is to have a finance council (it is required by Canon Law, as opposed to say, a Parish Pastoral Council, which is not), but diocesean regs vary widely, and external auditing of parishes is a rarity. The oversight is even worse. We’ve seen over and over again that while dioceses might have regulations about how collections are to be counted and reported, they have been regularly flouted by determined clerical and lay thieves, with too often concerned people – again, sometimes lay, sometimes other priests – being brushed off by diocesan officials. Not always, obviously, but too often.

Canon law requires each parish to have a finance council to provide oversight. But Bishop Schnurr, who heads the diocese in Duluth, Minn., said there were no standards for how finance council members were chosen or whether they should have any expertise in accounting or finance.

Only 3 percent of the dioceses said they annually conducted an internal audit of their parishes, and 21 percent said they seldom or never audited parishes, the survey found.

This lack of scrutiny is at the core of the problem, said Francis J. Butler, president of Foundations and Donors Interested in Catholic Activities, a nonprofit organization independent of the church.

“You’re taking a lot of risk,” Mr. Butler said, “and these days the church cannot afford to take these kinds of risks.”

Bishop Schnurr said the study’s findings on lack of parish oversight contradicted his experience. But both he and Kenneth W. Korotky, chief financial officer for the bishops’ conference, said a committee could soon consider writing guidelines for the composition of parish finance councils and how often dioceses should audit parishes.

But they cautioned that the bishops’ conference could not make guidelines mandatory, because each bishop was in charge of administering his own diocese.

The Villanova study is here.