Roundtable misunderstood

Joe Feuerherd's story on the National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management (NCR, Dec. 15) gives a fair account of the efforts that Geoffrey Boisi and other business leaders are making to help the Catholic church use its human and material resources more effectively. Mr. Feuerherd reports on the continuing criticism of those efforts--I really want to say continued "carping" by people who don't seem to have examined what Mr. Boisi is trying to do.

I've talked with Mr. Boisi over the last several years about his deep desire to help make the church a more accountable institution--accountable to itself, to the people who work for it and the people who support it. I attended the July 2003 meeting with the bishops and most of the subsequent annual Roundtable meetings. Those meetings have been respectful of the bishops, of church teachings and traditions, and of ecclesiastical authority. No one has been given a "platform" for dissenting views. The only platform available is one that makes the church smarter about managing its own affairs. Yet the same criticisms keep cropping up. Rumors persist that the Roundtable is a Trojan horse whose purpose is to undermine the bishops and co-opt their authority.

If the bishops and leaders of men's religious communities really hope to restore the trust that has been eroded by the clerical sexual abuse scandal, they could hardly find a better ally than Mr. Boisi and his committee in the effort to restore trust in the finances and management of parishes, dioceses and other church institutions.

MARGARET O'BRIEN STEINFELS

New York

[Margaret Steinfels is codirector of the Fordham Center on Religion and Culture.]

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