The first Wanamaker's department store was designed to evoke the interior of a vast church. It was one of the ways in which the store's founder translated his Christianity into the retail experience.

Nicole C. Kirk's new book Wanamaker's Temple: The Business of Religion in an Iconic Department Store delves into how religious and political beliefs shaped his retail empire. Read more

She is as the inaugural Brian Picot Chair in Ethical Leadership, which is within Victoria Business School's School of Management.

She joins five other Professorial Chairs at the Business School who lead research on important contemporary issues in specialist areas of digital government, public finance, business in Asia, economics of disasters and restorative justice. Continue reading

"Of all the organisations that serve America's poor, few do more good work than the Catholic Church: its schools and hospitals provide a lifeline for millions. Yet even taking these virtues into account, the finances of the Catholic Church in America are an unholy mess," the magazine says.

In a 4000-word article, The Economist says some parts of the church have indulged in "ungainly financial contortions" allegedly to divert funds away from uses intended by donors or to frustrate creditors with legitimate claims, including its own nuns and priests.

Sexual abuse settlements have led to a liquidity crisis, apparently encouraging a trend towards paying for the expansion and renovation of facilities through publicly raised debt rather than donations or contributions from the faithful.

Over the past eight years, eight dioceses in the US have declared bankruptcy. Often parishes that had commingled their funds with diocesan finances lost all their investments, even if they had been told it was being kept separate, and money was diverted from priests' retirement funds.

The Economist estimates that annual spending by Church entities in the US was around $NZ210 billion in 2010 — 57% on health-care networks, 28% on colleges, 6% on parish and diocesan day-to-day operations, and 2.7% on national charitable activities.

The magazine says the American Church may account for as much as 60% of the Catholic Church's wealth globally.

And it names Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, as "Manhattan's largest landowner, if one includes the parishes and organisations that come under his jurisdiction".

Source:

The Economist

Image: Baylor University

Imagine the moment (with a choir in the background for good measure): under a banner proclaiming "Welcome Home!" a lapsed Catholic opens the beautifully crafted doors to the parish where she hopes by God's grace to renew her faith life in Christ and the holy church. The friendly pastor, a smile on his face, shakes the newcomer's hand, saying, "Thanks for giving us your business! We promise that you'll discover we operate with best practices, accountability, transparency, and financial protocols that will ensure your donation is used effectively."

Choir sputters out, banner blows away in a sudden storm, and the returning Catholic bolts.

And rightfully so. After all, thinking of the church—the body of Christ—and parish life in business terms is not what anyone wants. That's just flat-out secularizing the sacred.

Isn't it?

Rather, the goal is to adopt, to the extent possible, best practices from the business and nonprofit sector so as to more effectively utilize parish resources in service to the mission of the church

Read more about parishes that work; business practices for the Church

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• Image: Our Sunday Visitor