No Complaints

Isn't it always a bitter pill to swallow - almost impossible to believe that someone in whom you placed your utmost trust as being incorruptible, someone who had appeared to the community of the faithful to be compassionate and fundamentally decent, capable and able to make most parishioners in the church they all attended - say, for example, a church named Blessed Sacrament, whose priest is now being subject to a police investigation, fallen from grace?

Fallen from grace in the opinion of the news media, hounding the selfless man who has given his all for the church and for those whose faith in him remains strong. Fallen from grace in the opinion of the Archdiocese of Ottawa, but not for those who feel a grave injustice has been done their former pastor, Joseph LeClair. For during his years with the parish he managed single-handedly, through the force of his charismatic personality and social skills to much enhance the status of that church.

The local newspaper broke a story months ago, detailing how Pastor LeClair had frequented a local casino, and in frequenting that place of gambling sin, lost several hundred thousand dollars. Asking, rhetorically as it happened, where a modestly-remunerated priest might conceivably have obtained so much money to be gambled recklessly away. Speculating that someone in the thrall of an addiction would be a slave to his need.

That need, having to be serviced, would look anywhere it could for the funding to provide the thrill or the challenge or the satisfaction or whatever it is that drives people to surrender to the impulse to placate some inner compulsion. And in this instance it seems abundantly clear that Father LeClair chose to betray the fiscal trust placed in him by the parishioners and by the Archdiocese.

He is now in an addiction counselling program in Aurora, Ontario. He has a lawyer representing his interests, and it seems he will continue in the priesthood once his exposure to the addiction counselling has been completed. An accounting firm has completed its audit to complement the more cursory one done by the Archdiocese, and a rather large sum of money has been found to be missing.

Oversight was not sufficiently undertaken by the parish finance committee, it would seem, since Father LeClair was beloved and trusted. And the truth appears to be that there are many within the parish who are outraged that police have been invited by the Archdiocese to intervene and conduct an official investigation into presumed wrong-doing on the part of Father LeClair.

In question is the handling of Sunday collections, the misuse of church accounts, failure to set aside refugee sponsorship funding, and deficient accounting practices. The church has incurred four years of deficits. Father LeClair has time and again denied that he has done anything inappropriate, much less appropriated for himself monies belonging to the church.

He has admitted, ruefully, that he has a gambling addiction. And it is his considered opinion that diocesan officials bear their own responsibility with respect to the state of the church's finances.
Above all, there are many within the parish who are angry at the position that their beloved priest finds himself in, and they too blame the Archdiocese.

"I've put a significant amount of money in the envelope every Sunday and I have no complaint", was the observation from one parishioner, seeming to echo the sentiments of many. Father LeClair is indeed fortunate that he has inspired such trust and loyalty in those whom he has served so faithfully.

On the other hand, how does that old adage go? There are none so blind as those who will not see?