Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Time To Gloat?



Is there ever an appropriate time to gloat?




YES. Right now.




I don't expect readers to remember nor to reread all my previous entries about my former employer, King Jackass, but if you want to truly understand the chaotic leadership of this man, I have gathered them and left them at the bottom of this post.

In Short: I used to work at a church, was canned in August after knowing full well that, despite all of his two-faced promises, he was going to do it. Despite addressing this issue in May, in front of witnesses, he sent me a termination letter that arrived on Saturday, telling me that as of Sunday, my services would no longer be needed. Nice guy, yes? That's just one small example of this egomaniac mad king's way of handling things.

The news has come through that he is leaving, er...retiring in two weeks. WHY? Because of "health reasons". True, the man is old and not in the best shape, but this reason seems to be out of step with recent events. I state the facts and let you draw your own conclusions.
  • No financial statement has ever been presented to the Parish Council, despite requests for five years.

  • An independent audit was conducted followed by a church governed audit (his boss, in other words).

  • Several accounts were found.

  • The announcement was first that he would retire in the fall. Then, two weeks were given as the retirement date.

Those are the facts. I am not accusing the man of stealing. I simply don't have information to back any such accusation, but he was always annoyed that music costs money. It should be free, like it was back in the 60's when people volunteered their time. Music, in his own words, "wasn't necessary" at mass; that only the priest was truly necessary. He never said this to me, of course, but many times I had heard the same words attributed to him. There is something fundamentally wrong with someone who feels this way. There is also something unethical about hiding what you are doing with other people's money, even if you were doing it for justifiable reasons.


It's easy for people to put a priest or their pastor up on a pedestal. It's also easy for clergy to place themselves up there as well. Despite how uneasy it is to say all this: these are flawed human people, just like us. He just happened to be more flawed than most. Oops!


This dude wanted an easy ride into retirement, doing as little as possible, being catered to, not wanting to share the spotlight with a choir (or a musician), he was the king. One time, I was witness, a fellow choir member gently kidded him about spraying some crappy varnish on the outside door. He did not take too kindly and said something about a special place in Hell...blah blah blah. An indication of how high his pedestal was.


Will I get my job back? Unknown. One thing's for certain-the music program is disjoint. One mass doing one thing and another mass something different. Ironically, this is how it was when I first came there. Full circle. It's going to take a lot of time for this even to be possible and may not ever happen.


But, for now, gloating is just fine.

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