Fr. Dan McMullin is not through his first year at Cornell, yet he has already brought about something we students have only dreamed of: firing Phil Fiadino and Theresa Miller — both lay “chaplains” –from the Chaplaincy’s staff. His motives, however, were presumably not to eradicate heresy nor to end the confusion of having laymen acting as “chaplains” in violation of an oft-neglected Doctrinal Note. Father Daniel is, rather, facing up to economic reality: despite an Ivy League alumni base, the Cornell Catholic Community is going broke.

I’ll lay out the numbers, helpfully provided by Fr. Daniel’s Musings column from February 8th. The CCC projected expenditures of $413, 000 year versus income of $365, 000 — a $48,000, or 9%, deficit. Their income breakdown is as follows: $105,000 from interest (implying an endowment of at least $1.5-2 million), $50,000 in Sunday collections, and $155,000 from two appeals to alumni. The rest comes from unsolicited gifts.

The most sigificant cost is $300,000 for staff, or about $50,000 per employee in salary and benefits. We expect, then, that cutting both Phil and Theresa will cover the gap and then some. But how pathetic is it that they cannot raise more money than this from alumni? Pathetic, but unsurprising: who wants to contribute to a liberal and pointless chaplaincy that lacks vigor, orthodoxy, or a truly distinctive mission? Little that the CCC does is not done better by others, including by lightly-funded Catholic student groups. And the cutting of two chaplains signals something other than optimism: they clearly do not see themselves pulling out of this particular death spiral soon. Nor will they until they actually stop whoring after some phony notion of secular relevance and get down to the business of preaching the Gospel.

Removing Theresa is the most obvious move, for though many of us would sooner have seen Sr. Donna go, Fr. Dan must retain some notion of respect for the Religious, even in their most denuded state. Theresa’s attention to the Cornell liturgical and musical life will not be missed by any who are attached to truly Catholic worship, but she was the only member of the chaplaincy who seemed to think it worthwhile to argue points with annoyed students by citing official Church documents, albeit in a scattershot way. Nor will many regret the departure of her modest skill in illicit lay homiletics: imprinted in my mind is her decision to sing an emotive song in lieu of a homily on one of the Sundays assigned to her. We wish her well, and hope she will find some job that does not involve crafting liturgies or making new felt banners.

The ouster of Phil Fiadino, on the other hand, is more surprising. The most enterprising and truly liberal — in both the antique and modern senses of that overburdened word — of the chaplains, his work as “chaplain” most closely resembles a true “ministry” of sorts. Don’t get me wrong. Phil is not a particular friend of orthodoxy, nor do I think such men as he — non-ordained, freelance, hyper-tolerant, loosey-liberal semi-intellectuals — should be encouraged as a model for chaplaincy service. But if you’re going to have a goofy, ineffectual, Truth-denying Peace-and-Justice chaplaincy, then Phil is your man! An old hand at weaving the seamless garment and protesting the Industrial-Military complex, far along the so-called Path to Pacifism as espoused by such great minds as Bishop Gumbleton, Phil is currently even playing informal sponsor to the newly-formed Cornell Interfaith Socialist Alliance. Yet the man can get along with just about anybody, illicitly preaches with far more skill and flair than any of his peers, and has even found common ground, as it were, with our august Society on issues like traditional music and high liturgical form, which he favors, albeit in his slightly eccentric, overthinking liturgist-y, middle-aged-man-carrying-an-incence-pot kind of way. Corrupter of minds and souls or no, he will be missed.

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