Jose Ceralde
7 April 2008
Mr. Rafael L. Oriel, Jr.,
Thanks for the education on the difference of Canada and Philippine educational system. Canada now has only a percent of private school system of which majority are Catholic schools according to Wikipedia. So most Catholic schools business environment had not been kind to them and the reality is they are getting smaller. In fact Ontario went to language (English/French) instead of religion (Catholic/Protestant) for educational funding of the separate parallel public system.
Now, let go back to the issue of should it be the mission of the church to ensure the internet is clean of pornography? If it is its mission, how should it undertake the task? Should it undertake it as a non profit organization (NOP) or a business corporate entity? The CBCP went with it according to your article as minority owner in a business entity. The majority owners were the Lims under their own company. CBCPNet is a SEC registered public corporation and followed the Philippine regulation. Investors bought shares and creditors lend them money in accordance with prevailing business information. No where did it say that the CBCPNet was a nonprofit organization run by the Catholic Church although the trust of its vision is to give clean Catholic based values in the internet. The Lims were the managers and the church personalities were members of the board.
Usually when a corporation is going south, the first ones who know are the managers who are involved with the day to day operation and they either sink with the corporation or they start hiding assets. By the time the board members saw the symptom of the bleeding it is usually too late because the managers gave all kinds of excuses why the business had not picked up. The CBCP or the church was investors and lost money when the corporation did not turn a profit. The church could not pour in donor’s money given to the church because it is not a church entity or non profit organization. Creditors and other investors should not be blaming it for their bad luck or poor investment decisions.
To answer your statement of the church in terms of accountability as a NOP in accordance to the standard practice is as follows;
“Most countries have laws which regulate the establishment and management of NPOs, and which require compliance with corporate governance regimes. Most larger organizations are required to publish their financial reports detailing their income and expenditure for the public. In many aspects they are similar to business entities though there are often significant differences. Both non-profit and for-profit entities must have board members, steering committee members, or trustees who owe the organization a fiduciary duty of loyalty and trust. A notable exception to this involves churches, which are often not required to disclose finances to anyone, not even its own members if the leadership chooses. (Sourced http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-profit_organization, 6 April 08)”
To sum it all up; the church did not have the expertise to establish an IT company so it went in as minority shareholder in a public corporation and not as a NOP. Usually when it is confident of its abilities to undertake its mission on its own it does so as a NOP. The church should not be blamed when creditors and investors lose their money in a public corporation saying they had been duped because of their faith in the church. Here in the US when the church invested its money in Reynolds Corp. and made millions, it did not take credit.
Lastly before investing read the prospectus and good luck.
