The Dawn Patrol
The blog of author Dawn Eden Goldstein, S.Th.D., aka Dawn Eden
Wednesday, January 6, 2021
I write for Where Peter Is on Frank J. Hanna III's "Official Catholic" dark money
Friday, January 1, 2021
An open letter to EWTN President Doug Keck
Dear Mr. Keck,
Today I have the sad task of asking you to remove those same videos. I am appalled that EWTN fired Gloria Purvis for no apparent reason other than that she was forthright in fostering the conversations about race that Pope Francis has urged us to have.
Gloria Purvis is on fire for Jesus Christ, his Church, and his Gospel of Life. She is exactly the sort of voice that EWTN should celebrate. But instead you are canceling her while continuing to elevate Raymond Arroyo, who has repeatedly made racially insensitive and antisemitic comments on his EWTN and Fox News shows.
EWTN, by deplatforming Gloria while continuing to showcase Raymond, has thereby taken a stand against anti-racism and thus for racism. I ask therefore that you remove my videos as well as my radio appearances from your archives, until and unless you rehire Gloria Purvis.
Thursday, December 31, 2020
UPDATED: Frank J. Hanna's Strange Secret
One can gain an idea of Hanna's philanthropic interests by looking at the boards on which he has served. In addition to EWTN and the Napa Institute, Hanna's current or recent board memberships include the Acton Institute, Catholic University of America, the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS), the Ethics and Public Policy Center, the Federalist Society, the Papal Foundation, the Pontifical North American College, and Sophia Institute Press (publisher of Taylor Marshall's anti-Francis conspiracy screed Infiltration).
Among the organizations he supports, Hanna has made it his constant practice to search for opportunities to leverage the group’s influence. “Frank is one of those board members who continually asks hard questions of us,” [Acton Institute President Father Robert] Sirico explains. “He looks beyond the enthusiasm for a project and wants to know hard facts about how influential an idea or program will be—not how many books we will publish, but how many people will read the information. He wants bang for the buck, and is highly strategic in his thinking.”Hanna began his career as a corporate attorney before entering the financial world in the late 1980s as an executive at Nationwide Credit, which was founded by his father. He and his brother David in 1996 founded CompuCredit, a financial company that offered subprime credit cards to consumers who had poor credit ratings. Those who sign up for subprime credit cards are often low-income and are disproportionately African-American.
The main philanthropic organ that Hanna uses to make his donations is the Solidarity Association. He founded it as an Association of the Christian Faithful by decree of Archbishop John Francis Donoghue in the early 2000s to fund the now-defunct Solidarity School. At its peak in the late 2000s, the Solidarity School gave an English-language immersion education to about ninety children from Spanish-speaking households whose parents "mostly [worked] in construction or fast food, as maids, or [as] day laborers."
Today, the Solidarity Association's website states that the nonprofit gives ongoing support to more than two dozen Catholic nonprofits, including not only EWTN and FOCUS but also the Catholic University of America's Busch School of Business (to which Hanna gave $250,000 in 2015).
The Solidarity Association is highly unusual among U.S. Catholic foundations that give to multiple recipients (as opposed to supporting a single hospital or school), in that it does not make its financial information public. Apart from the list of donation recipients that it provides on its website, its activities are completely opaque.
How can a Catholic nonprofit operate so darkly? Isn't it required by law to report its donations as well as other details such as its board members and assets? To understand how the Solidarity Association evades scrutiny of its finances, it is necessary to take a brief excursion into the peculiarities of U.S. tax law for religious nonprofits.
Normally, a U.S. foundation is required to file an IRS Form 990, which provides the public with information about its financials, their governance, and the recipients of their donations. However, the Form 990 requirement is waived for certain religious nonprofits, which can include not only churches but also official nonprofits associated with them, such as hospitals and schools.
In the case of the Catholic Church, the IRS permits the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to determine which Catholic nonprofits are official and which are not. This permission comes through what is known as the "USCCB group ruling," as detailed in a FAQ on the USCCB website (the screenshot below is from page 3).
Upon determining that a nonprofit deserves official status, the USCCB grants the nonprofit a listing in the Official Catholic Directory. If the nonprofit meets certain other qualifications, it may then use its Official Catholic Directory listing to prove to the IRS that it is exempt from having to file a Form 990. (This 2012 Catholic News Service article sheds light on the relationship between the USCCB and the privately owned OCD.)
And so, thanks to the exemption Hanna gained through listing his foundation in the Official Catholic Directory and meeting the additional requirements, Solidarity Association has never filed a Form 990 and so has never publicly disclosed its finances. Its listing on the nonprofit-information site Guidestar (free registration required to view) states, "This organization is not required to file an annual return with the IRS because it is a church." Guidestar further states that the Solidarity Association is listed with the IRS as a "Specialized Education Institutions/Schools for Visually or Hearing Impaired, Learning Disabled." This is apparently because the school's mission included providing special education.
With that said, even if the Solidarity Association does still qualify for an Official Catholic Directory listing, just because an organization doesn't have to disclose its finances doesn't mean it can't do so. There are many official Catholic nonprofits that do not have to file a Form 990 but choose to do so in order to exhibit transparency. Given the Napa Institute's strident calls for the laity to lead the Church in promoting accountability and transparency, it is mystifying that Hanna, as a Napa board member, would take advantage of the same shields that Napa criticizes for enabling financial abuses.
If Hanna were willing to enact the transparency and accountability that Napa promotes, he could shed some light on how he uses the Solidarity Association to fund the online-only Pontifex University, of which he is vice chancellor.
Pontifex University is unaccredited, a not-insignificant fact that its website buries under paragraphs boasting that it is approved by Atlanta's (now-former) archbishop and recognized by a Georgia state commission (which has nothing to do with accreditation). It charges students $9,175 for a “Master of Sacred Arts” degree and, “depending on exemptions for prior credits or qualifications,” up to $16,800 for a “Th.D.” The university's website also notes that its master’s program “may be audited for 30 monthly payments of $100.”
In 2019, Pontifex University used its “doctoral” program to give Christopher West, president of the Theology of the Body Institute, a seemingly appropriate qualification to oversee Pontifex’s “Masters of Sacred Arts with Specialization in the Theology of the Body.” Its website now lists the popular speaker and author as “Dr. Christopher West, Fellow and Professor of Theological Anthropology who earned his doctorate in theology (Th.D.) at Pontifex University.”
If visitors to Pontifex’s website are inspired to support the institution, the site accepts donations through the Solidarity Association, which it says it applies to “scholarships for prospective and existing students.” The donation page emphasizes that “Solidarity Association is recognized as having charitable status … by virtue of its inclusion in the Official Catholic Directory.”
Hanna is thus using the Solidarity Association's listing in the Official Catholic Directory to legitimize what is effectively a diploma mill. Pontifex University manufactures its own unaccredited "ThD"'s such as "Dr." Christopher West and then employs them to lead courses that result in degrees that are not worth the paper they are printed on. I say this not to discount the genuine expertise that West and other Pontifex professors (many of whom have legitimate doctorates) possess, but rather to point out that Pontifex, on an institutional level, fails to meet the standards of academic integrity that a Catholic university should meet.
Given how prominently the Solidarity Association's Official Catholic Directory listing features in Pontifex University's marketing, it is clear that the listing—and the freedom from transparency that it provides—is very important to Hanna. This brings me to the most curious part of his story—a strange secret that has remained hidden from the public eye until now.
He bought the Official Catholic Directory.
Given that Hanna has never publicized his ownership of the directory, discovering the truth requires a bit of digging. But the trail of ownership is clear:
- The president of Official Catholic Directory’s parent company, NRP Direct (formerly National Register Publishing Direct), Brett Grayson, works as Hanna's business lawyer.
- Until recently, a GoDaddy WhoIs search (see screenshot at left) showed that Hanna's company, Hanna Capital, owned NRP Direct's website. Today that same search yields only a private registration (meaning that the owner chooses not to be known); however, there remains online evidence that Grayson owns NRP-associated websites in association with another Hanna company, HBR Capital.
- Addresses for Treasured Works, which owns NRP Direct, and for Honeycomb Ventures, which purchased the Official Catholic Directory's trademark, trace back to Hanna Capital’s office.
Why, then, would Hanna keep his ownership of the Official Catholic Directory a secret, given how such ownership only adds to his already formidable influence in the world of Catholic nonprofits?
I don't know.
But I find it disturbing that Hanna owns the very company by which, through his foundation's listing in the directory, he is able to avoid the transparency that he—as part of the Napa Institute—claims the Church should practice.
_____________________________________
Updated January 2, 2021, 4:55 p.m. EST, to include Hanna's membership in Regnum Christi.
Saturday, December 19, 2020
Watch: I speak about "Living Dedicated Celibacy in the World"
Monday, December 14, 2020
A legal matter
Up on the roof, October 26, 2020 |
The idea to study canon law came to me in early June. It was during the lockdown. To make ends meet since my teaching position at Holy Apostles was eliminated last year, I had been doing theological editing. Having a job that requires constant communion with a computer screen is tolerable when one's daily life includes some human contact; without such contact, it can be maddening. It occurred to me that if I became a canon lawyer, I would have the benefit of interacting with other people every day.
Another motivation for studying law was the research I was doing at the time for my four-part critique of In Sinu Jesu for Where Peter Is. After the first installment of the critique was published, I heard from a couple of people who said they had witnessed or experienced abusive behavior at a monastery mentioned in the article. I thought about how, if I were a licensed canon lawyer, I could assist those who were seeking to report such behavior or who were harmed by it.
Over the course of the past semester, I have reflected further on what I would like to do as a canon lawyer and have come around to the realization that working on annulment cases could bring a sense of vocational satisfaction. I'm glad to have that thought, since it is highly likely that, in actual fact, more than ninety percent of my work as a canonist will be assisting one or more diocesan marriage tribunals. What appeals to me about it is that, as a woman and as a layperson, I could be present for people seeking annulments—listening to them and compassionating them—in a manner that a priest could not (granting that a priest may be compassionate in his own way). And the overwhelming majority of canonists are priests.
In other words, assisting with annulments could prove to be a way for me to exercise the spiritual motherhood that I talked about when addressing the Edith Stein Guild last year.
Please pray for me as I continue my studies. I pray for you and for everyone who reads my writings. God bless you!
Monday, November 23, 2020
All I've got to Gibb
At left is the mock-up I made for the cover of my memoir Sunday Will Never Be the Same. My publisher and my chosen art director, Steve Stanley, didn't think it was right. Eventually Steve designed the beautiful image that became the cover. Still, I have a fondness for my own design. Maybe one day I'll write an alternate book to go with the alternate cover.
Saturday, October 31, 2020
It's finally here: Steve Wynn's recording of the song we wrote together
#Thrilled to receive my copy of @stevewynn's marvelous boxed set--including the song he and I wrote together (my music and his lyrics)! #Grateful too for Steve's very kind words in the liner notes. As recording engineer @John_Agnello says, he is a mensch.@Progarchy @Glenn__Kenny https://t.co/gRn1SyGuy9 pic.twitter.com/f1ppgtNLu6
— Dawn Eden Goldstein: Wear a Mask/Stop the Spread (@DawnofMercy) October 15, 2020
I wrote in this space earlier about Dream Syndicate co-founder Steve Wynn was set to release his recording of a song that he and I wrote together nearly twenty-five years ago. Today I'm thrilled to report that the song is out on Steve Wynn's wonderful boxed set Decade and you can also hear it in all its glory in the YouTube video below—words by Steve and music by me.