Michael Kelly is editor of The Irish Catholic

Next year marks 190 years since the historic passing of the Roman Catholic Relief Act by the House of Commons. The legislation brought an end to a lot of the cruel restrictions that had been placed on Catholics by the penal laws.

Daniel O’Connell — ‘the Liberator’ — had been a tireless campaigner for the rights of the vast majority of Irish citizens who were relegated to second-class citizenry by virtue of their baptism into the Catholic Church.

Emancipation marked not only relief for hard-pressed Catholics, but a new beginning for the hierarchy. Soon, a massive building programme was rolled out and churches and chapels of ease started to appear at every crossroads to meet the needs of the faithful.

Priests and the hierarchy became all-powerful and a once-downtrodden Church expanded its infrastructure widely. The symbiosis between nationalism and Catholicism was secured.

The charismatic Mother Mary Aikenhead and her Religious Sisters of Charity founded St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin in 1834. St Vincent’s and the sisters are in the news at the moment, with controversy raging over the ownership of the site of the Republic’s proposed national maternity hospital (NMH).

While the sisters announced last year that they intended to relinquish ownership of the hospitals and the land where the new NMH will be built, they have remained tight-lipped about how they will manage restrictions from doing this contained in Church law.

A losing bet: Sisters Mary Margaret Kreuper (inset left) and Lana Chang admitted using embezzled money to go gambling in Las Vegas

The sisters will require Vatican approval before divesting from the hospitals. The reason? Well, it’s simple, from the point of view of Canon Law, the sisters hold the hospital in trust on behalf of Catholics, rather than own it per se.

Yet, nowhere in the discussion is the voice of ordinary Catholics. Instead, religious congregations often appear to act as if the property of which they are stewards is their own.

For all the talk of reform in the Catholic Church, there remains

a huge chasm between the Catholic in the pew and those in leadership positions.

Cardinal Newman, the convert from Anglicanism who went on to found University College Dublin, diagnosed the issue 160 years ago. When one

of his clerical colleagues observed that laypeople should “pray up, pay up and shut up”, the soon-to-be-canonised Newman responded that the Church would look rather foolish without laypeople. Foolish, indeed, but the input of laypeople is still largely absent from decision-making within the Church.

The story of two US nuns who admitted embezzling some $500,000 (£443,000) this week to go on gambling sprees in Las Vegas has circled the globe. It’s hard to resist the Father Ted quips and the story is as amusing as it is cringeworthy for Catholics.

But it points to the deeper problem that Catholics have very little say in how their hard-earned funds are spent, or disposed of, by those in leadership. At least in the political sphere, there is an election cycle and politicians judged to be wasteful can suffer the wrath of the ballot box.

Initial reports from the US suggested that the archdiocese did not want to press charges against the Casino Nuns. One wonders whether the same medicine of mercy might be applied to lay employees who made off with Church funds.

Those close to Pope Francis say the Pontiff will soon announce a raft of reforms aimed at making the Church less topheavy. Good.

Chief among these reforms should be transparency and accountability around finances.

The Catholic Church is a voluntary organisation that is entirely dependent on the donations of members. This will continue. But people want to know and want to see that their generosity is being properly stewarded; they will want to know that what was built on the shoulders of their ancestors will not be relinquished lightly.

“Pray, pay and obey” was never a credible way to run the Church. Nowadays, it’s not only untenable — it’s wrong.