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Text - Religion - Church Can't Go Broke, Incorporation a Trend.txt
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CHURCH CAN'T GO BROKE -- INCORPORATION A TREND
FLASHLINE
CHURCH CAN'T GO BROKE -- INCORPORATION A TREND
Web Posted: May 30, 2002
esieged by lawsuits and constant new allegations of pedophile priests and
other sexual abuse, the question is being asked -- can so vast a financial
holding company as the Roman Catholic church which owns land, buildings,
stocks, bonds and other assets actually go broke?
According to Time Magazine, the answer is a definite "no."
The current (June 3, 2002) issue notes that the church takes in annual
revenues of $7.5 billion. "Even more impressive are its vast property
holdings, which include everything from cathedrals and schools to
beachfront retreats, stately mansions, golf courses and television and
radio stations."
That tells only part of the story, though. No one, not even the U.S.
Government and the Internal Revenue Service, really know how much property
and other holdings are controlled by the Roman Catholic Church or any
other religious entity for that matter. There have been few investigations
into church wealth, but the Time Magazine probe did produce some
interesting findings.
╢ 1998 suit filed on behalf of two brothers who had been sexually
molested revealed that the diocese in Stockton, California controlled the
Roman Catholic Welfare Corporation which was worth a substantial $400
million. The archdiocese, after losing in court, was hit with a $29
million judgment. The church pleaded poverty, though, and managed to have
that slashed to $7.6 million. Plaintiffs attorney Jeffrey Anderson noted,
"The Catholic Church doesn't have to do any accounting to anybody."
╢ Church officials manage to keep old and outdated values of
property -- often the original purchase price -- on city records and tax
rolls, rather than the current fair market value. This allows them to
circumvent or minimize the impact of legal judgments. For instance, the
Archdiocese of Los Angeles -- reputed to be one of the wealthiest in the
nation -- negotiated a "relatively small settlement" of $5.2 million in
one case.
All of this, says Time, provides the Catholic Church with a
near-impenetrable veil of secrecy. Even more significant, in the wake of
the current pedophile priest scandal, "Practically every Catholic
institution in the U.S. is searching for ways to protect itself
financially," reports the magazine. The Boston Archdiocese, which has paid
out over $30 million in settlement hush-money and other awards, is now
"considering a complete reorganization of its corporate structure to
protect against future liability."
"One possibility would be for it to hold all its real estate in trust
for its parishes, which would make it even more difficult for new
claimants to squeeze money out of the archdiocese for priests' misdeeds."
In Colorado, for instance, the Denver Archdiocese is planning to end a
decades-old policy of having the bishop be the technical owner of church
property and instead transfer all assets to corporations. For decades, the
local bishop or archbishop often owned local church-controlled real
estate. That is now changing. According to the Denver Post, five churches
in the local Archdiocese incorporated in January, and "the archbishop is
committed to move the plan to all parishes."
A priest and canon attorney in one parish denied that this was due to
liability issues, and says that it does not prevent suits from being filed
against the archdiocese. Collection of judgments is another matter,
though, since the church would be insulated by a "corporate veil"
protecting assets.
In 1974, Madalyn Murray O'Hair published what was, up to that time, one
of the most thorough exposes of church wealth and ecclesiastical holdings
in her book "Freedom Under Siege, The Impact of Organized Religion on Your
Liberty and Your Pocketbook." The work is now out of print. O'Hair relied
mostly on "public record" accounts, tax roll listings, even church
publications for much of her information. In a chapter appropriately
titled, "Render Not Unto Caesar (The Church as Big Business)," she
revealed the scale of religion-controlled wealth. Roman Catholic assets,
for instance, exceeded the combined holdings of the titans of the American
corporate world -- Standard Oil, American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T),
and U.S. Steel. Corporate "fronts" like Angelus, Inc. were essentially
holding firms for the church, controlling lucrative properties, operating
businesses and concealing ecclesiastical lucre.
All of this property then, as now, was tax exempt. In 1876,
then-President Ulysses S. Grant proposed an amendment to the Constitution
to remedy what he termed the "evil of accumulation of the vast amount of
untaxed church property." William Lloyd Garrison agreed, declaring that
government had no right to "exempt church property from taxation." So did
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who cited the "magnificent cathedrals with their
valuable lands in Boston, Philadelphia and New York." Taxing those church
properties, said Stanton, would proportionately lighten the tax burden on
women who held property, and "every widow in the land, struggling to feed,
clothe, and educate a family of children..."
It never happened. Instead, churches were granted tax immunity through
mechanisms like the Internal Revenue Service code. Attempts to reform the
code repeatedly failed; in 1950, for instance, non-profit organizations
were required to pay taxes on "business income" that was "unrelated" to
their nonprofit activities. Religious groups were carefully excluded from
the new requirement.
The church's immediately legal future is described as "bleak" in the
latest Time. There are nearly 450 individual cases in Boston related to
the pedophile scandal, which has spread throughout the country. More than
90 men have come forward in Louisville, Kentucky and are filing complaints
against 14 priests, a deacon and a lay parochial school teacher for abuse
that allegedly occurred over a 25-year period. And Milwaukee Roman
Catholics are in shock over charges against Archbishop Rembert Weakland,
who allegedly paid a former theology student $450,000 to settle a claim of
sexual assault more than two decades ago. The church is in a fight for its
congregations, and its purse.
Flash Line
Flash Line Home
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national motto throughout country
(11-17-02) Faith-based funding compromise dead in Senate -- for now
(11-8-02) Godless Americans rally on DC mall, call for new voice in
political arena
(10-30-02) Atheist Scout won't recant, BSA threatens explusion
(10-29-02) Report on Calvi autopsy returns spotlight to Vatican bank
scandal
(10-28-02) Fate of Roy Moore's Ten Commandments now in hands of
federal judge
(10-23-02) Proof of the historical Jesus, or rush to judgment?
(10-17-02) Watts on board with new faith-based funding scheme --
vote could come at any time
(10-4-02) House rejects church electioneering bill
(10-3-02) Cobb County, Ga. school board opens door to creationism,
'Intelligent Design' pseudo-science in classrooms
(9-27-02) Speaker roster announced for November Godless Americans
March on Washington
(9-23-02) Catholic traditionalists demand apology from Chicago
Reader for 'blasphemy' -- demo planned
(9-21-02) Bowing to White House pressure, Senate readies vote on
scaled-down faith based funding bill
Copyright ⌐ 2002 American Atheists, Inc. All rights reserved.
[text only]