Aside from weirdos like Chunky David Brooks, who on earth would want to be a Catholic anymore?
Employees at Catholic Charities were told Monday that the social services organization is changing its health coverage to avoid offering benefits to same-sex partners of its workers — the latest fallout from a bitter debate between District officials trying to legalize same-sex marriage and the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington.
Starting Tuesday, Catholic Charities will not offer benefits to spouses of new employees or to spouses of current employees who are not already enrolled in the plan. A letter describing the change in health benefits was e-mailed to employees Monday, two days before same-sex marriage will become legal in the District.
The Catholic Church has spent the last 50 years raping children. Doesn’t there come a time when they ask themselves if it’s really such a good idea for a bunch of would-be celibates to spend every waking moment worrying about other people’s sex lives?
Omnes Omnibus
Wow, being assholes just because they can.
Jason Bylinowski
Day-amn, son. Thass right. So much attitude on display by DougJ, “Damn” gets a second syllable.
+5
DougJ
@Jason Bylinowski:
We ex-Catholics get our Irish up about things like this, you know.
inkadu
Why are churches tax exempt? Just wondering in a completely off topic kind of way.
valdivia
Has anyone mentioned the very explosive NYT piece about Patterson yet? The story keeps looking worse for him are we going to have Gov Ravitch this week?
DougJ
@valdivia:
Yeah, I wonder.
demimondian
@valdivia: No — what’s in the NYT now? I gotta say that governor sex-in-socks is looking better and better, at least if you ignore how he towed his wife in front of the cameras…
Mike Kay
David Brooks is jewish.
Mike Kay
@valdivia:
linky, please
valdivia
@DougJ:
A lot of people were already calling for him to resign but that was before we had these details. Now? I can’t see how he continues.
@demimondian:
well if I am reading the story right it just looks like Paterson used his office to disuade this woman from filing charges, ie used his power to prevent a case from going to court.
At least spitzer was just having sex, he is looking better every day.
valdivia
@Mike Kay:
Here you go.
Jamie
Naaah, that can’t be right, that’s way too easy.
demimondian
Do we have any kings looking to get divorced? It’s starting to seem like the Vatican is trying for _Spanish Armada II, the Sequel (Now it’s Transoceanic)_.
Mike Kay
@valdivia:
atleast spitzer had good taste. The call girl he was seeing was smoking hot. No monicas, geniffer flowers, or lady lynn forester de rothchild for Spitz.
jayjaybear
@Mike Kay: “Chunky David Brooks” is Ross Douthat, who is a Catholic convert.
KCinDC
@inkadu, the same reason other nonprofit organizations are.
I’ve been trying to find an answer to what the Catholics have been doing in the five states that already have same-sex marriage. I don’t remember hearing about them throwing such tantrums there. Is there something different about the laws here in DC, or is the archdiocese here just more ornery?
valdivia
@Mike Kay:
well she is a pro no? they have to be?
Steeplejack
@Mike Kay:
“Chunky David Brooks” = Ross Douthat. See the Lexicon.
Splitting Image
Closer to 2000 years actually. There is evidence that some of the older priests tended to get frisky with the young trainees even in the early days.
demimondian
@Mike Kay: You know, with all due respect to the cosmetically enhanced young woman he was diddling, the part I object to was his hauling of Silda Spitzer in front of the cameras. That was just…thoughtless.
Mike Kay
I can’t figure out why patterson would get involved, and instead turn a blind-eye.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike Kay: I saw what you did there.
Brachiator
Well, you’ve got the recent converts, Newt Gingrich and Tony Blair. If this doesn’t scare people away, nothing will.
valdivia
@demimondian:
yep this was my problem too.
@Mike Kay:
ouch!
MikeJ
@Splitting Image:
A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus. When they seized him, he fled naked, leaving his garment behind.
Mark 14:51-52
demimondian
@Brachiator: At least Tony Blair has an excuse — Cherie Blair is Catholic, and has been for her whole life.
jayjaybear
@KCinDC: IIRC, Catholic Charities in MA stopped doing adoptions, period, because they couldn’t discriminate against us fags anymore. I don’t know about employment benefits, though.
Mike Kay
@MikeJ:
was his name scott brown?
Anne Laurie
@Brachiator:
Yeah verily. As someone who grew up in The Church (although I haven’t been back since they gave me the high school diploma), the last ten years or so have definitely cranked up the crazy. New motto: “Do you want to be as intolerant and abusive as the most hardshell Baptist, but without giving up the pomp, red velvet, and incense? Then the Church Less Catholic of the Ratzenberger Inquisition might be just the Sanctuary You’re Seeking(tm)!”
mcc
Would “Catholic Charities” be covered by the employer mandate in the HCR bill?
VladCat
50 years? Extend timeline.
BrianM
Remember how we all laughed when they said heterosexual marriages would be damaged by gay marriage? Well, it looks like we were wrong.
New Yorker
And let’s not forget a quarter-century of aiding and abetting every fascist movement in Europe. It’s not an accident that fascism sprung up in arch-Catholic countries like Italy, Spain, and Portugal (the last war endorsed by the church as “just” was Franco’s attack on the Spanish republic). In Slovakia, they cut out the middle man and made Father Jozef Tizo the dictator. And most of the senior figures in the Third Reich were Catholics from Bavaria and Austria.
Josh
Yeah, Doug, fifty years? It was 500 years ago that Francesco Cenci was convicted of “Doing with grown men that which it is only permitted to do with boys.”
MattR
@valdivia:
I actually heard a radio ad today for The VIP Club (somewhere in the NYC area) that stated they had 100 girls dancing and they guaranteed that no more than 4 of them were ugly.
Konrad2
Hate to be playing devil’s advocate here (no pun intended), but most Catholic priests are (I’m sure) good guys who have served their lives living out their beliefs, and have not molested any children. And Catholic priests aren’t the only child molesters out there. The really evil thing that the Catholic Church did with the child abuse scandal was covered up the priests’ wrongdoing and transferred the offenders, allowing them to abuse more children. But most priests couldn’t have done anything to stop that and don’t deserve the fallout for that.
And, yeah, the Catholic Church is being weaselly here, but religious tax-exemption is given to worse offenders. Any of the far-right fundamentalist churches wouldn’t hire a LGBT person, let alone give their spouse benefits, and Scientology is still tax-exempt, but that’s a different subject altogether.
I’m not a Catholic, but I do think that other religious denominations are more deserving of your anger.
Konrad2
@New Yorker:
In the Spanish Civil War, the Republicans were anti-clerical, to the point of banning the Jesuits in their constitution. Mussolini’s March on Rome was successful because Italy had a chaotic and ineffective central government that didn’t see Mussolini as a threat, and because Mussolini had the support of many business and military leaders. The Nazi movement had many Bavarian and Austrian Catholics in leadership because it originated as a Bavarian movement, only getting wider support in the 1930s.
The Catholic Church did many immoral and questionable things in World War II and in the years preceding it, but if the Vatican had remained purely neutral, it would not have changed any of the outcomes.
kdaug
@Konrad2:
Two quick questions:
1.) Why are there church tax exemptions?
2.) Which “denominations” are more deserving of anger?
Sly
Stephen Fry recently remarked that the only people who obsess about food are anorexics and the morbidly obese and that, in sexual terms, is the essence of the Catholic Church.
DougJ
@Konrad2:
I am Catholic or was, so I think can be angry about this if I want to be.
Konrad2
@kdaug:
1) I’m not 100% sure, but I believe it was first started because churches (in theory) provide a public good, do not earn substantial profits, and giving all places of worship a tax exemption was necessary for religious freedom. The first two parts aren’t consistently true today, but many churches do provide free community services, like weddings, AA meeting places, or polling stations.
Also, a homeless shelter or soup kitchen (I believe) does not have to pay taxes and may receive help from the government, although I am by no means sure how finances work for homeless shelters or soup kitchens. A Christian homeless shelter or soup kitchen should also be tax-exempt if that is true.
I’m not sure if that would apply to a place like an office building for the Catholic Church’s financial or bureaucratic needs.
2. To give a few examples, Southern Baptists, the wide variety of Pentecostals/Charismatics, the non-urban megachurches that make the type of insulated, social archconservatives that make people like Michele Bachmann Congresspeople, and Scientologists.
Konrad2
@DougJ:
I’m sorry, I phrased that wrong, I didn’t mean to say that you shouldn’t or couldn’t be angry about that. I meant to say that there are other religious groups that (I think) do more harm and less good. Apologies for phrasing that incorrectly.
And I was a Catholic, too. : (
kdaug
@Konrad2:
1. Thanks. It just strikes me that a solid majority of the houses of worship I see are extraordinarily wealthy – I have difficulty seeing the logic behind them not helping to pay for the roads that lead to their megachurches, even if they operate soup kitchens.
2. I think it’s not hard to extrapolate from denominations to religions in general. I’m of the “My relationship with god/the universe is between me and god/the universe. Shut up.” school of thought.
asiangrrlMN
@Konrad2: Well, I would say that all discrimination is deserving of such anger. This is such pure bullshit that it should be called when any religion does it. And, the outcome in matters of all things fascist isn’t the issue as to whether if the Church had been neutral anything would have changed. It’s the fact that they were not neutral that matters.
@demimondian: Agreed. I hate that shit. Plus the hypocrisy of what Spitzer was doing personally given what he was doing professionally. And that the girl was young enough to be his daughter (I didn’t think she was smoking, but again, women and men have a very different idea of what makes a woman attractive). The last time I heard him speak, I was so angry at him for fucking up like that because clearly, he could have been a difference-maker in the financial fiasco.
Paterson: Full of shit. He said he didn’t know what was going on and yet he told Ms. Brown, another state employee to ask the woman to say that the fight wasn’t violent. Ms. Brown said she didn’t know what had really happened in the fight. So, Paterson didn’t know what had occurred, stepped in, and then tried to use his ignorance to the real situation as a reason he should not be asked to resign (or charged)? Weak.
Free At Last
@Mike Kay:
I can’t believe you left out paula (as in jones)
Kryptik
Amazing.
“Hey, lets screw our employees’ spouses out of health care, so we can stick it to the gays. Because we can’t care for the needy AND be tolerant of the gays, because that makes baby Jesus cry. Best to just not give anyone anything, just in case.”
You gotta love how un-Christ-like organizations like these are when it comes to ‘undesirables’. Hint, folks: Christ was radical because he cared for the undesirables, not because he towed to dogmatic lines.
Free At Last
@Brachiator:
And don’t forget Michael Novak and Lawrence Kudlow.
Mike Kay
@Free At Last:
I left her out because she wasn’t his mistress, only a one night stand.
AnotherBruce
And, yeah, the Catholic Church is being weaselly here, but religious tax-exemption is given to worse offenders.
Screw this, the Sierra Club lost it’s tax exemption because they fought against building a dam in the Grand Canyon. It’s about time churches start losing their tax exemptions if they want to play politics and discriminate, or deny presidential candidates communion. Either that or they can shut the fuck up and keep their tax money. Their choice.
Yutsano
And yet amazingly enough the Church doesn’t abandon any of the countries that support full gay marriage. They always seem to make their stands in the US for some bizarre reason. Maybe our souls count more with the Big Dude.
williamc
Wait, the Church let priest molest kids and get away with it for years and now they are going to deny their poorly paid workers the only really good thing (health care) about having a job these days (besides staying at a job you hate, stagnant wages, and the fear of being outsourced?). You might be wrong though, as I think Pat Robertson’s Jesus has been asking his prophet here on Earth to use the 700 Club and Republican Presidents to make this happen for a couple decades.
Does Pope Ratz know about this outrage? Oh, I kid the Pope, he doesn’t care about poor people or he’d sell some of his golden castle to feed them.
/snark on evil hypocrites
burnspbesq
@valdivia:
The Times is wholly inadequate to capture the comic potential of stuff like this. You need the full gonzo. You need the Post.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/gov_tried_to_minimize_aide_attack_lpNFe5RpEUwYZmgE0JJ9mL
stormhit
Yes, because one branch of Catholic Charities = all of them. Let alone “The Church.”
Yutsano
@stormhit: You’re absolutely right. That totally justifies it stiffing all their employees because, after all, it’s just one branch amirite? Sheesh.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: Besides, we know this is juuuuuust the start.
You know, this might be what it takes for normal every day (straight) citizens to finally say to the churches, “Get the fuck out of politics or lose your exempt-status!”
And, yes, I know that it doesn’t have tho same ring as ‘militant moderates’, but eh. It’s late.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: Nevah. Gunna. Happen. St Ronnie pretty much assured that churches can play in politics with impunity and face zero consequences for it. We might as well declare ourselves a Christian theocracy and drop the pretense that is the First Amendment. Of course they’d close the borders and catch every single Other they could just so they could continue their sense of self-righteousness, but hey, they got JEEBUS on their side!
The Raven
“[…] the last
50500 years raping children.”Sometimes I think Mexico had the right idea in their Constitution of 1857.
Croak!
No Joy in Mudville
@AnotherBruce:
I couldn’t agree more, but the trend seems to be in the opposite direction.
Is there any group in America more disliked (or is it distrusted?) than atheists? I love the polls that show atheism to be the greatest disqualifier for high public office. The Constitution had very little to say about religion, but the one thing it did state unequivocally was that there would be no religious test for elective office. Yet, today, we have a defacto ban on atheists. Something that I’ve always found creepy is the politician who pretends to have religious beliefs simply to beat the ban.
2006 Poll: Here are the percentages of people saying they would refuse to vote for “a generally well-qualified person for president” on the basis of some characteristic; in parenthesis are the figures for earlier years:
Catholic: 4% (1937: 30%)
Black: 5% (1958: 63%, 1987: 21%)
Jewish: 6% (1937: 47%)
Baptist: 6%
Woman: 8%
Mormon: 17%
Muslim: 38%
Gay: 37% (1978: 74%)
Atheist: 48%
10% worse than Muslim. Wow.
bob h
The good gentlemen moved with alacrity to make sure abortion coverage was omitted in the HCR bills, but have been strangely silent about the immorality of denying healthcare to tens of millions.
But expect to hear from them again if reconciliation gets going.
kay
I bet they’d lose the boatloads of federal funding they receive if they excluded gay people based on a religious objection.
So they excluded all spouses.
We’re going to regret our policy of taxpayer-funding of (certain) religions.
kay
CEO of DC Catholic Charities Edward Orzechowski expressed his concern that the narrow exemption language “will cause the government to discontinue our long partnership with them” and require the organization to defend their beliefs “rather than serve the poor.”
Yup. They didn’t want to lose the federal funding.
I still think they’re vulnerable. They’re trying to have it both ways: enforce a religious edict and retain federal funding.
Jado
As a Catholic (recovering), I can state categorically that the Church will NEVER stop doing things like this. An intrinsic belief of the Church is that they are RIGHT (infallible). It used to be that the Pope would issue directives directly, and now of course there is more of a committee involved, with the pope’s council of advisors, but the end result is the same – “This is what we say and what we say is RIGHT”
There is no modesty, no doubt, and nothing but arrogance involved in the process, and it reaches from the top all the way down to the local parishes. They are right. You will never convince they aren’t.
kay
@Jado:
Well, Catholic Charities might stop doing this if they lost federal funding for Catholic Charities.
But they, and we, many of us unwittingly, are probably in way too deep for that to happen.
valdivia
@burnspbesq:
thanks for that. I usually don’t check out the post but this was so worth it.
cmorenc
Catholic priests are required to be celibate for two reasons:
1) to remove and foreswear sex and marriage as two of the most seriously diluting and wrong-way tempting passionate distractions to devoting full attention to Jesus and God;
2) to somehow qualify priests to give morally binding advice to noncelibate people about how to conduct their sex, marital, and reproductive lives.
Perhaps reason #1 makes plausible, though completely unpalatable (and unrealistic) sense. But adopting reason #1 is entirely incompatible with reason #2. Church history with sexually abusive priests should give it deep pause about the nature and motivation of some (not all, but some) of the people who present themselves as willing to adopt reason #1: people trying to escape and (unsuccessfully) overcome something very sick and twisted inside themselves.
bago
@MattR: That was a tagline on Seattle strip clubs. “50 exotic girls and three ugly ines”.
master c
Where did my guitar mass hippie church go?
GVG
Actually the tax exempt status is because the power to tax is the power to destroy. If the government was allowed to tax churches, which ever denomination or group was in the majority could set up a tax code which just coincidently stuck it to the ones they didn’t like. It could have been the Protestant types against the Catholics, or both against the scientoligists or earlier the Mormons. It would start with being against some that “all” could agree were quacks or frauds but then it would move on and more and more would be “wrong”. soon everyone would have to conform and we would not have freedom of religion. I am regularly enraged about various church actions but I don’t see anyway to regulate them just a little bit. Our founders were often just a generation or so from having fled religious persecution by the state of origin.
Ash Can
@master c: This. Homosexuality was never a big deal in the Church until Ratzinger took over. (Coincidentally, I don’t recall Church clergy intervening to keep vegetative people alive on machines, or any Catholics claiming to believe in creationism, until he took over either.) He may be a dynamo on environmental issues, but what’s happening to people on his watch is distressing.
The Church has enough shit of its own making to contend with. The fact that it’s making more of it makes me crazy.
cmorenc
@GVG
This does suggest an interesting intellectual challenge: if the tax exempt status for churches was repealed, how would you go about drafting a measure aimed specifically at taxing the special protective underwear Mormons reputedly wear, while avoiding taxing the ordinary underwear the rest of us wear (especially long underwear?)
someguy
@ GVG
And your point is?
toujoursdan
I am a practising Episcopalian so I don’t have a dog in the Catholic fight. (I am gay too, so I guess I DO have dog in this fight.) But I am still in favour of tax exempt status. The American university and hospital system were built and sustained through church contributions. All of the Ivy Leagues, Northwestern, even USC, have religious roots and the Lutheran and Catholic university system is America’s largest. The vast majority of the U.S.’ hospitals were built by Christian and Jewish groups as well. Take tax exemption away and the poor, sick and college students get impacted the most; many of these schools and hospitals give generous scholarships and other aid to those in need.
The apparent wealth of religious denominations is just apparent. I serve on the vestry of my parish and know that it has a asset value of $56 million. But that isn’t real wealth. If you actually put any of our stuff up for sale, we’d only get a small percentage of that amount. We don’t have enough money to fix our own roof which has been leaking for years and destroyed part of the organ (cost $ 1 million) . We’re fighting with our insurance company to get money for a lightning strike that has made our tower unstable (which will cost $800,000 to fix), and we have to spend several thousand on a retaining wall to keep the hill from sliding away. Money is a constant issue, but we still staff a food bank and homeless shelter.
You can sell off the buildings, perhaps get money for the land and give that money to the poor (the RCC is closing congregations right and left here in the northeast), but that isn’t going to benefit the next generation or the generation after that who have spiritual or practical needs. Besides, the people who contributed to these churches did so because they find value in the community that congregations create and doing this wouldn’t be respecting their wishes.
Trinity Episcopal Church at Wall Street owns most of the land in lower Manhattan and gets millions in rental income each year, but most of that goes to helping Africa and the developing world, including parts of Africa that are very homophobic (and Trinity Church is very gay friendly.) Take that income away and then what? Who is going to step up to the plate then?
There have been molestations in every church, including my own, as well as in any environment where adults mix with kids. The mainline Protestant denominations are mostly lay controlled instead of bishop controlled and pretty quick to turn over offenders to the authorities.
The Catholic church is wrong, wrong, wrong on this issue. They shouldn’t play politics with peoples’ benefits. But I don’t think the answer is to punish everyone.
jrg
Bullshit. And even if there were, every church’s hierarchy wouldn’t be conspiring to cover it up.
master c
I feel like Im watching it explode. I was lucky enough to be in a progressive parish in Houston, and can not find one in Dallas.
This has really affected my relationship with the church.
I went to Catholic schools my whole life and they were really open to big thinking- Jesuits are really smart and educated.
That is all changing now. It started with John Paul, and has gone downhill since. This pope is literally the Cheney of popes…
[guy in charge of search committee nominates self]
Makes me sad….the shuffling of priests who have molested is unforgivable. Anyone have to do Virtus training so you can volunteer?
The church has instituted screening for people who want to help in the church….how about some virtus for the priests?
No way did I let my son sign up to be an altar boy.
toujoursdan
Of course there have been molestations in every denomination. But I agree that the RCC’s sin here has been the coverup.
jrg
A church is just a building. I fail to see how a molestation in said building reflects poorly on a denomination unless the denomination was somehow involved, as is the case with the RCC.
As someone who strongly dislikes all organized religion (and as someone who thinks “faith” is a pied piper), I think the RCC is particularly egregious.
toujoursdan
Actually a church is a congregation of people.
Other than that, I don’t know what you’re arguing over.
scav
@toujoursdan: I’m sorry, but some of your argument seems to be along the lines of “if the mafia does charity work, the mafia’s ok.” which I find dodgy frankly. Another line of argumentation holds that while we shouldn’t blame “the church” because SOME of its members/institutions are bad apples, we should excuse “the church” because SOME of its members/institutions do praiseworthy things. This I find logically inconsistent. If Toyota pulled some of the shit the church – admittedly, many religions but your turn to admit it, the Catholics have strong record of it – gets away with, we’d be all over their cases. Churches get the parents of children to be complicit in the cover-up of their own children’s rape. And then the play the holier than thou card on non-believers.
zoe kentucky in pittsburgh
Apparently the Catholics have figured out a way to prove that same-sex marriage hurts heterosexuals– by acting like douchebags to their employees in DC and shutting down their adoption programs in Massachusetts. All so they don’t have to treat same-sex couples as regular people instead of 2nd class citizens. I personally think this issue is ripe for political theatre, have a bunch of very outwardly queer people try to get fed at a Catholic soup kitchen– I bet they’d be turned away. (Love the sinner, hate the sin, MY ASS.)
I think they need to drop the charity from their name as their charitable priorities are so ROYALLY fucked up that they should just shut down altogether in DC. After all the damage their brand has taken over the past decade or two you’d think they’d avoid behaving like such holier-than-thou assholes in public. Oh, wait, what am I talking about, they tried to blame gays for the priest molestation scandal. It was the gays that made them move molesting priests from parish to parish.
Catholic Charities should have their non-profit status revoked. Isn’t the Vatican the richest country in the world, based on a per capita measurement?
jrg
Remember when the right-wing blogosphere was claiming that the murders that lunatic biology professor recently committed were politically motivated, because she was a Democrat, even though there was no other connection? That’s similar to your statement that “there have been molestations in every denomination”.
We’re not arguing over anything particularly meaningful, as you already stated there is a difference between a denomination that turns an abuser over to authorities and one that covers it up. I’m just saying that “there have been molestations in every denomination” is a red herring.
church
–noun 1. a building for public Christian worship.
I think we’re in agreement, toujoursdan. I’m just arguing semantics. Cheers.
toujoursdan
@scav:
Again, I have no idea what we’re arguing over. All I said was something that is factually correct. You can find molestation in every religious denomination, in day care centres, in public schools, etc. A simple Googlesearch confirms this.
I agree that the RCC has a culture of coverup and that this is a big problem for which they should be held account.
But punishing ALL religious groups for a dysfunctional culture doesn’t make sense. Taking tax exempt status away doesn’t hurt the abusers. It doesn’t hurt the bishops. It doesn’t hurt the Pope. It hurts the sick, needy and vulnerable.
We need to pass stronger criminal laws that hold both the abusers and those who covered it up accountable. They should be stopped from being whisked out of the country and put on trial and sent to jail. (Which has happened in most cases.)
toujoursdan
@jrg:
So it isn’t “just” a building using your own definition (see: #3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) . Sheesh.
geg6
The criminal conspiracy to sexually molest young children and cover up the wrong doing that is called the Roman Catholic Church is without a doubt the institution with the least moral authority on earth. I cannot believe a person with a functioning neuron would voluntarily be a part of such a cult.
And I don’t wanna hear about how I’m wrong about it. I was forced to grow up in that corrupt institution. As soon as I was old enough to exercise free will, I was gone like a flash. I’m sure they’d be happy to know that I credit them with my total lack of belief in any magical thinking. Heck of job, Vatican. Heck of a job.
scav
@toujoursdan: We could also organize ourselves so that people can get help from other organizations. Religion doesn’t have a stranglehold on, a monopoly on, helping others and sometimes the help religious organizations provide comes with too many strings attached. Besides, it’s not as though taxes don’t go at least partially toward supporting the community.
EDIT: Oh, and if religious organizations only provide charity because they get a tax break, I’m also calling bull-shit on their we’re holier than you line.
EDIT X2: Render unto Caeser.
jrg
My income is not tax-exempt, yet any charitable donations I make can be written off. If I was a church, however, I could write off a conversion van for outings, parties, a basketball court, musical instruments, and all my living expenses. I could even use my tax-free dollars to influence the political process, or cover up criminal activity.
What makes these glorified social clubs so important? Why are all of their expenses tax-exempt, while my hobbies, my expenses to support my family, and my car to get to and from my job are not? Charitable work is not the issue – all the other bullshit is.
toujoursdan
@scav:
Of course; we have had hundreds of years to organize ourselves in all kinds of ways. So why don’t we?
Can find any other social club or organization that has contributed more services to society than religious organizations have? Anything? There are other social clubs around, but I don’t see them building hospitals or universities.
And most mainstream churches offer services without any strings. You don’t have to be religious to access our foodbank or homeless shelter (which is supported by the Episcopal Church, Catholic Church, ELCA Lutheran Church, the Conservative Jewish synagogue and Islamic Centre.) When I go to the local Jewish hospital no one asks me whether I am Jewish. When I have gone to Presbyterian hospital in New York no one has asked me if I am Presbyterian.
Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Northwestern, Princeton, Georgetown, Cal Lutheran, SMU accept students from any religious background, don’t they?
Steaming Pile
@Omnes Omnibus: How Christian of them.
toujoursdan
@jrg:
Not sure why you think ALL religious institution expenses are tax exempt. They aren’t. We pay all kinds of tax. We pay payroll taxes for staff members. Clergy pay income tax on their earnings (and can make similar deductions.) We pay sales taxes. We pay taxes on utilities.
jrg
Clergy are not the church, they are employees. Thanks for reminding me about sales tax, though. That’s a biggie.
Edit: …and using your logic in post 86, I should be able to write off all of my income because I made a donation to Susan G. Komen for the Cure last week.
gex
@BrianM: Seriously, fuck you. Those heterosexual marriages are being damaged by Catholic Charities’ hissy fit. You do not get to blame the gays for this, asshole.
jrg
gex, I think he was being sarcastic.
toujoursdan
Nope. That doesn’t follow the logic at all. You are an individual, not an organization. Your mission isn’t to meet the spiritual and practical needs of others, as a charity or non-profit. You own your property, not hold it in trust for a group of people across generations. You can pass on your assets to individual(s).
There are significant tax exemptions for charities and non-profits just like there are for churches.
artem1s
well, having studied non profit history, I can only tell you that its cause its always been that way. Corporate tax law took some time to be establish in the US and there wasn’t much of a political upside to taxing religious establishments so they just didn’t get taxed. To this day, churches get a pass on reporting their income, while all other non profits have to file pretty extensive forms justifying their fundraising activities and expenditures.
Also, there is some discussion as to how much affect the recent SCOTUS decision will have on the prohibition of NP donating to political campaigns. They already can do grass roots campaigning to a limited degree as long as they report their activities properly. However every NP charter states that they will not endorse political candidates for elected office. There is a boiler plate clause that is used for almost all NP articles of incorporation. However, NP are independent corporations too. So if the SCOTUS decision allows unlimited corporate donations, does that wipe out 250 years of 3C prohibition against donating funds to elected officials?
as an example, the LDS can spend umpteen $ on issues oriented ads like they did in CA for prop 8. They just can’t lie to the government about how much they spend (there are limits but not well defined). what they can’t do is spend umpteen $ on “hiring” an elected official (judge) who will make sure that they get the rulings they want. Until now… maybe…no one seems to know for sure if the recent ruling also applies to NP corporations.
there is a reason Scalia and Alito loved this ruling and it wasn’t just so ATT could by a congresscritter.
Mnemosyne
@master c:
I wonder the same thing. In retrospect, when I was being raised in the church, it was the height of the Vatican II reforms and a lot of things were being examined and changed. And I do think the slow repeal of those reforms was primarily the doing of JPII. Now I barely recognize the church I was raised in. When it was time to get married, we went with a Unitarian Universalist church instead.
Mnemosyne
An interesting little court case here in California: there have been some breakaway congregations in Episcopal churches because of the whole controversy over having gay clergy and gay bishops. The breakaway congregations have been suing to keep the church building, but the Supreme Court has now decided several times that the church building is held in trust by the national church and the local archdiocese and is not the property of the congregation.
master c
Im hoping for punk rock version of Catholics to spring up.
It would be very low tech.
jrg
How, exactly, do you meet a “spiritual need”? What metric do you use to decide that “need” is met? Tax dollars are tangible and measurable, “spiritual needs” are not.
Edit: If I sound dismissive here, it’s because I am. You can claim that you donated $1000.00 worth of canned goods, thus meeting a practical need – I fail to see how hand-crafted pews or a $1 million organ meets a “spiritual need”.
Charities and non-profits, unlike churches, are not social clubs.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@New Yorker:
The church is all too often more Roman than Catholic*. And the late Roman emperors pretty much invented the modern totalitarian state, or at least the Western Civ branch thereof. The technology needed a little work, but they had the conceptual framework pretty much all ready to go.
*Try this as an exercise sometime – put out two maps of Europe side by side – one showing the nations which remained Catholic after the wars of the Counter-Reformation were over, and the other showing the boundaries of the late Roman Empire. Notice any similarities?
Ash Can
@Mnemosyne: It’s sad, isn’t it? One of the reasons I stick with the Church is that if everyone like me leaves, all of John XXIII’s landmark accomplishments will have been in vain. That would be dreadful.
liberal
@GVG:
I don’t know about the time of the Founders, but these days, this argument just doesn’t wash. Selective taxation would run afoul of the 14th Amendment.
Ash Can
@jrg: In the parishes I’ve seen firsthand, those pews and organs are paid for by the parishioners, who then get tax write-offs for their donations. What you’d want to do in this case is to make donations to religious organizations non-tax-deductible.
liberal
@toujoursdan:
That’s just crap.
While that might be true of the origins of American universities, it’s clear that the backbone of the American university system is the land-grant public institution.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@GVG:
This is correct. And note that in the early US most states had established, state-sanctioned religions – it was only the Federal govt which was blocked by the 1st Amend. from sticking its fingers in the cookie jar. Over time the various state churches were disestablished (i.e. no longer the official religion of that particular state).
Also, for the men drafting the US Constitution, the brutal religious wars which devastated 17th Cen. Europe (including the English Civil War of the 1640s which was partially a sectarian war) were as close in time to them as the US Civil War of the 1860s is to us today.
jrg
Yes, that’s true. A capital gift to build a homeless shelter is not the same as a capital gift to add a pew or baptismal font. One capital gift meets real, measurable needs for the homeless, the other meets some sort of nebulous “spiritual need” for parishioners.
I don’t mind carrying the tax burden for organizations that help the needy (provided it’s not just cover to proselytize). It’s not my responsibility to carry the tax burden for aesthetics or otherworldy Voodoo, nor is it my responsibility to carry the tax burden for a social club whose focus is to meddle in politics or cover up criminal activity.
toujoursdan
@jrg:
The same can be said for expensive artwork donated to a university or museum. What is the value there? Should NYU, Columbia or MOMA pay asset taxes based on their value? Can you put a price tag on beauty? Can you put a price tag on spirituality? Does the music from an organ have value? If I don’t find value in it because it doesn’t appeal to me, should no one?
So what this boils down to is that you don’t see value in religious institutions’ spiritual practises, therefore you want to impose your worldview on others. Anything that doesn’t meet your particular criteria has no value. Churches should be treated differently than other non-profits and charities because YOU don’t find their claims or service valuable, even if others do.
You’re no different than the fundamentalists here. It boils down to treating different groups different based on existential claims.
@liberal:
No. 2/3rds of America’s universities are private. 70% of these private schools were founded and/or still controlled by religious institutions. America’s original universities, the Ivy League, were wholly private and religious based. Take them out of the picture and America’s higher educational system would collapse overnight. There is no way land grant universities can meet the demand.
someguy
You make a good case for banning the Catholics.
The government.
And that’s a good argument to ban the Republicans too.
Jamey
That’s what deathbed confessions are for …
toujoursdan
@someguy:
And government does a good job, but it doesn’t and can’t meet the entire demand, particularly with all the greedy tax nuts around who can’t see how the public good benefits them.
Public universities from California to Georgia are in crisis because of falling tax revenue and that is starting to impact educational standards. It’s even worse at the primary and secondary levels.
There is something to be said for a mix of private and public schools. Both make America’s university system as vital as it is.
jrg
You can practice Santaria for all I fucking care, just don’t ask me to subsidize it.
toujoursdan
@jrg:
Fine. Let’s get rid of all tax exemptions then so that everything is on a level playing field. I don’t like opera, so let’s get rid of government grants to help opera companies. I am never going to get cervical cancer or be an Olympic athlete, so let’s get rid of tax exempt status for those charities.
Heck, I am gay and won’t have kids, so why should I pay for school taxes. I think U.S. foreign policy sucks so why should my taxes pay for the military?
At least those churches are benefiting the community through charitable work, which takes some of the tax burden off of you and fills gaps that the government can’t fill.
Besides, the monies donated to them have already been taxed once. I already paid taxes on my income and assets which I choose to give to a church.
ChrisZ
@toujoursdan
I’d say this is exactly how the world works, no? We all view different things as good/bad or benificial/detrimental and we propose social policy or laws based on that?
jrg
Hire an accountant.
toujoursdan
@jrg:
Really. So I don’t pay any payroll tax on income I donate? There isn’t a single deduction that I don’t get 100% reimbursement on if I donate. Wow. That’s new.
And the deductions are 100% dollar for dollar, ad infinitum now?
toujoursdan
@ChrisZ:
Good luck trying to convince a majority of Americans with your proposal.
Ash Can
@jrg: If tax-exemption equals subsidization, then by this reasoning no nonprofit group should be tax-exempt.
Toujoursdan knows the details better than I do, but the actual subsidization comes in only for those operations that have direct charitable benefits (food pantries, homeless shelters, and such). For the activities that are religious in nature, the churches are on their own.
toujoursdan
@Ash Can:
Yes and no. If someone wants to donate a stained glass window to the church, the material and labour to actually put the window in place are still taxed. The labourers are still subject to withholding tax.
If I want to give the church my house or car to use or sell, of course, I have already paid sales and/or property taxes on it which won’t be refunded once ownership is transferred. I may get a one time deduction on income tax but depending on the asset and length of time it is held, it will not make up the difference.
The clergy, parish administrator and sexton are still taxed through payroll taxes and still have to pay income tax.
Depending on the state, some churches can deduct sales tax for things like wafers, communion wine and reading material. jrg doesn’t consider giving hospital patients communion as something having value, but they do.
The main exemptions churches get are the same as any other non-profit: exemption from property, asset and income tax. But they are also subject to the rules for any non-profit. No one person actually owns the assets. They can only be disposed of following IRS regulations, etc.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
If I’m reading this correctly Catholic Charities in DC will employ you if you are gay married and give you health benefits if you are gay married but for moral reasons won’t give your spouse health benefits if you are gay married. Even by their internal logic this makes no sense to me.
ChrisZ
@toujoursdan:
I’m not sure what proposal of mine you’re referring to, I was simply pointing out that what you described with contempt was in fact what you, me and everyone else do(es?) all the time. In fact, I would go so far to say that it is the only way that any laws are made at all.
Nellcote
@toujoursdan:
Churches are already treated differently than non-profits. The point is that if they tax-exempt, they should be treated the same as secular non-profits.
ChrisZ
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
I think, although it is admittedly weird, that the Catholic Church doesn’t want to recognize gay marriage. So, although you can be gay and you can get married by the state, the Church doesn’t want to have to recognize that you are married. Thus, while hiring a gay person who was married by the state would be fine, giving that gay person’s spouse medical benefits would be recognizing their marriage, which they don’t want to do.
It took me a little while to come up with that though.
jrg
I published my dad’s memoirs when he was on his deathbed (through Blurb). That had value and wasn’t a tax write-off. If you think something’s worth doing, you’re going to do it regardless. I just don’t believe that magical thinking deserves the reverence it currently gets, whether it be in the public square or the tax code.
It seems pretty obvious we’re not going to agree on that point, so I’ll just leave it there.
liberal
@toujoursdan:
2/3 of the universities. What about population served? A lot of those religious “universities” are tiny and are fairly limited in terms of breadth (e.g., no engineering). Please supply a population-weighted figure. And are you figuring in public community colleges?
Nonsense.
[ed note: wiped out your paragraphing cuz of anticipated blockquote fail]
You make it sound like “private” universities are entirely “private.” That’s just nonsense. MIT, for example, is a “private” university, but it gets boatloads of research dollars from Uncle Sam. Furthermore, private colleges and universities are subsidized through various public financial aid programs.
liberal
@toujoursdan:
I think the arts should be supported, but there’s a good case to be made that most of that stuff is enjoyed mainly by the well-off, who also get disproportionate benefits from the tax write-off due to the progressivity of the income tax.
Olympics…I find it hard to believe anyone can really view it as “charity.” As if the athletes can’t earn extremely lucrative sponsorships, as if there aren’t megadeals for press coverage, etc.
Cervical cancer? Most biomedical research is paid for by Uncle Sam, and perhaps pharma. Charity-funded research tends to be second-rate.
You’re conflating the issues of leveling the playing field in terms of income tax treatment with the responsibilities of community and citizenship. Not the same.
LOL! The original post concerns work done by a charity, but paid for by the government.
The same “already taxed once” argument is usually made by right-wing libertarian types who need to vote with their feet and move to Somalia. But anyway, it’s false—charitable contributions are tax deductible (for those wealthy enough to itemize, anyway).
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
I understand that part of it, that giving a benefit to a gay spouse would inherently recognize the gay marriage in the eyes of the Church. But how about benefits for straight couples not married in the Catholic Church? How about benefits for straight spouses that have been married multiple times? How about benefits for straight “open” marriages? There is a fairly narrow set of marriage standards that the Church officially approves of, why are they all of a sudden now dropping spousal benefits?
DPirate
I suppose we ought to blog about the massive rapist activities of the NEA. I expect there are statistically more child-abusers working as teachers than priests; you hear about them all the time, the ones that dont get quietly “resigned” only to get a new job in another state/district.
Damn rapist teachers, anyway!
Tax Analyst
Wouldn’t Jesus just heal all the folks he felt like healing? I guess the rest could just screw off, because Son of God or not I’d imagine one only has so much time.
And of course I guess that sometimes Pops has a greater plan in mind and your danged hangnail of leprosy or cancer or whatever is somehow a part of it and you should just go with the flow.
Or do I have the real Jesus confused with the Republican Jesus or maybe the Supply-Side Jesus?