oh good grief...

[acroyear]

I may have my problems with the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church, especially over money (throughout its history), but the State of Connecticut absolutely needs to get their head out of their ass.  If you, as a government, don't like the financial handling of a church, you have one recourse: revoke the tax-exempt status.  Stepping in and applying a blunt restructuring on them is just asking for trouble, both because of the slippery slope issue (control one church, control them all), and more importantly: it requires tax dollars being spent on managing a church, in GROSS violation of the Establishment clause.

Comments

[uncle-possum.livejournal.com]

wtf? Haven't seen any news on this.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

http://www.cga.ct.gov/2009/TOB/S/2009SB-01098-R00-SB.htm and catholic reaction at http://www.ctcatholic.org/ .

background - one priest (or bishop, not sure, but i think just a priest) managed to embezzle a significant amount of church money through the corporate accounting system paying for very lavish belongings including a second home in florida (allegedly for him and his gay lover). typical scandal stuff that every church has gone through, only the CT reaction is far more than any evangelical church has gone through.

in reaction to the holes in the accounting practices that made this possible, the state is reacting by effectively controlling its restructuring in full rather than letting the church handle it under the more appropriate threat of losing their tax-exempt status and potentially facing a federal lawsuit for abuse of privilege.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

it just hit the today show this morning.

[crimsontom.livejournal.com]

There has been much discussion amongst some of my friends about tax exempt status of religions. I believe accoridng to law they are tax exempt as long as they are not politically motivated. This came to light big time when it was revealed that the Mormon church donated heavily to the Prop 8 campaign in CA.
The church itelf (not reporesentatives of it) got directly involved. So the discussion is now, should the Mormon Church lose it's tax exempt status?

[aliastaken.livejournal.com]

This whole thing opens up a very interesting social question...