Church and State

[ironphoenix]

Ganked from goldsquare: an excellent opinion piece on the complex and difficult relationship between religious and government institutions in the US. The legal arguments are specifically American, but the underlying question is universal.

Even the question of what should, from a purely religious point of view, be the criteria for membership in a religion is a very difficult one for me. On a fundamental spiritual level, I take the words "Catholic Church" very much at face value, and open the doors very wide indeed, but how that relates to human institutions is ... fraught.

Comments

[zenten.livejournal.com]

My personal belief is that freedom of religious expression should be protected by the law, but religions themselves should get no special status. So a charity that happens to be run by a church would be fine as long as it followed all the rules for charities (such as not just being a means to recruit for that church, just like I don't think a charity should just be the means to recruit for a gaming club), but a church itself would receive no special tax status beyond any other not-for-profit.

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

That is the basic liberal stance, as the article lays out... the question of membership is the tricky point under consideration, though. Any other organization which receives government funding (say, as a charity) may have obligations to accept as members any person of legal age; religious organizations impose requirements that may be incompatible with these liberal policies, and those requirements are intrinsic to the organization's religiosity.

[zenten.livejournal.com]

I don't see the big deal here. If you're excluding people, you don't get the funding. Seems simple enough to me.

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

So, for example, the meals that a parish provides to homeless people (anyone, not just to members of their own religion) shouldn't be subsidized by the government because the organization that is providing them by definition one that discriminates based on creed? To me, it doesn't really seem productive to limit things that way.

Maybe it's because I'm getting old... a lot of "simple" things don't seem so.

[zenten.livejournal.com]

The church sets up a charity that runs a soup kitchen, that follows all the rules that a secular charity does. I don't see why that would be hard.

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

In so doing, they risk losing control of how it operates, though. Admittedly, it is in practice a small risk for small-scale operations, and I suspect that it's how some religious organizations have set things up.

[zenten.livejournal.com]

In so doing, they risk losing control of how it operates, though

I consider that to be a good thing though. If it comes down to a specially selected segment of the population that has certainly beliefs, and the community as a whole (or at least ones interested in being on the charity board) I have more faith in the community as a whole doing the right thing.

Do you think that if this were to happen (barring the initial transition stage which will likely have a bit of chaos) there would be less time and money ultimately going to charity work, because some religious organizations would refuse to do any under the new terms?

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

Sadly, there are some people and organizations that I think would do exactly that.

I don't think I'm enough of a hard socialist to think that everything is better done the way the government thinks it should be, though.

[zenten.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's better through the government. Governments don't get to decide who runs a charity though, they just have rules for what sort of rules can be used to determine who runs a charity.

[bastetschylde.livejournal.com]

Then churches have to start implementing change and be more inclusive in order to improve the community, an idea of which many claim to support but are poor at in practice.

One can be of unorthodox identities and still be religious/spiritual, but they are slow to recognize that because of inherent black and white thinking.

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

In principle, I agree, and in practice, some have... our parish has non-Christian volunteers and possibly even paid staff. Whether that should be a legal obligation, though, is the question.

[bastetschylde.livejournal.com]

If it's a legal obligation, then that means that there is no separation of church and state.... hm.

[zenten.livejournal.com]

Separation of church and state doesn't mean that the church gets to ignore the law.

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

Nobody's saying that religious organizations should be free to ignore the law; the question is whether the laws are as they should be.

I'm getting the sense that your answer to that tends to be "Of course, that's why it's the law!" Am I reading you right in that? (Your answer may well be something other than an unqualified yes or no!)

[zenten.livejournal.com]

OK, when it comes to labour law I don't think that a religious organization should get to be an exception. Yes, this means that I think that a woman should be able to go to the labour board because the Catholic Church refuses to hire her as a priest simply because she's a woman.

The one exception I do see is for religious leaders (like priests) and their own religious beliefs. But I'm not exactly sure how that should be phrased.

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

It would be an interesting court case! I suspect that the defense would be that she can't apply because she lacks the essential qualification of ordination, which would bounce the case out of Labour Board and into a larger rights tribunal, where the question of the obligation of a religious organization to grant ordination without regard to gender (and will that make a precedent for sexual orientation?) will have to be decided. I think that in that framing, it's difficult to see how imposing that obligation on religious organizations wouldn't contradict the fundamental right of freedom of religion.

I don't see how your two paragraphs don't contradict each other, though.

[zenten.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know under Canadian law it wouldn't fly.

And what I meant is I don't think the church should be forced to hire a professed atheist or Hindu as a priest, just like a company shouldn't be forced to hire a manager who openly says that they don't agree with the stated goals or products of the company.

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

Ah I see what you meant there.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

Yes, a very interesting commentary. Thank you for posting a link to it. And, you're right, a lot of the details are USAn, a lot of the general argument is universally applicable.

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

Glad you found it interesting!

[bastetschylde.livejournal.com]

Churches have spent member-based donations (i.e., donation baskets) on something as trivial as a statue of an angel that cost say, $40,000 CDN, which could have been put to better use towards charitable and USEFUL activities like soup kitchens and research on cures for various life-threatening illnesses. The statue incident betrayed the 'good faith', if you'll excuse the pun, of people who contributed money, unless they of course were the sole giver or organization and specified that the monetary donations should be used towards such... or that it was a majority consensus (in which I would like to believe most would disagree on).

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

We spend tax money on art too... does that mean it's useless? There's a certain expectation that the money I give will be distributed among a variety of causes, ranging from keeping the church building from falling down to paying for the priest's meals and travel to feeding homeless people and sheltering abused women. I don't expect it to be embezzled for private ends, of course!

[bastetschylde.livejournal.com]

I think it was more a matter of degree/proportion spent, because quite a few people who were regulars left said church because they felt that the money was not being spent wisely. From what it sounds like, it may have been almost, or perhaps all, of the money raised in a given period - and possibly a particular individual involved who wasn't doing things properly (cristofcanada would know). Renovating a church or getting supports for a statue to make it SAFE, I don't see an issue with, just like restorations of ancient temples and so forth. Nor do I see a problem in money helping pay for clergy's reasonable expenses as you have described so long as it is all detailed and recorded to ensure that it's being used wisely - same thing goes for charitable organizations without any religious/spiritual focus.

It's also a matter of sources and where the money is being distributed. Tax money being spent on art often helps to support careers (like your discussions with priests) and encourages intellectual stimulation.

In some ways, I think the world would do better if it were secular. If it's true that the main draw of religion/spirituality is community as opposed to beliefs/faiths/_, then the world will significantly be improved. Many churches are like cathedrals... they are beautiful and large, but do churches struggle the same way charities do? I've been a volunteer in and employee of several charities, and it's very common for the work space to be in poor conditions. Why do religious/spiritual organizations have the opportunity to do their work in a large space whereas many charities don't? I'd love to know the answer to this. I know there are many small churches including one room ones, but I still wonder. What's the average number of paid staff in small, medium, large sized churches?

Someone should do a study on this.

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

I think it was more a matter of degree/proportion spent, because quite a few people who were regulars left said church because they felt that the money was not being spent wisely.

*nod* Voting with one's feet sends the message pretty clearly... that sounds like a fair outcome to me. The person or people who spent the money without understanding the donors' intent didn't do a very good job, although they didn't do a criminally bad one, and so their organization lost out as the donors walked. The organization should deal with them as with anyone who doesn't do a good job, if it's still around to do so!

My parish has perhaps half a dozen FT paid staff equivalent positions, I think: a priest, a pastoral associate (religious administrator might be the best translation of that), a finance director, and a few folks who cover admin and maintenance. I think the rest is volunteer-based.

Churches are struggling to make ends meet; for example, St. Brigid's Parish collapsed financially¹ and the building has been converted to a center for the arts. There are a lot of people leaving the churches, and a lot of lawsuits from the abuse that was inflicted by these organizations, so the financial picture is often bleak.

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1: The less charitable among us may be quietly gloating... my parish and St. B's were at odds for many years as two downtown parishes with very different views on homosexuals in the church. They weren't as bad as Phelps' gang, but they said and did some nasty stuff back in the day. Our policy has been for a long time to accept people as they come, sexual identity and all.