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]

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.