Vatican Uses Donations for the Poor to Plug Its Budget Deficit | Hacker News Reader

Vatican Uses Donations for the Poor to Plug Its Budget Deficit

wsj.com

124 pointsJumpCrisscross62 comments

I was raised a Baptist, but from my experience all churches of any size work this way, and this news will not be surprising to any church-goers.

Typically the pastor of even a small church lives mainly or at least mostly on the tithes given each week. It's common for churches to own a house that the pastor or priest lives in at no charge. All Christians I know either Protestant or Catholic know this and accept it as how the church works, you're tithing to God's work whether that's feeding the poor or repairing the church roof or buying the pastor's groceries.

I don't know as many Catholics, but from what I gather many of them see the Vatican and the bureaucracy as just part and parcel of the whole thing.

I've only met one pastor who had a full-time job in addition to pastoring, at a small church I attended in a major city for a few years, and technically he was a missionary sent to the city to plant that church. Now he has two jobs plus pastoring though, so he might just be a workaholic.

Same and same.

The goal in the case of churches (not within the context of an extra-church structure) is that the pastor can focus on the process of pastor-ing, and it's considered a good thing when s/he can do it full-time.

But it goes against the Biblical model of a pastor being a tentmaker (as Paul was, recorded in Acts) and often the pastor has a significantly higher wage than much of the congragation, which opposes the commonality taught in Acts too, IMO. Having a separate paid pastor also moves towards the idea that the pastor has a special place wrt to God, which again opposes New Testament teaching.

My current pastor, until his retirement worked for a pharma company, he was a drug dealer! (Medicinal and legal drugs, of course).

Tangent: can I ask that we not impose views on what constitutes proper societal patterns from religiously held texts in the Hacker space? For the Christian bible specifically and for religious texts generally there are often an abundance of equally supported interpretations, so much so that there are dedicated categories of academic debate and study (hermeneutics) and colloquial approaches (proof-texting) that are of general interest. I've seen some great discussion places become hot messes quick when social norms are interpreted from religious texts.

The context here is church organizations that ostensibly teach based on the New Testament so the GP comment seems completely appropriate.

If someone suggests devoting 10% of your commit messages to worshiping our (their) lord and savior then your comment would be more relevant.

FWIW, I was careful to state it went against the model of Paul being a tentmaker, and not that this model had primacy, nor that it was exclusive. The Church is a very different beast now.

My apologies, I applied my note to your comment in haste and in error. While I still would love proscription on prescription, I wholly acknowledge that you were not making a religious based normative claim and thus said proscription would not apply. Cheers!

In my personal experience with organized religion in general and the Catholic Church specifically the teachings of the scripture are wholly irrelevant to the actions of the church. Even if we could all agree on the meaning of the scripture.

On the other hand Paul explicitly says that he isn’t taking what he could rightfully do. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+9...

> 13 Don’t you know that those who serve in the temple get their food from the temple, and that those who serve at the altar share in what is offered on the altar?

> 14 In the same way, the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel.

> 15 But I have not used any of these rights. And I am not writing this in the hope that you will do such things for me, for I would rather die than allow anyone to deprive me of this boast.

So FWIW, I don’t believe having my priest receive a salary from the church goes against New Testament teaching. It just doesn’t conform with Paul’s personal example. There are also priests in the church who receive a salary from doing a more normal job, like being a professor at a college, but they typically don’t do nearly as much pastoral work as a priest who is assigned directly to a church.

Yes, it isn't heterodox, just not inline with Paul's model of eldership.

FWIW the whole notion of priests (but not paid workers), seems flatly contradictory to Christ's "tearing of the veil".

Perhaps. :)

My goal was to provide context on a “this is how they see it” factual basis versus trying to comment on its cultural or ecclesiastical validity.

> often the pastor has a significantly higher wage than much of the congragation

The sum total of everyone paid to work for the church I attend (pastors, musicians, cantor; plus the costs associated with some of the services (baptisms, etc); work out to less than a single reasonably well-earning household in the area. I don't think the priests themselves are making a significantly higher wage than much of the congragation.

My grandma died when I was 12 and my parents were forced to pay the voluntary church taxes my grandma did not pay in her last 20 years, most of their salary went to the pastor that month who didn't even issue an invoice.

The pastor was not required to request such payments from relatives as a condition for burying the deceased, but it's easy to prey on those who are left behind.

Taxing churches and cracking down on the rampant corruption around religious organizations cannot come soon enough.

> my parents were forced to pay the church taxes my grandma did not pay in her last 20 years

Can someone shed some light on how the church is able to "enforce" taxes not bound by legal doctrine?

Through manipulation and coercion. They were told by the local pastor that she wouldn't get a religious funeral unless those taxes were paid.

Can you explain more about paying taxes to the church? I haven't heard of this occurring anywhere, but I know different countries have different rules.

There is a voluntary church tax paid by members of the Reformed Church in Europe. My grandma did not attend church in the last few decades of her life, and she did not pay this tax. My parents were forced by the local pastor to pay those taxes in order for her to get a religious funeral by the Reformed Church.

So you paid a mutually agreed price for a funeral. If you didn’t want their services you could have gone elsewhere.

The funeral was paid separately on top of the money the pastor coerced them to give to the church.

There is no agreement involved when you're told your mother wouldn't be buried with what you perceive as dignity, and you're manipulated while in a state of shock and grief to think that the voluntary payment you're making is mandatory.

What do you think grandma would've wanted? Would she be mad at the church and felt entitled to be buried through their service despite not having been involved with that church for 2 decades?

Would she have felt it was her children's duty to pay more than necessary to be buried a certain way? I'm not asking this rhetorically. I really am curious. We all want a dignified funeral for our loved ones, but did grandma make her wishes known?

I don't think she has made her wishes known. She was religious, just not a churchgoer.

My churches (two previous were Baptist) publish their budgets. My current church has only 16% going to admin costs (building, maintenance, and salary I believe) while everything else went to mission work (we run . Everyone here volunteers their time though, which helps bring costs down. I don’t recall previous budgets, but I think they were closer to 50/50. I guess my current one is unusual, but 10% of 50 mil (according to this article) is surprising to me. That’s the lowest bar I’ve seen

From what I could find, on average from 50 - 80% of the church budget goes to church administration.

https://holysoup.com/the-shocking-truth-of-church-budgets/

It depends heavily on the church.

I'd agree that church volunteers really do bring costs down though -- and congregational volunteering is just really healthy in general. It encourages members to exercise more agency, to think about service in concrete ways, and to spend more time fellowshipping with each other.

I had a pipe dream that I was going to get some of my local churches to collaborate more on developing/sharing OS software and technical support with each other, particularly around admin, member registries, etc... But I've had difficulty getting it off the ground. Most church members I know aren't technical, so there's just a very large education gap that has to be addressed first.

For what it may be worth: In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (sometimes/formerly called Mormons), the vast majority of leaders are unpaid. Leaders of congregations aka "wards" (bishops) or groups of congregations aka "stakes" (stake presidents), or area authority seventies (who at least sometimes lead or help lead groups of stakes, if I understand), are all unpaid.

In part this works because there are many others at the local levels who have significant responsibitilities for different things. It is common for at least the bishops and stake presidents to spend 20-30 hours/week serving in those roles. They are "called" (assigned) for usually 5 and 9 years, respectively, then released. (I imagine similarly for the area authority seventies and members of temple presidencies (3-5 years?) Missionaries (or their families or others who help) also pay for their own support. Mission presidents (3 years, full-time in an assigned part of the world) usually support themselves from their savings (I think; I know at least sometimes) though housing is (usually? always?) provided, then they go back to their other employment.

The Church tries to do the same internally that they advise members: avoiding debt and having some savings, living w/in available means, saving for things in advance instead of getting loans. For family finances, it emphasizes things like getting education, avoiding debt, savings for unforeseen events, giving an honest day's work for an honest day's pay, paying tithing which results in noticeable blessings, etc. Tithing supports construction projects, publishing, and other Church expenses, and the monthly fast, giving 2 meals' cost or more to the poor, goes 100% to the poor, as do other donations to humanitarian aid etc (which is used worldwide, including major collaborative work with other churches). No plate is passed during meetings, but there are donation envelopes in a small box in a hallway that anyone can pick up (edit: to mail or hand in); only 3 people in the ward, none in the stake etc., are authorized to accept the returned envelopes (or regular donations can be made online). I am under the impression that taxed business income pays the living stipends of a limited # of top leaders (such as the apostles, with global responsibilities), but it is less than they would usually make or in some cases much less than they did make in their previous employment. That has been written about elsewhere.

(edit: weddings in a temple, and weddings or receptions, funerals, etc etc in a local ward building are free, run also by volunteers. Sometimes family reunions too, I think, and of course local social activities.)

(edit: All this is uniform, world-wide. Also I think I read that it doesn't accept ~"ecclesiastical tax" money, even if/where it would be allowed.)

As a Catholic who has, at times, been involved in both local and regional Church organizations, this isn't a big surprise.

But a lot of the discussion and reaction assumes Peter's Pence (the annual call for donations from which this money comes) is intermixed with the typical 'tithe' or other charity works for all local Catholic churches, when it's not.

In local Catholic churches (parishes) there is always a standard collection, for the local parish only. The money goes to the local facilities, the school (if they have one), the pastor's residence, and if there's leftovers it can be used for special projects (e.g. new boiler, that sort of thing), and also for local charity.

Then there are often 'second collections' for specific needs... there are local charities, missionary charities, etc. (none of which are even loosely affiliated with the Vatican, and most of which have no affiliation even with the local/regional Church organizations).

And finally there are three or four 'hierarchical' collections or appeals, one or two for the regional church, Peter's Pence, and maybe one or two special collections for a one-off need.

So as a Catholic who does manage donations carefully, and also doesn't particularly enjoy money being used for things other than what it's supposed to be used for (the US Conference of Catholic Bishops say Peter's Pence is to "respond to those who are suffering as a result of war, oppression, natural disaster, and disease."), I don't currently donate to this particular cause.

The problem is, a lot of other Catholics (and this isn't an exclusively Catholic phenomenon) have a bit of a blind trust that all the organizations asking for their money are managing their donations well.

Coming from a religious (non-Catholic) background it seems obvious to me that tithes pay the salaries of people working for the church.

I don't think that people who are surprised by this are ignorant or that they should know better. Probably they just have a different background. But "non-Catholics misunderstand how Catholic church works" isn't exactly breaking news.

Unless there is a notable portion of the Catholic church that didn't already understand this? That would surprise me, but it's possible I'm out of touch.

As a Protestant I'm at least somewhat sympathetic to arguments that the size, age, and formal nature of the Catholic church might lead to otherwise innocuous funding structures being more problematic in practice. But if you want to make that kind of argument, I think that would need to be part of a much longer, more nuanced conversation, and it likely isn't going to fit into a single-page article.

How odd to make out that this is irregular... it’s called Peter’s Pence as in collecting for the chair of St. Peter, i.e. the Pope. It’s the one collection that’s specifically for that, as opposed to countless other Catholic charities.

The USCCB website identifies Peter's Pence as helping the Pope "respond to those who are suffering as a result of war, oppression, natural disaster, and disease." (See http://www.usccb.org/catholic-giving/opportunities-for-givin...).

Thanks, that’s interesting. Would that, in your experience, also tally with what the faithful think they’re contributing to? I live in the UK and anecdotally would say that here it’s traditionally understood to be a collection for the Pope to be used as he sees fit.

In the USA, that is the general perception, as that's how it's also stated on the little envelopes we get in the pew and the blurb pastors put in their bulletins.

Doesn't apart of their budget go towards providing for the poor? Did the donators assume the money goes directly in hands of needy? Or was the act inferred to them?

(couldn't read the article - firewalled)

Concerning Switzerland (other countries are probably similar, e.g. Germany) (from https://awa.zh.ch/internet/volkswirtschaftsdirektion/awa/en/... ):

When registering in the municipality of residence, you will be asked about your religious denomination. In the Canton of Zurich, members of the Evangelical-Reformed (Protestant), the Roman-Catholic and the Christian-Catholic Church are required to pay church taxes. Church tax is levied along with the income tax and tax on assets. It amounts to between 8 and 16 percent of the cantonal base tax (“einfache Staatsteuer”) for members of the Catholic Church, between 7 and 15 percent for members of the Evangelical-Reformed (Protestant) Church and 14 percent for members of the Christian-Catholic Church.

As I already pay that, and as it's not a small amount, I was hoping that at least what I donate directly whenever I'm in the Church (the small box into which people put their donations - don't know how it's called), was used exclusively for the poor and not for something else?

The whole 'kirchensteur' thing has me pissed of to the nth degree. What other private entity has managed to get the government to do their subscriptions collection for them based on the amount the person earned? It's beyond ridiculous.

Churches should pay taxes, not use the government to levy their tithe as though it is a tax.

In Germany and a bunch of other EU countries this phenomenon exists as well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_tax

The sooner this is abolished the better.

What annoys me even more is that in Germany e.g. the wages of bishops are directly payed for by the state. Only priests and lower levels are payed via church taxes.

As usual it's a stupid historic thing dating back to 1803 and not one has touched it since (It is "compenstation" for a one-time transfer of church property to the states in compensation for France taking German territory).

Churches shouldn't pay taxes, but yeah, having the government collect the tithe seems like not enough separation between church/state. Even still, as long as the tax isn't compulsory for non-believers and the countries in question are generally happy with it, it doesn't seem like a very big deal.

FWIW, in the US and elsewhere, we have ideologies like Critical Race Theory which are not discernibly different from religions (certainly more religion than sociology or research) and which are taxpayer funded. (And no, this is not the same thing as religious studies programs--studying a religion/ideology is not the same thing as promoting, producing, and enforcing it).

Why shouldn't they? They do business and make profit just like any other corporation, but somehow at the end they don't get taxed because certain kinds of delusional people get a pass?

What's really wrong with that? The government already has the systems in place to collect tax so it sounds more efficient than trying to do it privately. In my country the tax system is also used to collect student loan repayments even though it's not tax, but it probably saves on administrative costs that way. Sure, student loans are also the government, not a private organization, but maybe it could be opened up to businesses as a way to collect recurring or income related payments! Imagine the accuracy of price discrimination you could achieve with access to that.

Separation of church and state is a thing.

In some countries

In Germany at least you can opt out.

I was surprised and even shocked that when my mother in law was out of the hospital after cancer treatment the Diakonie (social welfare connected to protestant church and funded by those taxes) showed up twice a day to change her dressing, make sure she was fed and administered her meds. And she was not a churchgoer. Made a huge difference.

Despite that I still agree those taxes should't exist and also agree that no organizations should be exempt from taxation.

The cynic in me is suggesting that people that just had cancer treatment are excellent parties to be nice to on the off chance that they'll put you in their will, the optimist is happy that religion can show its good side every now and then.

Be careful about generalization though. In Switzerland the "ecclesiastic tax" is not a federal matter but a cantonal one and in some cantons even a communal one. In some cantons it is mandatory, in others it isn't and a mere request addressed to the proper authority can be enough for you not to pay it.

For example in Valais while most people pay it, you are not obligated to do so.

I had no idea this was a thing. I can't say I've done much research, but it seems like it was voted on as recently as 2014, and the ~70% population voted to keep it? I assume it must be providing some sort of public good if its got that kind of approval.

Some other charities ain't that top heavy as Catholic Church but on the other hand they do not last 2 thousand years.

It's a shame none of us will ever find out if the RCC will last another two thousand.

If you want to feel good about dropping cash into the collection plate, never try to figure out the status of the Vatican's sovereign wealth fund, or assess the value of cultural artifacts kept in its private collections.

It's all taking from Paul to pay Peter.

They are a real estate company.

if they are running a deficit, maybe they can legitimately consider themselves poor? :)

As is always pointed out here wealth and income are two different things. Catholic dioceses are independent financial entities but even the nation-level parts of the Catholic church are fabulously wealthy with real-estate and art work and other assets of significant value.

The Catholic Church of Germany is worth an estimated $25,000,000,000. The Catholic Church of Australia is estimated to be worth around $20,000,000,000. Opus Dei which is a weird Catholic-supremacist group is worth $2,000,000,000 alone. The wealth of the Vatican is unknown and likely far far higher.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_organizatio...

To be clear this measure of wealth is based mostly on real estate and artwork, correct?

The Vatican itself runs a deficit every year and the budget is relatively small - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Vatican_City - as the article notes, it is plugged with donations from Catholics across the world via Peter’s pence.

As a catholic I’d rather not have my church sell off all our priceless artworks and churches to private collectors and landlords...

That's been going on for hundreds of years, is this surprising to anybody?

They should distribute all those fantastic works of art and scholarship they've got locked up. Sell them to public institutions that will preserve them and show them to the general public.

I guess that's a bridge too far. It's more important to steal from the poor...

What exactly are the “works of art and scholarship” you think they lock up? The Vatican library and archives are open to scholars from across the world. And you can visit the churches like the Sistine Chapel to see the artwork - millions of tourists and pilgrims do so every year!

Maybe they should bring back indulgences

If true, its a despicable system and deserves universal condemnation.

In fact, it deserves legal action. What other charity is 10% efficient, and gets away with it?

For the record, I do NOT disagree with your sentiment, but because you asked: https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?keyword_list=&bay...

Aren't many of those rated 0 because they don't report?

“You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion.” - L. Ron Hubbard

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