When Catholic priests aren’t molesting your kids; their taking your money. Here we have two Roman Catholic priests, Monsignor John Skehan and Rev. Francis Guinan, that have spent the last 5 years stealing from the faithful. Over that time-span they managed to rack up over $8.6 million for which they used on various personal endeavors. Skehan, the more reserved of the two, wasted his money on real estate… boring! Guinan on the other hand decided to toss his morals out the door completely. He went to Sin City and hit the casinos! My guess is that he probably had a few escorts, but what do I know. $8.6 can buy an awful lot of escorts though.
Stories like this just keep me in stitches. I know a few people that sign over 5-10% of their income to the church and it makes me wonder how they can be so damn ignorant. From observation, it seems that people do it for one of two reasons. First, they want that 1st class ticket to heaven. Second, they want to feel good about themselves. They think that because of their money, someone less fortunate is being helped.
Here’s how I look at it. If you’re serious and truly passionate about helping others, then get your ass of the couch and do it. There are opportunities in every city. Go to a soup kitchen and help out. Be a big brother/sister. Volunteer at the local Boys and Girls Club. Put some time in at Habitat for Humanity. Instead of taking your 10th trip to Disney, go to a village in Africa and make a difference. Hell, just go to the inner city near you and make a difference.
But most won’t do this because they truly don’t care about others. They give money out of guilt and they want to buy a clear conscience on the cheap.
Thanks for this one Itanshi!
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So I guess there’s an easy 8.6 million to add to the list of Money that religion wastes in america. Already off to a good start I’d say.
People will do any thing for a clean conscience,and of course,as you said,1th class ticket to heaven.
If there is a god,and he truely exists,i think he will give them a 1th class ticket to hell.
If you are stupid enough to get me 8.6 mill for no good reason, I would blow it too. But then, I dont pretend to worship a mythological creature either. Maybe I should start a church?
The problem with being a Deist and trying to get money is that I can’t use the “God told me to have you give me money story” seeing as how my god is a disconnected observer to the general doings of mankind. Oh hey, I got it.
Everyone, this is very urgent. I need you to give me money because if we can get enough together then I can call god up and talk with him. I know it seems like it should be simple, but do you have any idea of the long-distance charges I’ll face calling from Atlanta, GA to Trancendence, Notintheuniverse? I will need 8.6 Million dollars to pay for this. Please people we must act now, only I can give you all the answers once I talk to god!
While much of this is amusing and certaintly plays to the cynicism and distrust that religious leadership has engendered over the centuries, there are cases (possibly a majority) where such money is well spent. The basic use would be to pay the living and operational expenses of the priest and church which, presumably if you’re a member of the church at all, you can morally support. Beyond that, there’s the larger operation of your denomination/church organization. Also, as a member, one might be persuaded that these operations are reasonable.
However, most churches have some sort of outreach that can be anything from prosyletization to community development. My father is quite involved in the Anglican Church of Canada’s development agency (Primate’s World Relief Development Fund) which spends a large amount of time/effort/money on supporting and defending refugees, working with UN agencies to help with placement, training, human-rights defense, etc.
Many churches, particularly in the liberal and/or evangelical left (yes, the latter category exists) have very strong social-justice efforts and work with Amnesty International and various other organizations. It’s not all glitz and such.
Even within the catholic church, which gets a lot of attention for such abuses as are described above, you find things like Scarborough Mission, which is an organization which works hard on inter-faith and inter-religious dialogue and multi-faith development and justice issues. These folks do not live large, I assure you.
Within my own community, the Baha’i Faith, communities vary. Most localities I’ve participated in have a very difficult time maintaining sufficient funds for local community efforts, and I know that in Canada and the USA, a lot of money that gets to the national level is used to support under-developed Baha’i Communities in 3rd world countries. These very poor communities in very poor nations tend to spend such money on books and wells and such as they attempt to teach women how to read, or bootstrap local community health initiatives. I’m not saying everything done is what an outsider would agree with, but it’s not so much with the luxury. Even when building temples which are beautiful and seem quite luxurious, you should hear the stories of people finding amazing discounts and deals on high-quality materials and workmanship with shoestring budgets.
So while I understand the temptation to poke fun at religious organizations and the scandalous treatment of precious dollars donated by many with little means… don’t let cynicism completely override the knowledge that some people care very much, and work very hard to make such donations do some good for both that religious community and the wider society.
And as to Arya’s comment above, I’m in agreement. Those who misuse such precious material sacrifices are paving their own hell with gold-leaf.
I work on computers for a living (suprise, right?) and at a previous employer one of our clients was a church. It serviced the lower income familes in the area, and the church was this big old kinda ratty building. Walk into the lead god salesmans office though and it was luxurious. Plush comfy carpet, all beautiful wood desk and bookshelves lining the wall. Huge television, powerful desktop system with 2 monitors and a notebook with all the bells and whistles. I went out to his house once, at the church’s expense of course, and he lived in a country club in a huge house with screened in swimming pool. Beautiful place his congregation that lived from paycheck to paycheck bought him.
There needs to be some kind of investigation of just what the church spends its money on. Not just to say, “Yeah, they’re corrupt,”, but serious research into just how much they use for new churches/ads/new things in general, how much they end up paying for “maintenance”, so to speak, and just how much is left over for “good deeds.” I for one would really like to know just how that pool of donations gets spent.
Micheal,
I wouldn’t dream of arguing against specific examples. Of course such things are easy to find. Neither you, nor I, however, have any insight into their church’s financing specifics, so it’s a bit hard to judge that example. Much of the material stuff could have been simply donated by one or a few wealthy parishioners. Or the priest could be living high off the poor. Who knows? Regardless, I’m not arguing against the existance of such abuse – heaven forbid… there’s all sorts of examples like that. All I’m saying is that the other examples are also there – they just get less notice.
Snurp:
What you say makes sense, but also each church/community has a different slant and varying goals. You and I might not agree with the goals, in which case we wouldn’t join. But it’s not insane for those who do join, who agree with the goals to donate in support of them. If part of those goals are the continuation of the system of belief and its organization, then that’s what the organization will spend it on. If the goal is propagation of the belief (teaching and/or prosyletization) then they’ll spend it on that. etc.
I think where what you say is primarily of interest would be where you are investigating a community or church that you are intesteded in potentially joining – then you should really understand it. But to me, that’s just due-dilligence required of anyone joining a religion. To some, money spent on “missionary activity” is “good deeds” and that makes sense to them. Religions and denominations vary too much to generalize.
Snurp:
I’ve made a suggestion like this to a few people before. I don’t know how to organize something like that but its something I feel should be done. I used to live near a place called the World Changer’s Ministries, a 2 acre Ultra-church lead by a man named Creflow Dollar (god, that name is awsomely ironic). His congregation consists mainly of low income black families that are tithing their paychecks away because this man aparently found some line in the bible that he can use to make them do this.
Can you guess where Brother Dollar lives? I can assure you its not a humble dwelling. And with his billboards and tv shows, his expensive car and those ATMs in the lobby, I can guarantee he’s making a profit and not paying a cent on it. Makes me kinda physically ill.
If anyone could find a good way to get accurate data on their intake and expenditures, I’d love to start watching our “charitable” brothers in the Americhurch community.
Actually, one really wierd side-effect of the “protestant work ethic” and certain modes of thinking in western christianity has resulted in a sort of “spiritual materialism.” In this thinking, material success is the natural result of spiritual health/growth, and so the inverse implication is presumed – that if you’re materially rich then this is evidence, specifically, of spiritual strength.
It’s an incredible departure from the biblical Jesus, but it’s very attractive.
“$8.6 can buy an awful lot of escorts though.” Probably shouldn’t be basing your estimates on family; that seems a little low to me.
Anywho, have a friend who’s son of a menonite pastor, and not to play into stereotypes but I don’t think this kind of thing happens as much in their churches. Because they’re stingy. Ok, that was a stereotype, but I calls ‘em like I sees ‘em.
Whale biologist.
Actually this is a really good idea; I wanna exploit the needs of the meak too, god damn morons. Maybe if we keep them all poor as shit, they won’t have the money to send their kids to Jesus Camp?
My mom goes to this 9.2 million dollar church and all the Pastor talks about is when you are a good person and follow God your bank accounts will flourish. Also the donation envelopes have a section that you can put your credit card information. I guess that is the price to pay to have faith…
well, It’s not that I mind idiots giving away their money. I encourage people to give away money, I might get some of it.
The problem is that they’re actually spending it to the detriment of mankind.
As a former humanist atheist, I would have agreed with you a few years back. As a convert Catholic, I couldn’t disagree with you more. Yes, there are church leaders who unfortunately take advantage of their status, but give some statistics of what percentage is actually doing such thing! See, what you are doing is taking a few examples (I’m sure there are many more) of similar cases and indirectly saying “two church leaders did it, all church leaders do it.” You ran into a logical fallacy. I sympathies with you, not believing in God can be depressing at times and the best thing to release that bad feeling is to bash at anything religious. I hope you find your true happiness! One thing, you don’t have to agree with me, but please do respect my position as I do yours. Call me a religious freak, it’ll make me feel all the more holly. God bless :o)
But, all church leaders DO do it. you don’t think new churches fund themselves do you?
wood desk are the best, i really hate plastic desk coz it is not biodegradable.;~
my dad and i loves wood desk because it looks very cool and always impresses the visitors”.`