Bruce Feiler - Where God Was Born, Abraham, Walking The Bible

Get Your Hand Out of the Collection Plate
Friday, January 5, 2007

Yesterday I was talking about how bracing it is for anyone who spends any time reading about the history of religion in America to learn that a whopping 155 members of Congress are Catholic. As recently as a few generations ago, this news would have caused deep concern in large portions of the Protestant majority in America. Today, the opposite news rises to the surface: the Catholic Church is sagging under the weight of its moral weakness. The NYT flags the following story on Page 1 today: A study at Villanova has found that a stunning 85% of churches experience embezzlement of their funds. EIGHTY-FIVE PERCENT.

“As a faith-based organization, we place a lot of trust in our folks,” said Chuck Zech, a co-author of the study and director of the Center for the Study of Church Management at Villanova.
“We think if you work for a church — you’re a volunteer or a priest — the last thing on your mind is to do something dishonest,” Mr. Zech said. “But people are people, and there’s a lot of temptation there, and with the cash-based aspect of how churches operate, it’s pretty easy.”

There will be no need to ask "Where's the outrage?" over this story, it's going to be loud -- and not just in Catholic churches. And as an outsider to the Catholic Church, I can only conclude that this is another piece of drip-drip information that's going to deeply undermine the authority of the institution. Pull back just for a second and look at the wallops: gay priest cover up, huge financial settlements, The DaVinci Code, financial scandals. Put this in the context of the power the Church has had over Western Civilization for the last seventeen centuries and it's hard not to think we are entering a new era when religion is going to be less and less defined from above and more and more defined as an individual creation.

Labels: Christianity

Posted by B Feiler at 9:18 AM
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