“Pair of books paint Vatican as a bastion of extravagance,” by Anthony Faiola and Stefano Pitrelli.
We do not need to wait for these two Italian books to be published in English. We have lawyer Gerald Posner's 2015 book, God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican (Simon and Schuster).
Further, we have a report in this week's National Catholic Reporter by Jack Ruhl, "NCR research: Costs of sex abuse crisis to US church underestimated."
Ruhl writes that "The US Catholic Church has incurred nearly $4 Billion in costs related to the priest sex abuse crisis during the past 65 years, according to an extensive NCR investigation of media reports , databases and church documents."
Ruhl adds: "In addition, separate research recently published calculates that other scandal-related consequences such as lost membership and diverted giving has cost the church more than $2.3 Billion annually for the past 30 years."
That's a total of $69 Billion! No wonder church officials have been pushing for tax aid for their shrinking private school system through vouchers and tax credits, a scheme of course overwhelmingly opposed by American voters.
No comments:
Post a Comment