One of the Michigan news outlets had a search engine that allowed people to see which businesses in their area received these loans. My son's Catholic school received up to $130k to retain 26 employees. The money for religious school teacher and staff pay wouldn't bother me so much if the priest weren't sitting in prison for embezzlement.
If the money enabled the parishes to keep groundskeepers and DREs on the payroll, then it did what Congress intended it to do. OTOH, if there is a new statue of the Little Flower, not so much. I would like to see an accounting. If I were the pope, I would demand to see an accounting. But if I were pope I would know that in 2000 years the Church has never figured out what financial accounting is. Judas was the first diocesan comptroller.
"Judas was the first diocesan comptroller." Tom, LOL! Agree that insofar as the money preserves jobs, it is doing what it was supposed to do. Also agree that there needs to be accountability.
I'm basically with Tom. I want to see church employees continue to be employed and paid, and if Congress made the money available to church entities, I don't object to the church tapping into it.
My biggest objection to the article is the way the authors consistently refer to "the Catholic Church" as though it's a single entity. It's not. It's many separate entities, including hundreds of individual dioceses and thousands of parishes, schools and similar organizations. The loans weren't paid to "The Catholic Church" as though it were some single monolith asking for billions of dollars. As reported in the article, I assume that these individual entities applied individually, and were approved and paid individually.
To be sure, the US bishops conference is a single entity at the national level, and it seems the conference did lobby for the exception. I'm not entirely sure what to think about that.
Even apart from the national (and state) conferences, the Catholic church is a pretty organized church. The dioceses and large organizations like Catholic Charities USA employ a lot of lawyers, accountants, tax specialists and others who probably are more sophisticated about a program like the Paycheck Protection Program than other churches would be. A diocese is more than a voluntary association of individual parishes: it is a well-organized legal entity with a real top-down organization. A typical Catholic diocese probably is well-organized to pursue a program like this.
It is true that the Trump administration is seeking to curry favor with church officials and, by extension, Catholic voters. But PPP is not a Trump program per se; it was passed by Congress.
One of the Michigan news outlets had a search engine that allowed people to see which businesses in their area received these loans. My son's Catholic school received up to $130k to retain 26 employees. The money for religious school teacher and staff pay wouldn't bother me so much if the priest weren't sitting in prison for embezzlement.
ReplyDeleteThat the Ground of Being is green is apparently a theological point both Trump and Dolan adhere to.
ReplyDeleteIf the money enabled the parishes to keep groundskeepers and DREs on the payroll, then it did what Congress intended it to do. OTOH, if there is a new statue of the Little Flower, not so much. I would like to see an accounting. If I were the pope, I would demand to see an accounting. But if I were pope I would know that in 2000 years the Church has never figured out what financial accounting is. Judas was the first diocesan comptroller.
ReplyDelete"Judas was the first diocesan comptroller." Tom, LOL!
DeleteAgree that insofar as the money preserves jobs, it is doing what it was supposed to do. Also agree that there needs to be accountability.
I'm basically with Tom. I want to see church employees continue to be employed and paid, and if Congress made the money available to church entities, I don't object to the church tapping into it.
ReplyDeleteMy biggest objection to the article is the way the authors consistently refer to "the Catholic Church" as though it's a single entity. It's not. It's many separate entities, including hundreds of individual dioceses and thousands of parishes, schools and similar organizations. The loans weren't paid to "The Catholic Church" as though it were some single monolith asking for billions of dollars. As reported in the article, I assume that these individual entities applied individually, and were approved and paid individually.
To be sure, the US bishops conference is a single entity at the national level, and it seems the conference did lobby for the exception. I'm not entirely sure what to think about that.
Even apart from the national (and state) conferences, the Catholic church is a pretty organized church. The dioceses and large organizations like Catholic Charities USA employ a lot of lawyers, accountants, tax specialists and others who probably are more sophisticated about a program like the Paycheck Protection Program than other churches would be. A diocese is more than a voluntary association of individual parishes: it is a well-organized legal entity with a real top-down organization. A typical Catholic diocese probably is well-organized to pursue a program like this.
It is true that the Trump administration is seeking to curry favor with church officials and, by extension, Catholic voters. But PPP is not a Trump program per se; it was passed by Congress.