It’s become common knowledge that churches operate like businesses, but enjoy a Medici-like perk of not having to pay taxes like other things that operate like businesses (such as, you know, businesses). However, as one person in St. Louis found out, on top of tax exemption, Jesus, Inc. also enjoys another perk worth some gear-grinding — they do not pay for unemployment insurance.
This person — who has chosen to remain nameless for fear of retribution from the church — was at one time employed as a Catholic high school teacher in the Archdiocese of St. Louis. Because we live in hard economic times where Catholicism is only a multi-billion-dollar enterprise, this person (henceforth referred to as St. Screwed) was laid off from their teaching position.
Suddenly jobless, St. Screwed did what any responsible, recently laid off person would do — go down to the unemployment office, sit for hours in a room with others who share in the “blessing” of joblessness, then talk with a disinterested government employee about collecting benefits.
Imagine how St. Screwed must have felt when they were told the Archdiocese of St. Louis does not pay for unemployment insurance and thus, St. Screwed was not able to draw unemployment.
St. Screwed has been weathering a storm since being laid off and is currently performing odd jobs to make ends meet.
Unfortunately, St. Screwed is not alone. There have been many whose employment with the Catholic Church has been suddenly severed and who have been forced to walk the Via Dolorosa without any kind of safety net. In St. Screwed’s case, some insight into the inner workings of the world’s most powerful religion have been provided by Kevin Loos, managing director of human resources for the Archdiocese of St. Louis.
Mr. Loos told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that while he is sympathetic toward St. Screwed’s plight, the handbook given to employees of the Archdiocese of St. Louis points out that they do not pay into unemployment insurance and that nobody “should be surprised about [it].”
However, even though the archdiocese point out in employee handbooks that the Catholic Church is exempt from paying into unemployment insurance, many people are caught off-guard by it, considering that some archdiocese actually do pay into state unemployment insurance and provide their employees with that safety net should St. Matthew appear and demand heavenly cutbacks.
What’s more is that this exemption, of which the various archdiocese, by and large, take advantage, creates a conflict between the law and the spirit of ethics. A tradition of which, I’m sure, the Catholic church beams with pride.
Mr. Loos also commented about how the archdiocese handle their money.
“It comes down to an economic decision. If I magically had another quarter of a million dollars, there would be clamor for how to best invest that money.”
Mr. Loos justified the archdiocese’s economic decisions by recalling an anecdote told to him by a former archbishop regarding the spending of archdiocese resources. He noted that the archbishop told him to think about the little old lady in the front pew putting her money in the basket during Sunday services. How would she want her money spent?
In reality, it doesn’t matter how she would want her money spent. The transfer of funds from parishioner to institution is like paying taxes — you don’t get a choice in where the money goes. Just like how governments collect tax revenue to fund a variety of programs and projects at their own discretion, church collections (“tithing”) operate in the same manner. The money goes where the church wants it to go. It always has, which is why out of the around $170 billion the Catholic Church of America spends annually, only about 3 percent of it is allocated to charitable causes, while the rest goes to healthcare (exempted from various women’s reproductive services), education (exempted from teaching actual science in favor of fairy tales), parish disbursements, and religious orders and Catholic lobbying groups.
Just look at the Mormons. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is filthy, stinking rich and the architecture of their palaces of worship definitely reflect that. The Mormons, like the Catholics, the Protestants, Muslims, Jews, and other religious denominations, could reasonably allocate at least some of the money they use to build megachurches and facilities that look like castles from fantasy novels to help the poor or, you know, the unemployed.
But as mentioned above, St. Screwed and many others who have suffered through “God’s plan” similarly are victims of church discretion in prioritization. This discretion commonly blurs the line between what is legal and what is ethical. In this case, what is legal (not paying into unemployment insurance by virtue of legal exemption) is not what is ethical (providing safety and security for former archdiocese employees suddenly laid off).
The lesson from St. Screwed is that if you wish to be an employee of a Catholic archdiocese, do so at your own risk. They’re not accountable for anything. Business laws do not apply to them.
It’s exactly as Jesus would have wanted.
Featured image by AgnosticPreachersKid, available under a Creative Commons Atrribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.
[H/T St. Louis Post-Dispatch]
