Clare’s blog, aka rantspace

Apart from the quoted amounts spent on WYD by the church ($150M) and the NSW govt ($86M+), now we find that the Federal govt (ie. John Howard, just before the last election) threw in another $22M, which is being challenged as unconstitutional in the Supreme Court (see here). And new legislation especially to “protect the Catholic pilgrims from harassment” is in force. Has anyone stopped to wonder just what sort of political manoeuvering must have gone on behind the scenes to prompt all this? And Pell says the church didn’t ask for any of it!!! Yeah right!

A: To shoring up the shortfall in government dollars created by giving churches such incredible tax exemptions.

What sort of $$ are we talking about? Take a look at this comment in Crikey for some actual figures. The Catholic church, despite being a business (with charity sidelines), gets tax exemptions amounting to millions of dollars per year. The Anglican Church likewise, though no figures are given. But just stop to think about how many churches there are, and realise that each one is exempt from land tax, council rates and capital gains tax (to name just a few of the taxes from which they are exempt), and you begin to get the idea.  Think of the size of St Andrew’s Square, in the Sydney CBD, and wonder for a moment what the council rates on that would be! The totals across all denominations are in the billions. One wonders, if the churches were forced to separate charity from business operations and only claim tax exemptions for the charitable operations, just how much of those billions would remain tax exempt. The government would certainly suddenly find itself a lot richer!

If I wasn’t laughing, I’d be crying:

THE body of an inspirational Catholic who died in 1925 will be flown to Sydney for World Youth Day. Pier Giorgio Frassati will play an important role in the huge Catholic festival despite being dead for more than 80 years, Fairfax Media reports. Mr Frassati was only 24 when he died from polio, but he has become a role model for young Catholics because of his fervent faith, teamed with good looks, a robust physique and sunny nature. The idea of bringing his body to Sydney seems to derive from personal contacts between the Frassati family and the Archdiocese of Sydney, Fairfax Media reports. Italian sources told Fairfax Media his body would be flown to Sydney in June, and would be displayed in St Mary’s Cathedral during the World Youth Day period in July.

…and these figures:
Cost to taxpayers A (of funding extra police, turning schools into dormitories, and extra public transport) $86M
(see here)
Cost to taxpayers B (compensation to AJC for disruption to income due to WYD being held at Randwick Racecourse) $41M
Cost to Catholic Church (presumably including the transport of body as described above) $150M
(see here)

Benefit to nation’s economy $150M (but that figure, and its breakdown, is in doubt because the govt has used FoI provisions to ensure the report detailing it isn’t published)
(see here)

Spiritual benefits:
1. Preaching to the converted
2. The chance to venerate a dead body
3. Potentially more religious (a vocations expo will be handing out showbags)
4. Plenary indulgences for those who participate in rituals around the WYD cross

And in amongst all this lavish spending, the average Catholic payout to clergy abuse victims, usually after years of fighting to get it, is around $40,000. That means, in case you don’t want to do the arithmetic yourself, that the amount the church is paying for WYD would fund approximately 3750 abuse payouts. The amount the govt is paying would fund another 3175 payouts. Benefits in goodwill, and spiritual benefits, from settling without fight nearly 7000 abuse claims are about as unconfirmable as the economic benefit supposed to be the outcome of WYD.

I can’t help wishing they’d spend a lot less on self-promotion and a lot more on restoring the damage they’ve caused in the past.

Oh, and though the dead Frassati will be there, presumably Jesus won’t be – he was Jewish!

Clergy abuse victims get criticised for going to court, but what else are they to do? In this case, the church made an internal investigation of child sex offences, but failed to refer the matter to police, thereby hiding a serious crime. In another case, the diocese (Catholic), in spite of appearing to support the victim’s claim, says “it’s not our policy to pay compensation”. But the Towards Healing program for compensating Catholic victims is a national one, and individual dioceses should be working on victims’ behalfs to ensure they get some redress through the program.

But when churches continue to hide crimes, and refuse justice and redress to victims, those victims have no other option but to seek justice in civil or criminal courts. And people wonder why we lose faith in the church!