Archbishop of Newark builds himself a palace while the church shuts down schools for lack of funding

boing
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Glad to see my tax dollars going to a good cause.

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Wow, you’re a real fuckwad, Your Grace.

Not tax dollars, though. It’s the Catholic Archdiocese, so they’re funded not by taxpayers but by, uh. . . people who give money to the Church. What’s the word? “Chumps”, I suppose.

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I am confuse. How do your tax dollars fund this?

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Maybe bradgall meant tithe dollars :slight_smile:

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As much as this guy is an unmitigated asshole who would probably be engaged in all the wackiest simoniacal hijinks of the pre-reformation church, were they still an option, I must admit that his behavior has its upsides:

If he were bright enough, or not so consumed by hubris, he’d be a much lower profile target, probably still have the long history of flouting the law and sheltering pedophiles; but that would be a lot of dusty paper and decades-old he said/he said stuff. Interesting to the wonks and the victims and the lawyers, but dry as a dust.

The McPalace, the preening, the insistence on fancy titles, all that, are unlikely to be the worst of his crimes; but they are highly visible, and overtly contrary to any theories of clerical asceticism, humility, etc.

In an ideal world, of course, you wouldn’t be faced with bad people; but if that’s on the docket, let them be noisily bad, and expensive.

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Because the Catholic church does not have to pay any taxes on its income, real estate, etc., we taxpayers have to make up the difference. They don’t even pay sales tax.

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Exactly.

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An age old(e) problem. As Chaucer wrote:

What sholde he studie and make hymselven wood,
Upon a book in cloystre alwey to poure,
Or swynken with his handes, and laboure,
As austyn bit? how shal the world be served?
…
His bootes souple, his hors in greet estaat.
Now certeinly he was a fair prelaat;
He was nat pale as a forpyned goost.
A fat swan loved he best of any roost.
His palfrey was as broun as is a berye.

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Your grace?

he’s not a duke.

cardinals and archbishops merit “eminence” and “excellency”, respectively.

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Clerical asceticism seems to be a choice, not a rule.

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I do so hope that Francis puts an epic smack-down on this guy as he did for the Bishop of Bling.

::grabs popcorn in anticipation::

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Priests and employees pay sales tax on their groceries etc. In US at least. I heard in Ireland they don’t.

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Grabbing some knitting might be better.

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Taxpayers fund society. Religious institutions and the clergy do not pay their fair share of taxes. We’re in effect subsidizing them.

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That and ‘these are very small, those are far away’ are two of my favourite gags from that show.

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That’s a fairly roundabout way of saying that tax dollars are paying for this. Especially since, even if the church had to pay taxes, our good friend the Archbishop would have done exactly the same thing.

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Let’s go ahead and add all these places to the Rolls of the Damned as well:
http://hirr.hartsem.edu/cgi-bin/mega/db.pl?db=default&uid=default&view_records=1&ID=*&sb=3&so=descend

It’s not just a Catholic thing.

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Should Francis choose to defrock him, there would be no need to incorporate the archbishop’s name into my afghan. Besides, most of the available space is already occupied by economic and political oppressors.

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