Thursday, December 6, 2012
The Washington Post reports that the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA) has urged the IRS to become more involved in addressing "outlier" ministries that are not otherwise being held financially accountable. Among the suggestions: ensure that compensation for leaders of nonprofits is "reasonable." (Please correct me if I'm misreading the actual recommendations, as I've only read the news coverage of the recommendations.)
The ECFA's actions suggest an interesting question: should fans of tax exemptions for churches nevertheless encourage the IRS to crack down on churches that appear to "abuse" the exemption, or is that headed down a dangerous path? And if the tax exemption reflects a jurisdictional distinction between church and state, should the state have anything to say about how "reasonable" the church leaders' salaries are?
Excellent constitutional scholar and all around generous guy Nelson Tebbe is blogging with us at CLR Forum for the month of December. Come on over and check out his first post, "Government Nonendorsement," in which he gives a readable summary of this new piece. For me, one of the most interesting conceptual moves he makes in the piece is to consider the question of "secular nonendorsement."
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
The United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York has denied in part and granted in part the federal government's Rule 12(b)(1) motion to dismiss the complaint of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, Catholic Health Care Systems, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rockville Centre and Catholic Charities, and Catholic Health Services of Long Island (CHSLI). The case is important on the issues of standing and ripeness, inasmuch as it goes in a different direction from several other courts that have addressed these questions. The plaintiffs operate self-insured health plans which they believe do not qualify for grandfathered status, though they all do qualify for the safe harbor (meaning that no enforcement would occur against them until January 1, 2014). The decision is complicated and has several moving parts. Here's the scoop, after the break.
Speaking of Germany...... last Friday the Murphy Institute dedicated one of its "Hot Topics: Cool Talk" programs to the recent grant of political asylum by U.S. Immigration Judge Lawrence Burman to German family (Uwe and Hannelore Romeike and their five children) who were home-schooling their children. (In Germany, attendance at an officially recognized school – public, private or religious – is mandatory.) Judge Burman ruled that “home-schoolers are a particular social group that the German government is trying to suppress. This family has a well-founded fear of persecution … therefore, they are eligible for asylum.” Luke Goodrich, a Becket Fund attorney who worked on their amicus brief supporting the Romeike’s asylum claim, debated this issue with David Abraham of the University of Miami School of Law. You can watch the video here.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Anthony Trollope is a wonderful novelist of the Victorian period. His Chronicles of Barsetshire series is both a window on nineteenth-century Britain and a stylistic masterpiece. And he is the author of as stingingly elegant a line about literary talent as I have run across (composed at the expense of my man, James Fitzjames Stephen): "a poor novelist, when he attempts to rival Dickens or rise above Fitzjeames, commits no fault, though he may be foolish." (from "Barchester Towers")
Here is a fascinating quote from his travelogue, "North America" (1862), written long before President Eisenhower said something vaguely similar, though in a very different register:
I have said that it is not a common thing to meet an American who belongs to no denomination of Christian worship. This I think is so: but I would not wish to be taken as saying that religion on that account stands on a satisfactory footing in the States. Of all subjects of discussion, this is the most difficult. It is one as to which most of us feel that to some extent we must trust to our prejudices rather than our judgments. It is a matter on which we do not dare to rely implicitly on our own reasoning faculties, and therefore throw ourselves on the opinions of those whom we believe to have been better men and deeper thinkers than ourselves . . . .
It is a part of [the American] system that religion shall be perfectly free, and that no man shall be in any way constrained in that matter. Consequently, the question of a man's religion is regarded in a free-and-easy way. It is well, for instance, that a young lad should go somewhere on a Sunday; but a sermon is a sermon, and it does not much concern the lad's father whether his son hear the discourse of a free-thinker in the music-hall, or the eloquent but lengthy outpouring of a preacher in a Methodist chapel. Everybody is bound to have a religion, but it does not much matter what it is.
Great piece on the filibuster controversy by University of St. Thomas law prof Charles Reid: very informative--and, to me, persuasive. Which means, alas, that Rick Garnett will disagree with it. :-)
You can read it here.
Monday, December 3, 2012
Longtime MOJ-contributor, thoughtful scholar, wonderful priest, and good friend Fr. Robert Araujo, S.J., has given me permission to ask all Mirror of Justice readers to join me in praying for him as he continues what appears to be an increasingly difficult battle with cancer. Oremus!
Rocco reports, at Whispers in the Loggia, on a very interesting new motu proprio called "The Church's Deepest Nature: On the Services of Charity." It is, as Rocco says, about "on the Catholic identity and ecclesial oversight of the church's charitable efforts." A bit:
In carrying out their charitable activity . . . the various Catholic
organizations should not limit themselves merely to collecting and distributing
funds, but should show special concern for individuals in need and exercise a
valuable educational function within the Christian community, helping people to
appreciate the importance of sharing, respect and love in the spirit of the
Gospel of Christ. The Church’s charitable activity at all levels must avoid the
risk of becoming just another form of organized social assistance
(cf. ibid., 31). . . .
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