As someone who’s done pro-bono and charity work for several religious organizations … the Catholics, Muslim and Jewish dioceses or denominations were always by the books. The Christian-based ones though? Every single one was shady, pulled in as much money for their family as possible and a few would even pull me to the side to ask about fudging numbers with their software.
The Christian and Baptist churches were mostly criminal, if not just in a moral stance, they were outright criminal. The precedent at least had checks and balances while the latter … everyone is in on it.
They learned from the best! The Catholics are no longer so obviously gold-crazy as they once were (for centuries!), they have so much wealth it is hardly a concern for them at this point, untold billions, 170 million acres of land, and so much more than we will ever know.
Baptists, Assembly of God, et al? They have a lot of catching up to do, so they are still obsessed with fleecing everyone for every dime that they can.
Sadly, they are all tax free in many places, so the poor are still being robbed to pay for their “faiths”
A lot of this is just due to the Reformation I imagine. If you want to become a corrupt greedy preacher, why do so in a church that requires their priests to take a vow of poverty? Pre-Reformation, those who wanted to grift joined the Church and found various excuses to get around vows of poverty. But in many Protestant churches, there is no vow of poverty to have to work around.
As someone who’s done pro-bono and charity work for several religious organizations … the Catholics, Muslim and Jewish dioceses or denominations were always by the books. The Christian-based ones though? Every single one was shady, pulled in as much money for their family as possible and a few would even pull me to the side to ask about fudging numbers with their software.
The Christian and Baptist churches were mostly criminal, if not just in a moral stance, they were outright criminal. The precedent at least had checks and balances while the latter … everyone is in on it.
They learned from the best! The Catholics are no longer so obviously gold-crazy as they once were (for centuries!), they have so much wealth it is hardly a concern for them at this point, untold billions, 170 million acres of land, and so much more than we will ever know.
Baptists, Assembly of God, et al? They have a lot of catching up to do, so they are still obsessed with fleecing everyone for every dime that they can.
Sadly, they are all tax free in many places, so the poor are still being robbed to pay for their “faiths”
A lot of this is just due to the Reformation I imagine. If you want to become a corrupt greedy preacher, why do so in a church that requires their priests to take a vow of poverty? Pre-Reformation, those who wanted to grift joined the Church and found various excuses to get around vows of poverty. But in many Protestant churches, there is no vow of poverty to have to work around.