Money

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Coronavirus pandemic provided an 'acid test' for financial issues in Catholic parishes

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Coronavirus pandemic provided an 'acid test' for financial issues in Catholic parishes

Catholic leaders often whisper about "Christmas and Easter Catholics," as in people whose names are found on parish membership rolls but it's rare to see them in pews -- except during crowded Christmas and Easter rites.

Thus, any study of the COVID-19 pandemic's financial impact on America's nearly 17,000 parishes had to start with the early lockdowns that turned Easter 2020 into a virtual event, with millions of Catholics stuck at home, along with their wallets and checkbooks.

Journalists at The Pillar, an independent Catholic website, collected online materials from 100 parishes in 10 strategic church provinces and found that total offerings were 12% lower in 2020 than the previous year. It was clear when the crisis became real.

Data researcher Brendan Hodge noted donations at Christmas -- "perhaps in combination with secular notions both of making donations before the end of the tax year and of making resolutions for better tithing in the new calendar year" -- and then Easter.

"But in 2020 the normal Easter surge in giving was reversed: the very lowest weeks of tithing came during the Lent and Easter weeks when nearly all U.S. parishes were closed," he noted, in the first of two investigative reports.

After the Easter collapse tithes and offerings seemed to find a new "normal," with a consistent pattern of giving that mirrored 2019 numbers -- only about 12% lower. Clearly, many faithful Catholics stayed the course, offering their usual financial support while taking part in online services and whatever in-person rites could be held under social-distancing regulations.

This raised an old issue: Why are some Catholics -- in good times and bad -- more loyal than others? This question is part of a pattern religious leaders have seen for decades, with about 80% of the work and support in most congregations coming from 20% of their members.


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Returning to Kamp Kanakuk: Is this new expose a work of journalism, theology or both?

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Returning to Kamp Kanakuk: Is this new expose a work of journalism, theology or both?

Readers with long memories will recall that, when the Internet arrived it had an immediate impact on important subjects that rarely received adequate coverage in mainstream media.

Take religion, for example. The lower cost of publishing online led to an explosion of forums, listservs, newsletters, online “radio” channels, podcasts and weblogs. Some failed or evolved into new forms — consider the long and complicated histories of Beliefnet and Patheos — and others became, well, normal.

Now, in the “cancel culture” era, it’s clear that another example of online evolution is affecting serious coverage of religion, as well as other complicated topics.

I am referring to the controversies surrounding Substack and the myriad newsletters and alternative publications thriving there. For a sample of the fea paranoia surrounding Substack, click into this thread from a professor at the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry or read between the lines of this Washington Post column: “The Substack controversy’s bigger story.” Here is a sample of that:

Substack is a start-up for self-publishing email newsletters: Writers decide how often to write and whether and how much to charge; Substack sends the newsletters and collects any fees. The ease of use has made it popular with journalists. …

Some of the most prolific users are heterodox political writers who had found mainstream publications an increasingly poor fit. A number quickly rose to the top of the Substack leader boards. This attracted the gimlet eye of the cancelers: Other online writers — some of whom had their own Substack newsletters — have leveled accusations of transphobia and other offenses. A nascent boycott aims to pressure Substack into deplatforming the alleged offenders. Reportedly, their campaign is having some effect.

“Heterodox” is an interesting word. It appears, in this context, to define the work of various kinds of conservatives or, even worse, free thinkers (Andrew Sullivan and Bari Weiss, for example) who accuse many “liberals” or “progressives” of turning dangerously illiberal.

This brings me to this weekend’s must-read missive from Nancy and David French, care of The Dispatch, an alternative conservative online publication that is thriving in this new online environment. Here is the dramatic double-decker headline atop this long feature:

‘They Aren’t Who You Think They Are’

The inside story of how Kanakuk — one of America’s largest Christian camps — enabled horrific abuse.


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Now for something completely different: RNS scribe doxxed after investigating Ramsey Solutions

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Now for something completely different: RNS scribe doxxed after investigating Ramsey Solutions

Religion reporters don’t usually have to fear for their lives, nor wonder if someone’s going to show up at their homes to exact some kind of revenge for an unfavorable story.

But there’s always a first time.

Several weeks ago, Bob Smietana, the veteran national reporter for Religion News Service, got to experience some very weird doxxing — not at the hands of some anti-religious conspiracy, but from devout Christians.

On Jan. 15, RNS published Smietana’s 4,150-word investigative piece on the workplace at evangelical financial guru Dave Ramsey’s $42 million headquarters in Franklin, Tenn., just south of Nashville. (The Tennessean, Nashville’s hometown newspaper, finally got around to running the piece on Jan. 28.)

That piece followed a Dec. 11 story by Smietana on Ramsey’s for-profit enterprise defying COVID-19 precautions such as wearing masks.

Put all that together and you had a non-flattering description of a workplace shaped by strict controls and perhaps even a personality cult. Here is what ran Jan. 15

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (RNS) — Dave Ramsey has spent the past three decades trying to build what he calls the best place to work in America.

From his headquarters south of Nashville, the evangelical Christian personal finance guru runs a media and live events empire that includes a popular national talk radio show. Tickets to workshops on topics such as “EntreLeadership” run from $3,000 to $10,000.

Thousands of churches around the country, meanwhile, host Ramsey’s “Financial Peace University,” a 9-week program built around his principles for handling money “God’s way.”

Several churches I’ve attended have indeed offered this program. Finances is something most pastors know nothing about, so they kick the task over to Ramsey, who’s making millions off these referrals.

But inside Ramsey Solution’s $42 million headquarters, there appear to be some problems, according to the kind of source one normally encounters in pieces of these kinds — former employees..

Ramsey’s intolerance for dissent has created what former employees call a cult-like environment, where leaders proclaim their love for staff and then fire people at a moment’s notice.


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Washington Post shows (again) how to cover both Liberty University and Jerry Falwell, Jr.

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Did you read the very interesting comments that the Rev. Jonathan Falwell made in this fall’s first campus-wide convocation last week at Liberty University?

This was, of course, the first symbolic gathering of this kind after the scandalous fall of Jerry Falwell Jr., as Liberty’s president. So this was a logical event for reporters to stream online. Well, it was a logical reporting decision for journalists who are interested in Liberty’s future, as well as the Jerry Jr. scandal and its potential impact on Donald Trump.

If you want to read the Jonathan Falwell comments, just about the only place to find them is The Washington Post, which continues to cover the scandal’s higher education angle — specifically Christian higher-education — with a strong team of religion-beat pros and an education-beat specialist. The contents of their latest must-read story — “After Jerry Falwell Jr.’s departure, Liberty University faces questions about faith, power, accountability” — show the journalistic wisdom of this approach.

After noting a short plug for Jerry Falwell Jr., and his role as the builder of the current campus, the acting president — the Rev. Jerry Prevo of Alaska — pledged that Liberty’s remaining leaders are committed to the school’s spiritual and academic mission. That set up this:

Then Jonathan Falwell, pastor of the Liberty-affiliated Thomas Road Baptist Church, spoke. He did not mention his brother by name. But he told his audience, in Lynchburg, Va., and around the globe: “So many times we see Christians that are more focused on building their own brand than they are about building the kingdom of God.”

There are a lot of universities out there, Jonathan Falwell said, but Liberty is different: It was built to change the world with the gospel. He urged students to be faithful, trust God and avoid temptation.

Some students who heard the two men said the convocation highlighted a key tension at their school. They felt that Prevo was elevating the former president because of his transformation of the university and that Jonathan Falwell was elevating the Christian values they shared.


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Did Falwell try to 'hang a lantern' before hotter problems surfaced at Liberty University?

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So the “cabana boy” story is back, only with a plot twist. I am referring, of course, to the neo-tabloid New York Times report last year that ran with this headline: “The Evangelical, the ‘Pool Boy,’ the Comedian and Michael Cohen.”

Now, expect lots of mainstream digital ink (#DUH) to be spilled in the hours ahead about this Washington Examiner “Secrets” column headline: “Exclusive: Falwell says ‘Fatal Attraction’ threat led to depression.”

This article by Paul Bedard was based on a 1,200-word document from Jerry Falwell, Jr. — currently on an indefinite leave of absence as president of Liberty University — and a follow-up telephone interview. Thus, journalists are starting off with on-the-record material they can quote.

The key: Falwell says that he has struggled with depression in the wake of an affair by his wife Becki, which then led to threats of blackmail.

In a statement exclusively to Secrets, Falwell revealed his wife Becki’s affair for the first time, said it was short lived and that the two reconciled quickly. But, they claimed, her former lover has threatened them over the past several years and they are done with it hanging over their heads.

“I’m just tired of it,” said Falwell of the anxiety he’s felt about the affair becoming public and embarrassing his family and Liberty. “It’s just got to end,” he added.

This may have been part of the subtext for recent statements by Liberty’s board about secrets and problems swirling around their digitally unzipped leader.

When I read this remarkable document, the first person I thought of was pundit Chris Matthews, and not because of the details of his resignation from his MSNBC show. No, I was thinking about something he shared long ago in his political playbook “Hardball.”

I am referring to this Beltway battlefield strategy: “Hang a lantern on your problem.”

What does that mean? You can see various definitions online, including: “When politicians recognize their problems and presents them outright, it takes them away from their opponents and puts them in control of how they are viewed.” I like this short version: “It’s always better to bear your own bad news.”

Thus, journalists will need to pause and ask if this remarkable Falwell memo is the whole truth or part of the truth that helps Liberty’s leader during his current problems? The answer, of course, could be “yes,” to both.


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Mark Hemingway: Campus free-speech fights almost always include religion landmines

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On one level, arguments about free speech on secular college and university campuses are “secular” arguments.

However, if you know anything about the First Amendment wars in recent decades you know that topics linked to religion — especially when they involve the Sexual Revolution — are frequently in the mix. Things also get dicey when religious believers start talking about salvation, heaven, hell, etc.

Someone like Mark Hemingway totally gets that. As a former GetReligionista, Mark (click here for obligatory 30 Rock nod to Hemingway) knows the landscape of media coverage in the battlefield where fights about religious liberty and free speech frequently overlap.

This brings me to a RealClearInvestigations.com piece that he wrote recently that ran with this headline: “A Push in States to Fight Campus Intolerance With 'Intellectual Diversity' Laws.” Here is a key passage:

In March of last year, President Trump issued an executive order making federal research funding contingent on universities having adequate free speech protections. At the state level, Texas last year became the 17th state since 2015 to enact legislation protecting First Amendment rights on campus. Currently, the conservative National Association of Scholars is working with four states – Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, and Arizona – to go further: pass laws to increase “intellectual diversity” at public universities.

South Dakota has already done so, and the law’s requirements amount to the most sweeping campus reforms in the country. It was triggered last year by a minor controversy over the stifling of a planned “Hawaiian Day” on one campus -- a last straw for critics of cultural hypersensitivity, which revived intellectual diversity legislation opposed by the state Board of Regents.

Under intellectual diversity laws, not only must dissenting views be tolerated, but college administrations are required to actively take steps (yet to be specified) to ensure that students are exposed to competing cultural and political viewpoints.

So what would “competing cultural” viewpoints look like in campus debates about gender, sex and marriage? Is it more accurate to say that there are “Republican” beliefs involved there doctrines linked to traditional forms of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc.?

It was on Twitter that I saw Hemingway connect some dots in ways that I thought would be of interest to religion-beat writers and religion-news readers. For example:


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AP explains why it was wrong for local-level Catholic employees to get coronavirus relief money

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That Associated Press headline the other day certainly was a grabber: “Catholic Church lobbied for taxpayer funds, got $1.4B.” Let’s start with three statements about this in-depth report:

(1) The headline and the lede both assume there is such a thing as the “U.S. Roman Catholic Church” and that someone can write a check that will be cashed by that institution. This is like saying that there is an “American Public School System,” as opposed to complex networks of schools at the local, regional and state levels.

(2) There are national Catholic organizations that speak — and even lobby — for Catholic groups and causes, such as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. This doesn’t wipe out the reality of local parishes, ministries, schools, religious orders, regional dioceses, etc.

(3) It was completely valid to do an in-depth report on how Catholic nonprofit groups campaigned to receive coronavirus relief money for their employees — for precisely the same reasons journalists can, and should, investigate similar activities by other huge nonprofits and companies with complex national, regional and local structures. Maybe start with Planned Parenthood, just to provide some balance?

The key, once again, is a concept that came up the other day at the U.S. Supreme Court — “equal access.” Under these legal principles, part of the legacy of a liberal-conservative coalition in the Clinton-Gore years, government entities are supposed to treat religious organizations (think nonprofits) the same way they treat similar secular groups. They can work with all of them (sacred and secular alike) or they can turn all of them down.

They key is that they are treated the same. The bottom line: Religion is not a uniquely dangerous force in American life. This topic is discussed — sort of — way down in the AP feature.

But here is the overture of this follow-the-money investigative piece:

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. Roman Catholic Church used a special and unprecedented exemption from federal rules to amass at least $1.4 billion in taxpayer-backed coronavirus aid, with many millions going to dioceses that have paid huge settlements or sought bankruptcy protection because of clergy sexual abuse cover-ups.

The church’s haul may have reached -- or even exceeded -- $3.5 billion, making a global religious institution with more than a billion followers among the biggest winners in the U.S. government’s pandemic relief efforts, an Associated Press analysis of federal data released this week found.

Note that nice neutral noun there in the second paragraph — “haul.”


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MinistryWatch.com is go-to resource for keeping up with evangelical controversies

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Last month, colleague Bobby Ross Jr. noted the value of MinistryWatch.com for alerting journalists to less than salutary aspects of U.S. ministries, especially in wooly evangelical Protestant and “parachurch” sectors.

Ross cited its recent articles on Wycliffe Associates and David Jeremiah’s ministry. This outlet also provides ratings on organizations and, more positively, info on what groups do what things right.

One such media controversy has been revived with the death of the highly influential evangelical author and speaker Ravi Zacharias. Heartfelt personal tributes came from the likes of Vice President Mike Pence, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow and here from prominent New York City Pastor Timothy Keller.

And yet. Coverage in religious media noted problems with his exaggeration of academic credentials and — notably avoided in The New York Times obit — a 2017 legal entanglement involving a married woman in Canada. That case was settled out of court under a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), leaving as-yet-unexplained mysteries. (Note this World magazine analysis last October of problems with NDAs.)

MinistryWatch updated matters for the media on Monday. The woman, Lori Anne Thompson -- who has backing from celebrated evangelical victim advocate and attorney Rachael Denhollander -- is now asking the organization (without actually naming it) to release her from the NDA to answer what she calls “cruel and baseless allegations.”

In its original coverage, MinistryWatch concluded that “a cloud of uncertainty” hovers over the Zacharias ministry. The Guy cannot summarize this complex situation here, but MinistryWatch offers the media a typically careful assessment of what’s known, what’s unknown and why that is important for donors and the wider Christian community.

Here’s a sampling of other recent MinistryWatch articles.


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