Catholic Church lobbied for taxpayer funds, got $1.4B

Evidently it works just fine since the bottom 60% of the population runs a surplus against the government since at least 2012[1].

[1] https://taxfoundation.org/60-percent-households-now-receive-...

It's easier than that. Pretty much anyone with charisma and public speaking skills can start a non-denominational "Christian" church.

I'm a Catholic, and although I believe in my church's doctrine, I don't always come to the defense of my church's leaders. Here's how I see this:

Last week the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue that when public funds (e.g. grants, aid, forgivable loans) are made generally available to any organization that meets certain neutral criteria, a religious organization that meets the criteria cannot be excluded merely because it is religious. The First Amendment's Establishment Clause requires the government to be impartial when it comes to religion, showing no preference toward any particular faith, or toward religious believers in general. But that doesn't mean that religious organizations must be barred from funding that is otherwise generally available.

So, assuming the Catholic parishes, dioceses, and organizations satisfied same the criteria for the PPP loans as everybody else, I don't think there's a "separation of church and state" issue here.

Another consideration: What happens if they were ineligible to participate in the PPP. They would likely be forced to furlough or lay off employees. Because churches don't pay into states' unemployment programs, those employees would not be eligible to collect unemployment insurance (or the federal government's additional unemployment aid), which would put them in pretty bad shape. I happen to think that churches SHOULD pay into unemployment programs or provide similar unemployment benefits for laid-off workers, but that's not the reality right now. And so having churches participate in the PPP is an available way for the government to look after people who happen to work for religious employers.

As for some of the more controversial details -- lobbying for special classification with regard to employee size restrictions -- I would not be surprised if the Church were in the wrong there, although it's certainly true that the Church has an organizational structure that far predates and doesn't map cleanly to U.S. corporate structures.

In this case maybe the loans should not convert to grants, should not be forgivable. Let the Catholics repay the loans with interest.

Those assets are, in large part, the church buildings themselves. They are not liquid assets. Indeed, they are even more illiquid than most other real estate, because the market for church buildings, all of which are constructed to meet the needs and functions of a particular faith, is quite limited.

A lot of people are under the mistaken impression that the Catholic Church has vast piles of money sitting around in a Scrooge McDuck-style money bin. Whereas if you look at the balance sheets of your average Catholic parish or diocese, you'll see that their budgets are relatively modest, they sometimes operate in the red, and to the extent that they have liquid assets, they're generally set aside to fulfill pension obligations.

Even at the Vatican level, the annual operating budget is roughly equivalent to a mid-sized U.S. city, and expenses tend to be fairly close to income. The art in its museums is often mistakenly viewed as if it could be sold off like gold or diamonds, but the Vatican actually acts more as a conservator than an owner of the pieces. It does not consider itself at liberty to sell the art, because it was entrusted to the Vatican's care under the expectation that it would be perpetually maintained. In that sense, the art truly is priceless; it can't be sold.