{"id":5366,"date":"2006-10-10T08:57:44","date_gmt":"2006-10-10T08:57:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/part-iii.html"},"modified":"2006-10-10T08:57:44","modified_gmt":"2006-10-10T08:57:44","slug":"part-iii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/part-iii.html","title":{"rendered":"Part III"},"content":{"rendered":"

The NYTimes series on religious insitutions and government regulation continues:<\/a><\/p>\n

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The conflict in South Bend echoes disputes from Alaska to Florida that raise the following issue: As religious organizations of all faiths stretch their concept of mission far beyond traditional worship, should their traditional tax exemptions expand as well? Increasingly, government at all levels is answering yes.<\/p>\n

The property tax exemption is one of the oldest tax breaks granted to religious organizations, but it is not the only one. Lawmakers and judges have also approved what amounts to special tax treatment for religious organizations and some of their employees, including exemptions on personal-income and payroll taxes, and have made it easier for them to get tax-exempt construction loans for purely religious projects.<\/p>\n

Like the exemptions from federal and state regulations that have proliferated for religious groups in recent years, these tax breaks are widely defended both as an acknowledgment of religion\u2019s contributions to society and as a barrier to unjustified government limitations on the liberty that religious organizations enjoy under the First Amendment.<\/p>\n

But in some communities like South Bend, tolerance of religious tax breaks is fraying as local governments struggle to provide basic services with limited resources.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It’s hard not to see the government case here – the central example in the story concerns a retirement village in South Bend, owned by the Holy Cross Brothers, that is indistinguishable from secular operations of the same type, with an average net worth of residents of $1 million. <\/p>\n

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When the Brothers of Holy Cross appealed the county\u2019s ruling to the Indiana Board of Tax Review<\/span><\/a> last year, it lost. \u201cA charitable purpose involves something beyond merely successfully marketing one\u2019s services to seniors,\u201d the review board said. \u201cIt implies some level of sacrifice on the part of the entity providing those services. It is this sacrifice that separates an \u2018obviously charitable act\u2019 from the everyday purposes and activities of man in general.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fight has now moved to the courts, where the project\u2019s management hopes to fare better. \u201cWe thought we were within the orbit of what was considered to merit that exemption,\u201d Mr. Wychocki said. \u201cNow we just stand and shake our heads.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The rest of the examples are what you would expect – Holy Land USA in Orlando and various megachurches with their expanded, diverse services and facilities, as well as a long section, which is mostly above my head on issuance of tax-exempt bonds. <\/p>\n

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\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5366\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}