Follow the money

Get Religion mentions a WV bishop who gifted a lot of money to other bishops, mainly asking about the dogmatic and religious points of view in the story (i.e. another liberal bishop fighting believing Catholic people and priests who are old fashioned)

They correctly point out that a lot of money is just given out to the poor who come to the door so doesn't get in the books, but they don't dig into the real question: Was he gifting the money to other bishops to help their personal charities, or did he do it to get them to look the other way?

Note to non Yanks: West Virginia, best known for it's coal mines, is one of the poorest areas of the USA. 

Reminds me of Altoona, where the bishop diverted lots of money around from a charitable organization, according to The Wanderer (a "far right" Catholic paper),who published a series on him in 1996...I am trying to find the original link, but the bishop's accountability page notes:

In the course of the series of articles, allegations were made that Bishop Adamec had purchased his bishopric, with a multi-million dollar donation to the building of the U.S. bishops’ new headquarters in Washington, D.C. near the campus of the Catholic University of America. Allegedly, Adamec obtained the funds through the Slovak Federation. The allegations published by The Wanderer received no official response, but at that year’s meeting of the conference of bishops, the bishops spent most of their executive session discussing punitive actions against The Wanderer for publishing the expose on Adamec.

and then there was the money links with Cardinal McCarrick. Not my area of expertise, but that modern Jeremiah, Ann Barnhart, who if you look past her vulgarity, usually hits the nail of the head, points a few fingers at them:

Crazy Ann says follow the money to find out why ex Cardinal McCarrick got away with a lot.
What is the link between American "papal foundation" funding a "dermatology hospital", a child trafficker, a dead whistleblowing hooker, and the Pope?

Here in the Philippines, the church is in high gear against Duterte's drug war (i.e. the hit squads. )

Leading the charge is Cardinal Tagle of Manila, who is running for Pope. He goes all over the world giving speeches, including speeches on the abuse crisis where he sheds tears about the problem, but doesn't name names of course. 

Duterte, however, is not so sanguine: he routinely curses out the bishops, which make the SJW hyperventilate and the ordinary folks cheer.

Duterte was molested as a boy, so he holds a grudge. But maybe he also knows that some of the bishops etc. are as corrupt as the politicians.

The anti Duterte webzine Rappler had an editorial awhile back discussing both sides of the feud,. He notes the church is good at helping the victims of the drug war, but unless they clear up their own corruption, they will begin to lose public trust.

it's not just abuse (hey, this is the Philippines where a lot of folks are descended from the Spanish priests' girlfriends, and most businessmen have "second wives"). 

The problem is that the old fashioned ways of donating money and giving it out to the poor is open to corruption. The modern world requires proper paperwork or accounting of where it comes from or where it is going.

here's an example:

From the Rappler, from 2012: Bishop accused of diverting millions.

the layfolk complained and the article says that the issue was sent to the Vatican to investigate.

and the bishop said he'd resign if the Vatican decided he did something wrong.

But last time I looked, the Bishop is still there.

this 2014 article in the Rappler examines the finances of the Manila diocese and the church in general.

The article points out that the bishop resist inspection because a lot of money is just given out without doing the paper work, so you don't know if it goes to the poor or is diverted. As I noted above, this opens you to accusations of fraud where nothing wrong was done.

but as Rappler points out: having financial experts do the paperwork to track the money might not help: a lot of the money is being stolen by experts supposed to be doing the paperwork

 The Church financial adviser said there had been incidents where Church funds were abused and misused by the very financial experts they trusted. The victims are not only the dioceses, but even some religious congregations. “There were cases where millions of funds disappeared after these were entrusted to these so-called experts.”

Heh. sounds about right.

How bad is it?

It's so bad even the Pope is worried. (2015 article).

He said he was approached by two government officials who had a compelling offer.

“‘You have so much need here with so many poor,’” the pope recalled them saying. He said they offered him the equivalent of US$400,000. “I listened because when the offer is so big, the offer challenges even a saint. But they went on: ‘To do this, we make the deposit and then you give us half for ourselves.’”

The offer shocked the future pope. “In that moment I thought about what I would do: either I insult them and give them a kick where the sun doesn’t shine, or I play the fool,” he said. “I played the fool.”

Pope Francis said he politely declined the offer, suggesting the government officials donate the money — with a receipt. “We must ask for forgiveness for these Catholics, those Christians who cause a scandal because of their corruption,” he said.

yes, but did you bother to report their names to the government or to any of our hard working reporters here?  

and THAT, my friends, is why corruption thrives. No one wants to point fingers at friends or relatives, because family, or in this case, the institutional church, is more important than rule of law.

nor is the corruption limited to Catholics, or limited to churches:

Inquirer article on the "diversion" of money supposed to go to the survivors of Typhoon Yolanda.

Sigh.

Yes, I am a Catholic.

A lot of naive preachers forget that Judas was involved in skimming the till, kickbacks and taking bribes to spy on Jesus, so none of this is new.
And the secular organizations have the same problem.
Separating the wheat from the weeds is a big problem, because if you overdo it, you pull up the wheat, so until it is terrible, Jesus advised to let it be and let God sort it out at the end of times.
On the other hand, he advised millstones for child abusers and the lowest place in hell for crooked religious leaders, and was probably crucified for his actions against the merchants in the temple who overcharged and probably gave kickbacks to the priest to be allowed a monopoly on the sales...So it balances out.