wait what, church leaders taking money from their church members and not being accountable for the money? Come on it's for god's will, have faith people, don't need to ask dumb question as what is the money going for?, for the poor of course, for a building, for anything, just don't worry were it goes. As for the blessing part ah, the catholic church has that one beat, blessings, what a great way to make money, man I so should have been a preacher, I could have been a millionaire by now. But back to the catholic church, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence is a pretty good description. I remember my grandmother telling me stories of how the church in spain abused this, her mother told her than near then end of the 19th century the priests were going on about the end of the world and armageddon, so some people would commit suicide, however they would leave their fortunes to the church so that they could get out of purgatory. Leaving their families broke, yeah the church is great at this scam.

Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Your brother shouldn't have given $30,000 to con artists in the first place. He was there for seven years, and he couldn't see this coming? 

I hate this crap! There are way too many churches that just use the hard-earned paychecks of their flock to pay for nice houses or fucking golden statues or something. Jesus would love it.

He only gave 20,000 - my kid sister gave the other 10,000.

But younger bro lawyer and his environmental scientist wife also fully tithed a solid joint wage...for 7 years...you'd think she'd know better anyhow. That's got to be tens

of thousand a year.

I tried momentarily to resist this mega I-told-you-so opportunity but failed. Fascinatingly though, he believes it's not the church and not god but the evil of men.

In his mind this event only strengthened his belief humans are born into sin, are inherently nasty and that god is our only hope.

Spelling it out like that I almost think the bastard deserves to lose his money.

Anyway, he and his wife still tithe but they to give recognised charities - doctors without borders being one - and they manage the contributions themselves.

And he now goes to a plain old anglican church where as he explains it: "They worship god, not the pastor..."

I'll update the results of the hearing as it goes along. I can't believe anything sensible will come of this.

And I'm sure he's not the only person who's been fiscally raped by a church.

My friend was keen on getting me to join her church, which was exactly like the one you're describing - loads of money tithed by the congregation on the promise that it was going towards building a big beautiful church on the hill with all the trimmings and a giant baptismal bath and the exact same message from the pastor constantly being reinforced the more you give the more you'll be blessed etc etc, it had been the same for years while they held their weekly get togethers out of a few hired rooms in a defunct council building.

Meanwhile the pastor acquires a lot of expensive land in the snub suburb builds a house with more space than he could ever use and quite a pretty collection of special edition cars start appearing in his driveway. 

I was invited to visit his house once, and what really put me off churches for life (this was some 13 years ago BTW) after having listened to him plead in his sermon for my friend (who had three very young kids and another on the way, poor as a mouse and barely able to afford to keep a roof over her head) to donate hundreds of dollars to his church coffers "for international charities" on top of her already significant tithe, was to go to his house and be guided past three rooms frontmost of his house which were all filled with designer furniture, antiques, fine art and any other gawdy display of money you can think of, wrapped in plastic and never used, straight out to a rear section of the house where there was a full second section of living quarters. This second section was a repeat of the first three rooms, the only exception, he was using this part. 

I couldn't help wondering what he was saving the spare three rooms for, the second coming? 

Anyhow, the sickening self indulgence of this so called 'holy man' in the face of his impoverished church and congregation and the serious lack of open accounting for where the gigantic sums of money he was collecting every Sunday were going, added up in my head to a pretty obvious conclusion. I walked away gagging, but my friend alas, stayed and probably still serves as their lackey today. I mean, I know she's serving her heart out for some mad christian rip-off scheme, just don't know if its the same one.

Yah, this shit goes on everywhere.

We had a case locally where one of our Catholic churches had a priest who was managing the parish cash on his own. He pretty much had to because of what he was doing with it.

It seems that over a period of about ten years, he had embezzled a few million dollars for personal gain. Actual criminal embezzlement. He did not even spend the money on a lavish house nearby but on two condos, one in Key West and the other in the suburbs of Philly. Both were secret love nests for him and his boyfriend (remember this guy is Roman Catholic).

If that is not enough, he was buying expensive jewelry for the boyfriend including a diamond engagement ring worth something like USD $50,000 (this was prior to all the talk of legalizing gay marriage mind you) along with nice cars and other expensive gifts.

He finally got found out because one of his parishioners went to Philly on a business trip and picked up a local magazine to find the area nightlife. As it happened, there was his priest and the boyfriend on the cover, both wearing next to nothing. When the guy returned home, he got a private detective and started an investigation. Four years later, the priest is forcibly retired, in public disgrace and convicted of a bunch of criminal charges.

for sure - it's not often a god-bothering member of an atheist's family takes a church to the Supreme Court - I wish just wish half way through the hearing he'd suddenly

shriek: "Now listen you fucks - prove there's a bloody god, go one, your pea-brained fucksticks - come on - and don't quote bloody eXni!"

Sadly he's just going to drone on about the laws relating to responsible audit and other slow shit that goes through lawyers' heads that would never take root in mine.

Will just go on about the evil of men and freewill and how this proves we all deserve to be incinerated unless we start guzzling the blood of the lamb.

I think I've been on too many theist threads today - I could just fucken scream. How can god people be so insistent there's a god at all? A jesus? How can all this mythical shit have happened that has never, ever happened since

such shit came under scientific scrutiny? Pompous lot of wankers.