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The Fairfax media (The Age) published a big story on the Australian Church’s wealth, highlighting the property assets.
Fair’s fair. Just as the Church is being held to account for its behaviour, Fairfax media also needs to be held to account for the standard of their reporting.
So in this light, should we be surprised that the biggest church in Australia, with more people at church each week than attend professional sport, that has churches in every suburb, has property with a notional property value?
Properties are valued for purposes of insurance.
The fact that, for example,
- St Patrick’s cathedral is valued at $44,630,000
- Caritas Christi, which provides palliative care, is valued at $15,000,000, and
- St Paul’s school for the blind is valued at $14,000,000,
are all somewhat meaningless in terms of wealth as they are valued as going concerns not just as land and buildings.
An asset’s valuation does not represent a cash equivalent.
Or should we be surprised that Australia’s largest non-government provider of education, health care, aged care and social welfare has hospitals, schools, aged care homes etc that are worth millions?
These assets are not assets for assets sake, they are not assets used to make a profit for their owners.
Rather, these assets used for works integral to education, healthcare and welfare in Australia.
These institutions operate as not-for-profits and so the question needs to be put who will benefit if they were to be crippled by a withdrawal of tax exemptions available to charities.
Apart from the human cost, and the sectarian overtones to this debate, the online haters would be the first to scream if their tax bills skyrocketed!
Are we also surprised that possibly the largest non-government employer in Australia has superannuation funds, and development agencies etc, when some 220,000 Australians are employed by some 3,000 Church agencies.
Reading the Fairfax article, it seems the Church is to be condemned for being financially responsible by investing well for superannuation and maintaining and establishing new works.
Yes, the so called, Church’s finances are complicated, but not because of any conspiracy; what the six-month investigative article misses is the Catholic Church is on one entity.
With forty-odd dioceses in Australia and over one hundred religious orders and congregations like the Jesuits, not to mention entities like the Australian Catholic University, the financial and legal independence of these bodies is real.
Their separation is not a legal fiction as may be implied by the Fairfax article.
The Jesuits, for example own schools like Xavier College, and have residences and offices etc. Even though they are physically located in a diocese, these assets are independent of those owned by an individual diocese.
In this context, the reference to the Catholic Church as an entity is complex and not helpful.
The Age article also fails to recognise that in areas such as education Government regulation of government grants is clear and real.
The Fairfax story is juxtaposed against the issue of Church payments to the victims of sexual abuse.
The Church has committed fully to participating in a national redress scheme.
And while The Age cites various figures on a national scale to highlight wealth, curiously it avoids an overall compensation figure for the Church.
The evidence given to the Royal Commission is so far the various Australian Church bodies have paid $276,000,000 compensation to victims.
The Church can hardly complain about fairness in coverage about sexual abuse, but the Fairfax story has too much the feel of tabloid sensationalism that contains more than a touch of dog-whistling around anti-Catholicism, an ugly streak that has a long history in parts of Australian society – just read through the online comments on the digital stories which would never be put in print.
Fr Chris Middleton SJ is Rector of Xavier College, Melbourne. Prior to this appointment, Fr Middleton taught at St Aloysius College in Sydney, and later served as Chaplain at Newman College, the Jesuit residential college within the University of Melbourne, and then Vice-Rector at St Leo’s College, within the University of Queensland.
In 1998 Fr Middleton was appointed Rector and Deputy Headmaster at Saint Ignatius’ College in South Australia. In 2003 Fr Middleton was appointed Principal of St Aloysius’ College. He taught History in Years 10-12 during his eleven years as Principal.
As well as various other education appointments, Fr Middleton founded the Benenson Society, a human rights advocacy group.
He was appointed a Province Consultor in 2011. In 2012 he was appointed Province Procurator.
Sources
- Supplied
- Image: Xavier College
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