Religious charities have found themselves in both local and national news this fall. That's usually not a particularly comfortable place for them to find themselves because it inevitably means questions are being asked, practices examined and organizational motives challenged and sometimes even individual character issues being raised. Still, while the media glare is often no fun for anyone who has ever been under that spotlight, such scrutiny is the price religious - or indeed any type of charity must be prepared to pay - for the privilege of soliciting our dollars.
A Roman Catholic brouhaha was first up in September when the traditional fall education campaign of the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace was put on hold temporarily when several bishops from the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops objected the planned campaign material was too political. Since the Archdiocese of Keewatin-Le Pas' episcopal seat has been vacant since July 16, when Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation of Archbishop Sylvain Lavoie because of ill health, we weren't directly at the bishops' table for that debate .
The fall campaign was to have taken a hiatus midway through the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace's five-year plan of environmentally-themed education campaigns. Organizers planned a campaign, which included postcards addressed to Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, conceived as a national consultation on the direction of Canada's foreign aid policy. The postcards would have had Harper "launch a national consultation on the future of Canadian development assistance." The postcard would also have urged a "Special Parliamentary Committee to examine the new direction of Canadian assistance."
The Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace is a Canada-wide movement composed of Catholics who aspire to work in solidarity with the poor in Africa, Asia and Latin America to help them improve living and working conditions. It was created in 1967 by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops with the mandate of educating the public to the needs of developing countries and of providing financial support to socio-economic development projects and programs throughout the Third World. This was the first time in the 45-year history of the agency that the bishops intervened to block an education campaign. A modified version, without the postcards for Harper finally launched with the bishops' blessing Oct. 15.
Closer to home, Rev. Leslie-Elizabeth King, who pastors both St. John's United Church and Advent Lutheran Church in Thompson, touched a nerve in her "Spiritual Thoughts" column in the Nickel Belt News Oct. 26 when she mentioned using the Canada Revenue Agency website to look at how the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association of Canada's Calgary-based Samaritan's Purse Canada operates. Operation Christmas Child is especially popular in local Protestant evangelical circles in Thompson, including with the Thompson Pentecostal Assembly and Mennonite Brethren Christian Centre Fellowship, although St. Lawrence Roman Catholic Church also mentioned Operation Christmas Child in its Nov. 11 weekly bulletin for parishioners, noting: "Brochures and shoe boxes may be obtained from the Pentecostal Assembly for those who wish them."
"I looked at Samaritan's Purse," wrote King, "the charity that sponsors Operation Christmas Child (the shoeboxes of stuff for children). Their total budget for 2011 was $53,035,757.00. Salaries are shown in categories that have a very wide range so the information is not very specific. Of their 57 full time employees in Canada, the top 10 annual salaries are anywhere from $160,000 to $199,990. All could be at the lower end of that range. Only six per cent of their budget goes to management and administration and that is reasonable for such a large organization. Ninety per cent of their expenses are for their charitable program. That is also very good.
"It is interesting to compare this multi-national charity to a church in a smaller community. The way CRA categorizes expenses does not recognize that the work of a minister is in effect often charitable work with no budget line attached to it. Counselling, pastoral care, hospital visiting, community activities, and educational leadership, usually are offered with no charge to people and groups that are not part of the church. They can be properly considered charitable programming. Worship and administration are not charitable work. Churches make the assumption that everyone knows the bulk of their work is charitable. This needs to change.
"There are two other differences that we need to keep in mind when comparing these reports. The top of the salary scale for a United Church minister is $41,397 annually, far lower than $160,000. Few congregations are able to pay more. And we get no government funding whereas Samaritan's Purse does receive government funds.
"The work churches do stays in the local community for the most part, though most of the established denominations send money to various mission within Canada or overseas as part of our responsibility to help others, and as emergency response."
Frank King, communications manager for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association of Canada's Samaritan's Purse Canada, responded to King in a letter we published in the Thompson Citizen Nov. 14, making two main points of clarification: "The federal government funding Samaritan's Purse Canada receives does not support salaries of any staff members in Canada. The funding, from the Canadian International Development Agency, is a very small part of our annual budget and goes toward specific projects, such as building hospitals in desperately poor South Sudan; and "our work in developing nations, including distributing Operation Christmas Child shoe box gifts, is always done through local partners. This is a priority for us because we want to build up local churches and we want to rely on local expertise to do (or financially support) the work that best benefits those communities."
