Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Is the DCNY rendering unto Caesar?

Hopefully you recall the gospel story of Jesus instructing Peter to pull a coin out of a fish and pay taxes with it. The DCNY has five buildings that are no longer being used for religious purposes. Four of those buildings have ceased to be churches for over a year. Is the DCNY paying taxes on these buildings? This would be their legal obligation if there has been no religious usage of these buildings. The Church of the Good Shepherd is being marketed as commercial property. Does this mean that the DCNY is rendering unto Caesar for this or any of the other properties they snatched from existing congregations? We know from the past five years that legality is not always uppermost in the DCNY or pecusa, but you'd think that these entities would be concerned with the ramifications of skirting the law. Some of those ramifications are temporal, others eternal. Does the DCNY care?

No comments: