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Can a Tax-Deductible Church Take Sides?

AUGUST 11, 1988

 

There are three reasonable approaches to the whole idea of tax exemption for religious institutions. The first is: There shouldn’t be any tax exemptions for anybody or anything. Not for the little church around the corner, not for Harvard University, not for the Olympic Laser Sailboat Committee. That position is so defensible that it happens to be my own: The government should stop using tax policy to encourage or discourage particular activities.

The second way is to say: OK, here is your tax exemption, and here is a list of things you can’t do. In days gone by, they used to call these “prohibited transactions.” But they were full of holes. Tax-exempt publications could not spend “substantial” time urging legislation, and on no account could come flat-out in favor of a political candidate.

But the business of denial or non-denial of tax exemption can become an instrument of harassment, and that is happening right now to the Catholic Church. One doubts it will ever come to a question of actually withdrawing tax exemption from the church. I have no doubt that if that day approached, the church would contrive to meet that challenge by having a great hand reach down from the skies, pick up the U.S. Capitol, and drop it into the Potomac.

But the attempt is worth considering. It is backed, of course, by the American Civil Liberties Union, something called the National Association of Laity and a couple of dozen other pro-abortion organizations and, yes, the alleged infraction of the church is its stand on abortion—specifically, Cardinal Humberto Medeiros of Boston, who attacked two pro-choice congressional candidates; a 1984 statement by then-Archbishop Bernard Law and seventeen other bishops defining abortion as the critical issue of that year’s presidential campaign; and a television appearance, also in 1984, by Archbishop John O’Connor of New York urging voters not to support candidates who take a pro-choice stance.

As it happens, the courts are winding their arguments around a technicality, namely, whether the plaintiffs have “standing”—i.e., have they suffered or will they suffer as the result of the court’s verdict, and do they therefore have the right to bring a grievance before the courts? The defense claims that any future ruling by the courts cannot do or undo anything done in 1984. The plaintiffs argue that the removal of tax exemption is the only way to guard against future infractions.

But the interesting question is extrabureaucratic. It is: Should a church have the right, while enjoying conventional tax protections, to urge the incorporation into law of a deeply held moral belief? We don’t believe in polygamy; should a church be penalized for advocating anti-polygamy laws?

During the nineteenth century, the case against slavery crystallized above all in the churches, even as it had done in Great Britain. Was it incorrect for churches to press the case for emancipation among their parishioners? “Incorrect” in the sense that to do so would be to violate the (then nonexistent) tax code?

Insight into the question comes by asking oneself: Doesn’t the constitutional prohibition against denying the freedom of religion subdue the case against the IRS code? Christian Century magazine lost its tax exemption in 1964 for a few years because it came out for Lyndon Johnson for president. One could understand if it had lost its soul for making that argument, but the secular punishment, in order to be plausible, should have been based on the extramoral character of the partisan position. If a Catholic bishop were to say, “Vote for any Republican,” one might properly raise the objection. But in saying, “Vote for any candidate, irrespective of whether he is Republican or Democrat, who believes in protecting the life of the unborn,” surely you are arguing a moral position distinguishable from the kind of partisanship the IRS is seeking to discourage.

The churches were prime movers in the civil rights legislation of the 1960s, and one hears no complaints against Martin Luther King’s sermons.

But of course, it’s as simple as this. You crank up all these eristic arguments against this organization or that one depending on what positions are being taken. I’d like to see action by the anti-Catholic team taken against a church that recommended voting only for candidates who believed in gay rights. But that won’t happen. How come? Easy. Hypocrisy.