Will the Pope Declare Google Evil? 622
theodp writes "In the next few days, Pope Benedict XVI plans to issue his second encyclical, in which he is expected to denounce the use of tax havens as socially unjust and immoral in that they cheat the greater well-being of society. He is also expected to argue that the globalized economic world needs to be regulated. Prime technology companies playing the offshore 'profit laundering' game include Dell, Google, Microsoft, and Sun, who set up subsidiaries in Ireland, where the corporate tax rate is a low 12.5% and no taxes are charged on royalties (e.g. from patents)."
Says the man... (Score:2, Insightful)
Double Dutch Irony (Score:5, Insightful)
Just one more hypocrisy from the church, I am wagering.
This not a matter of the church (Score:4, Insightful)
All Global Corporations, I should say. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And Why Is He Such An Expert? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see anything "evil" about it (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Politics (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's a hint: 'separation of church and state' is only to specify that the state cannot endorse a religion or foist one on its citizens. It also, of course, doesn't apply to the Vatican, which knows no such separation. It has also never meant that the church stays out of politics, or that politics stay out of churches. The church can't be granted government power, and the government can't grant the church power. That's it, and it only applies in your own borders.
The Vatican isn't making a law. It's lobbying. That's what the Pope does every time he opens his mouth. Outside of the Catholic Church and the Vatican, he has no authority.
MSM and Religion (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Double Dutch Irony (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The pope sucks. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Can I declare the Pope Evil? (Score:2, Insightful)
Then you can ask him why he thinks that paying taxes is actually contributing to the good of the common man? Hasn't every war in history been started by either those-collecting-taxes or those-who-want-to-collect-taxes ? The Papacy is the epitome of taking power and money from the poor masses and giving it to the elite few.
Re:And Why Is He Such An Expert? (Score:3, Insightful)
The Papal authority has (debated) Biblical backing, in the little part where Jesus says something to the effect of "Behold, I give you the keys to the Kingdom of God... whatever you bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven" and such. The regular Protestant approach to that is that the passage applies only to Peter specifically, but the Roman Catholic church considers the Pope as the successor to Peter.
Re:Says the man... (Score:2, Insightful)
People don't "set up and operate" their businesses in tax havens. They operate the businesses in other places, which are usually much better markets than small, isolated tax havens, but then evade (usually democratically imposed) taxes by hiding the profits from those businesses in tax havens.
The summary (and maybe the encyclical; I'm not willing to read a piece of nutball religious propaganda to find out) obscures the issue by citing a couple examples of companies that actually operate their businesses in a tax haven. This is the exception, not the rule.
Re:Taxing ? What is 'divine' about taxing ? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Scientologists will be screwed especially hard over that one. Couldn't happen to a more deserving lot, honestly.
=Smidge=
Typical (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Says the man... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well I'll run over and tell the pope that he needs to edict all of the church's remaining savings to some non-profit (maybe a religious organization of some sort...) before he can issue any more moral edicts to his followers.
brb.
Re:The pope sucks. (Score:4, Insightful)
Frankly, I've never seen any passage in the Bible describing the position or, or need for a pope.
Local Sevices and Laws not paid by Foreign Taxes (Score:5, Insightful)
The point being made is that rich individuals and corporations are setting up a minimal presence in a foreign tax country (tax haven) in order to avoid paying taxes in the countries where they actually live or work. This is "bad" because by not paying local taxes, they're not supporting their local government and social programs. If you live in the [insert your country here] and use the Netherlands as a tax haven, then you're not paying your fair share for your country's universal health care, or 911 services, or military that keeps your democracy free, or whatever.
If you're going to benefit from your local country's laws and services, is it really too much to ask that you pay your fair share? If local taxes are too burdensome or wasteful, then work to improve them instead of hiding from the problem(s). We all complain that money influences politics. If people are allowed to hide money overseas, then they have no motivation to reform existing local laws. If they were forced to resolve the issues locally, they would be subject to local laws and publicity, thus making it difficult to corrupt the reformed laws. By hiding money overseas, there is little legal or public oversight to prevent abuse (such as laundering drug money.)
Thus tax havens create at least two problems: local services, laws, and legal protections are not being paid for, and local laws, morals, mores, and publicity are being evaded. The latter is probably the greater of the two sins.
A third problem that the Pope appears to be concerned about is that local taxes pay for social programs. You know, homeless shelters, health care for the poor, etc.. By turning to a tax haven, you are implicitly turning your back on your fellow man. Do you really think that anyone using a foreign tax shelter is actually using the money they saved back to build up their local community? Granted, the Catholic Church shouldn't be throwing stones, but a Christian who hides tax money isn't much of a Christian. Belittle the Pope all you want, but he is probably the only individual who has the ability to bring worldwide attention to global morality. You don't have to like the guy shining the light on the cockroaches, but do be glad that someone is doing it. (But we do keep a mirror handy to throw some of that light back.)
John 8:7 (Score:3, Insightful)
Humm, come to think of this, I think the Pope's own book has some advice for situations like this. I think it goes something like "He that is without sin...first cast a stone".
Re:The pope sucks. (Score:5, Insightful)
Says the man... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Double Dutch Irony (Score:3, Insightful)
The day the Catholic Church starts paying taxes is the first day anyone should listen to them on tax questions.
Re:Double Dutch Irony (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:This not a matter of the church (Score:3, Insightful)
The US government? No. Our state government? Possibly. At the very least, it would reduce Maryland's budget shortfall by a third.
Re:Taxing ? What is 'divine' about taxing ? (Score:2, Insightful)
If you let government tax religion, then you run the risk of taxes being used to suppress religion, or to favor one religion over another.
Not worth the risk, IMO.
Re:The pope sucks. (Score:2, Insightful)
Moreover, it's basically the biggest fallacy ever that maintaining the celibacy of the priesthood perpetuates child sexual abuse. The decisions that those priests make are THEIRS, and theirs alone... not the Vatican's. Hell, I guess since I'm not getting laid, I should be going and molesting little boys, by your logic. Well, except for the fact that no one's forcing it on me, I guess, so I have no one to blame the molestation on.
Re:The pope sucks. (Score:2, Insightful)
Such an uneducated and unintelligent rant as this is a waste of bandwidth, as is any attempt to make sense of and reply to it. However, I have some free time I'm willing to waste on this. A brief investigation will show that each and every attempt at fact in this drivel is not so and the opinions expressed (so elegantly) are of no value whatsoever.
About a billion Roman Catholics care (to one extent or another) what the Pope says.
The assertion that the Pope is merely a "figure head" who nevertheless has undeserved power is, of course, self-contradictory.
As pointed by another poster, the Bible isn't the primary source of the Pope's authority; tradition (supported by scripture and other early Christian writings) is what really gives an apostolic church it's authority.
I find it amusing that you think that "with science, people don't have to believe anything." A lot of philosophical schools would debate that. At minimum, you need to believe that your reality is "real", something not all would immediately affirm.
I too find "religion in deities" to be ridiculous, almost as much as I would actual belief in multiple deities, but I believe in only One. So, too, does the pope, I hear.
Do you have any idea what the Pope is actually paid and actually owns? He doesn't actually have a "salary" as such and personally owns very little. He just lives in a palace, which he doesn't really own. I believe they they had his old car on eBay a while ago - a rather modest VW Golf. He does have access to the "Peter's Pence" collection from around the world, which may be several (maybe hundreds of) millions, but is mostly used for his charitable purposes and just to pay the bills at the Vatican.
Oh, and evil is usually defined in Christian theology as the "absence of good", somewhat like the absence of any sense in your screed.
More to the point, since the Encyclical isn't even released yet, no one knows really what it is actually going to say, so all this is speculation of the most uninformed and useless kind. The old Roman saying is "Those who talk don't know and those who know don't talk." I believe the Holy Father may actually deal with this, as with all ethical issues, in terms of the liceity of both means and ends. It is entirely possible that there are good ends which may be pursued by valid means which result in less taxes being paid. Simple greed isn't one of the approved motives, however, anymore than law-breaking is an approved method.
Frankly, I think the AC poster is either under 15 or has some serious problems that I really hope he gets straightened out.
God bless
Re:The pope sucks. (Score:1, Insightful)
And so is the Bible.
I am aware of the Christian/Catholic doctrine that the Bible is "divinely inspired," which is commonly taken to mean "written by God" or at least "sufficiently influenced by God so as to be lacking in errors."
I submit that this popular doctrine is itself an artifact of mankind.
These facts are not in dispute:
1) each word in the bible was put to paper by a human hand.
2) each statement about the truth-status of Biblical content is spoken by human lips.
Once God appears before me and says, "The Bible is free of error," I will believe it...however so long as it is only humans saying it I will treat it with the same level of skepticism that I treat any other human statement.
In any event, back on topic, big businesses have demonstrated that they are not concerned with doing what is right, but rather, with doing what they think they can get away with. I don't believe that any statements from an old anachronism like the Pope will change that.
Re:This not a matter of the church (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I don't see anything "evil" about it (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Can I declare the Pope Evil? (Score:3, Insightful)
who skipped out on their rallies and only joined because everyone was basically forced to
is evil because he still prohibits birth control. Ever poor family of 12 that loses kids to starvation or the side effects of malnutrition can look to the Pope for why they couldn't just have two kids that they were able to take care of.
No, they can look to their own genitals for that reason. I know plenty of families that don't use birth control and have a reasonable number of kids.
Then you can ask him why he thinks that paying taxes is actually contributing to the good of the common man?
Because the more that the rich ged rid of tax havens, the more money goes into governmental redistribution programs for the poor. Do you seriously think he's asking the poor to pay up their taxes?
Hasn't every war in history been started by either those-collecting-taxes or those-who-want-to-collect-taxes ?
Yeah, this sentence means nothing. The only forces capable of starting actual wars (not rebellions) are governments or proto-government-oids, which need taxes to survive. And to, uh, finance their war.
Re:The pope sucks. (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess this makes sense if you presuppose a great deal of freewill, but not even the Church does that (if people had all the freewill they could, it would be possible to never fall into sin). By the Church and by reality, people are flawed and vulnerable to temptation. Not having sex is hard--that's why marriage is sanctioned in the first place, as an acceptable outlet for those urges. (1 Corinthians 7: 1 Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. 2 Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.)
Re:Taxing ? What is 'divine' about taxing ? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Taxing ? What is 'divine' about taxing ? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you call what the early Christians had "socialism," then you must also think open source software is socialism*.
Repeat after me: "Socialism isn't voluntary. If it's voluntary, it's not socialism."
* (Which, by the way, instantly makes you unpopular around here, which I'm sure is the opposite of what you intended when you publically misinterpreted the Bible here.)
Re:Precious Irony (Score:5, Insightful)
The question is not taxes or no taxes. The question is how much taxation and how exactly are those taxes to be put to use.
Re:The pope sucks. (Score:3, Insightful)
"Moreover, it's basically the biggest fallacy ever that maintaining the celibacy of the priesthood perpetuates child sexual abuse. The decisions that those priests make are THEIRS, and theirs alone... not the Vatican's. Hell, I guess since I'm not getting laid, I should be going and molesting little boys, by your logic. Well, except for the fact that no one's forcing it on me, I guess, so I have no one to blame the molestation on. "
The catholic church's own internal studies show that a celibate priesthood attracts the wrong kind of person. 20% struggle with desires to have sex with children, and half with desires to have same-sex partners; these numbers are WAY over the average for the ppulation at large.
The same-sex bit isn't a problem for most people, except that in this case, again, its the whole "sex outside of marriage is wrong" crap.
" > > Hey, how about that "no birth control" policy? Nice way to doom another generation to overpopulation and starvation. And the "no condoms" bit. The Pope is promoting AIDS, herpes, clamydia, etc.
> As someone else so succinctly points out in a thread further down the page, that isn't true at all. If you can't use birth control for religious reasons, don't have sex. It's not hard.
" > > How about the whole "virgins are better, they're pure" so its not so bad to rape a woman who's had sex, because she's a slut anyway, since she's not a virgin.
> ...wow. Please, find me actual proof that this is the position of the church. That's not in the Bible, nor is it the church's position in the least, as far as I'm aware. Until you present some evidence or proof, this is an absolutely ludicrous assertion.
"
While we're at it, where in the bible does it say that priests must be celibate? Oh, it doesn't - it says priests must be MARRIED! Fucktard pope in the middle ages got his underwear in a twist because a priest and a bishop were having a "good time enjoying each other's company", and while the bishop was keeping it all quiet, his lover went on and on to anyone who would listen about how great it was. So the pope declared that, from that point on, priests be celibate.
Your papal "bull" is exactly that - bull. Its contrary to the bible, but that's not a surprise. There's not a single religion that adheres 100% to their own teachings.
" > >> Or the "divorce is wrong" so stay with hubby as he beats the shit out of you and the kids.
> My understanding of the position on divorce (which may well vary by denomination, too) isn't that you can't divorce, it's that you shouldn't remarry if you get a divorce, unless it's to your original spouse, who you've somehow magically worked things out with. "
People get the governments they deserve, because they allow and enable those governments. Explains both Bush and the Nazi Pope. Forgive his past? No - he's still a fascist bastard using the same tactics to regiment people's lives that any other cult uses.
What is it with religion and sex anyway?
Re:The pope sucks. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Double Dutch Irony (Score:2, Insightful)
2) Commercial real estate owned by churches that is not used for church purposes is taxed on the local level. In New York City, the catholic church is the largest landowner after the city itself. They do pay property taxes on quite a few parcels, many of which are subject to long term ground leases.
Re:John 8:7 (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The pope sucks. (Score:1, Insightful)
If you want to test your court, take 4 witnesses that state that "God shot him" and see how far you get.
Greenleaf sounds like a buffoon. All his "evidence" is hearsay [and in a language he probably can't even read] unless MML and J turn up to be questioned they haven't given evidence. Cross-examination is the key. How does he determine the sanity of someone who he can't even be sure existed [except from hearsay], let alone examined?
That said, what you've called "written evidence" [ha ha ha] is trivially shown to be inconsistent and untrue.