The church spends its money on vast "secular" holdings and investments, and makes a ton of money off them.
While demanding that ward members come in and scrub the ward house toilets because they say they can't afford janitors.
Full disclosure would not only give the church's critics ample ammunition to fire at them, it would make the members who've been sacrificing to give 10% and scrub toilets really, really pissed.
Not just scrub toilets, the little minions are giving callings to work at all kind of church factories for free.
Factories that make products sold for profit.
I wish I could convince a workforce to work for me for free, pay me 10 % of their 'other' earnings, have a self-funded world wide sales department and pay no taxes to the federal government. No wonder they drop billions of $ building shopping malls and buying up property.
slcdweller Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I wish I could convince a workforce to work for me > for free, pay me 10 % of their 'other' earnings, > have a self-funded world wide sales department and > pay no taxes to the federal government.
Come up with an outrageous religion. You can't use the gold plates thing, that's already taken :)
I don't think it's the investments that have made money the Church is trying to hide but rather the mis-management of investments, the overhead in paying Church employees including the top leadership and mission presidents, and the true cost of the missionary program. The City Creek Mall along with the housing towers came in significantly over budget and most people are in agreement that the projects will never pay for themselves. Where did the investment money come from? Perhaps from the Perpetual Education Fund? Most endowments make money but if this one is actually losing money because of mismanagement it would be extremely embarassing for the Church. About 15 years ago Beneficial Life had net assets for over $3 billion but just 5 years later the Church had to give it about $500 million to keep it solvent. This is a loss of $3.5 billion in just 5 years, again another huge embarrassment to the Church managers and leaders. I don't have any inside information but I think the Church is embarrassed about how they manage the sacred funds to which they are entrusted.
Historically, it all started during the Henry D. Moyle era back in the early 60s. Moyle, IIRC, was in charge of building chapels. He convinced the other leaders (you know, all those prophets with the Gift of Discernment) to build lots and lots of chapels, all over England as I recall. The church got in way over its head. Before that time the audit results were indeed read over the pulpit, as information that the members deserved to know. Then suddenly it stopped. For some reason they never started it up again. The faithful are simply to trust their leaders to know God's will.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/18/2017 07:42PM by slskipper.
Moyle almost bankrupted the church in his belief that investing in facilities would show faith that God would reward with a huge number of converts. Tanner was brought in to stabilize the finances.
And the cost of building a new chapel was placed squarely on the shoulders of the members. My parents were routinely tapped for the building fund after sweating out their yearly tithing settlement. That's why it's hurtful when the morg rolls out the wrecking ball to level the older, non-cookie cutter buildings. I think the church would have saved a bundle if they would have stuck to renting buildings instead of constructing new ones.
From D. Michael Quinn's "The Mormon Hierarchy: Wealth and Corporate Power," in quoting an email from Alan Blodgett of the Church Financial Department:
"Why then doesn't the Church tell its financial story? I can only guess that Church leaders fear that individual members may not understand the vastness of Church resources and operations, and having this information might negatively influence their faithfulness and support of church leaders. (President Monson, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve, so expressed himself once in a meeting held just prior to President Tbig anner's death, [thus] putting an end to a proposal made [in 1982] to publish financial statements.)..."
Until the LDS church sees a negative financial impact from NOT releasing their financial statements, nothing will change.
And I am continually amazed that Mormons willingly hand over 10+% of their income with zero accountability. They would never do that with any other "charity."
If they knew how rich the church was ($34 billion in tithing in 2014?), they'd think seriously about my revelation that ghawd wants them to deduct $15/hour from tithing owed for every hour of free time they donate to a calling.
Yes, ghawd told me to tell his people this! Go ahead, ask him yourself!
That's why there can't be financial transparency. The leaders that are supposed to be so inspired will be shown to be regular guys going on feelings rather than research. How can you claim to be getting information from God when the information is always wrong?
The real reason is that anyone with a calculator and a rudimentary understanding of accounting would be able to ballpark guesstimate how much money has been embezzled/bribed/pillaged from the LDS church.
It is not about having too much money. It is about having far too little. Possibly with a good chance of being an international money laudering scheme with some very unsavory characters.
There is a reason LDS assets are high profile to the public, such as glamorous real estate. Again, the facade of mormonism is the reality.
My guess is that even the extensive real estate holdings are highly leveraged.
Someday we will see LDS Inc share the fate of Enron and Lehman Brothers.