Bill Maher: The Business of the Catholic Church

The Huffington Post

The total payouts for abuse cases in dioceses all over America is now over $2 billion, and I imagine much of it came from people who went to Church and bought the invisible product by dropping their hard earned money into the basket (Full disclosure: when I was a child, that was my favorite part of the mass, and my father often let me put a quarter in). I wonder what those people think when they see that their money got spent on buying the privilege of touching and fucking kids. I was reading a week or so ago about Aga Khan, a very rich man who leads some tiny sect of Islam, and it's a good one to lead, since lots of the followers just send the dude money for being him.

It's the Ultimate Hustle.

Hustle, indeed. It's official - the Catholic church is the most successful organized crime syndicate in history. That's not a commentary on the religion of Catholicism, but of the corrupt men running the business that masquerades as a religion. Personally, I think it has become abundantly clear that there is no way to enforce restrictions on religions injecting themselves into politics and commerce, nor to ensure they cooperate with the law, so let's do away with those tax exemptions, shall we?