[mistrial9]

anti-Church pitchforks come out pretty fast here? it shows that some people simply want to eliminate Church itself, and use bad news to propel that point of view.

why not address the actions themselves, specifically; plenty of crooks in the investment game, some of them use Church money it seems.

[shadowgovt]

That's not what the SEC alleged.

The SEC alleged that with the direction of the LDS leadership (i.e. "with the Church’s knowledge and approval"), Ensign Peak shell-companied the Church's funds.

Best-case scenario is that this was an attempt to hide information for the simple sake of hiding information (as nonprofits, churches are pretty heavily scrutinized relative to other institutions). Worse case, it was an attempt to hide the use of the money for political ends, which is a violation of the tax-exempt agreement of the church. And it's not a small amount of money.

This behavior is every bit as sus as any major non-profit with tens of billions of dollars under its control trying to intentionally dodge public scrutiny.

[OrvalWintermute]

While I support religious faiths in general, religious leaders shouldn't be in the game of hiding financial data from the civil authorities.

[aliasxneo]

Yeah, a lot of it seems to e a bit of an overreaction. Not sure if the sentiment is HN specific or not, but after reading the article that was on the front page yesterday about ancient people being "stupid with their religious superstitions" I'm not really surprised to see it here.

[ok_dad]

I personally wouldn't mind eliminating every religious organization, since religion is not any specific organization, but rather a personal belief system and a way to live your own life. Large groups of people (the execs that run the orgs) deriving income and wealth from that personal experience is demented. Christians and others shouldn't be afraid of their religion being destroyed, just the corrupt organizations that prey on their personal beliefs in order to further their own agendas.

[aliasxneo]

I agree, but I also think Christians have precedence to be afraid of government persecution. So, it's a fine line that our forefathers tried to draw.

[ok_dad]

Christian and many other individuals have been persecuted in the past, but it isn't persecuting an organization by punishing them for breaking the law or acting in contravention to it unless that law is specifically targeted towards them. In this case, it seems there was a "slap on the wrist" punishment, but no true accountability for their actions.

It is pointless to even argue for the straw-man that "Christians in America need to fear persecution" since that is not the case, even the tiniest bit, in today's America.

[aliasxneo]

It's the same principle applied to any entity fighting for freedom. I never posited that Christians in America are under imminent threat of being persecuted by the government. I'm just reinforcing that Christians should scrutinize Church/state interactions and be leery of overreach (on either side for that matter). I should clarify that when I say 'government' I mean all forms of it, just not in America.

In this case, I would agree the punishment wasn't severe enough.

[dbrueck]

I'm not the OP, but the slap on the wrist punishment seems appropriate for the violation. See VLM's comment about the form in question, for example, but the summary of events is basically:

SEC: Hey, the way you're filing those forms looks sneaky, don't do that.

church: k