CHURCH FILE BANKRUPT

The Orange County Register reported that several members of the orchestra hired to perform at the Crystal Cathedral's Easter Sunday services walked out and refused to play after they realized that the church had paid them half of what was promised to them. The Southern California megachurch, pastored by Robert Schuller, filed for bankruptcy protection in October 2010, following the revelation that it owed $7.5 million to unsecured creditors.Cornerstone World Outreach Center, a Sioux City, Iowa, church, has filed for bankruptcy, three years after completing a new $8 million building program. An Ohio contracting company won a lawsuit against the church in an attempt to recover $3.6 million the church had failed to repay after the building was completed.The Orange County Register reported that several members of the orchestra hired to perform at the Crystal Cathedral's Easter Sunday services walked out and refused to play after they realized that the church had paid them half of what was promised to them. The Southern California megachurch, pastored by Robert Schuller, filed for bankruptcy protection in October 2010, following the revelation that it owed $7.5 million to unsecured creditors.

In December 2010, Minneapolis area Mighty Fortress Church filed for bankruptcy with nearly $7 million in liabilities related to its new sanctuary, training center and K-12 Christian school.

But not all financial struggles are related to ambitious building projects. New Christian Life Church, a congregation in Boynton Beach, Fla., is facing foreclosure that the pastor, Richard Butler attributes to church repairs and a shrinking congregation.The churches and similar institutions recognized as statutory corporation have the right to collect taxes. That includes not only the Catholic Church, the Protestants, the Orthodox Church and the Jewish community, Jehova's Witnesses and others commonly considered as religious groups, no, even the non-religious, atheist and agnostic freethinkers ("Bund für Geistesfreiheit") can make use of the states' help to collect taxes  for them. [1] Only the Roman-Catholic and (most) Protestant churches, as well as the Jewish communities really do it. [2]The Rev. Thomas Stitts was known within the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis as a priest who molested boys.

But three civil trials on abuse that were supposed to start a week ago never did. Instead, the archdiocese filed for bankruptcy, becoming the 12th Roman Catholic diocese in the last decade to declare bankruptcy amid a wave of clergy abuse lawsuits.Germany's Roman Catholics are to be denied the right to Holy Communion or religious burial if they stop paying a special church tax.

A German bishops' decree which has just come into force says anyone failing to pay the tax - an extra 8% of their income tax bill - will no longer be considered a Catholic.

The bishops have been alarmed by the number of Catholics leaving the Church.

They say such a step should be seen as a serious act against the community.

All Germans who are officially registered as Catholics, Protestants or Jews pay a religious tax of 8-9% on their annual income tax bill. The levy was introduced in the 19th Century in compensation for the nationalisation of religious property.

"If your tax bill is for 10,000 euros, then 800 euros will go on top of that and your total tax combined will be 10,800 euros," Munich tax accountant Thomas Zitzelsberger told the BBC news website.

Catholics make up around 30% of Germany's population but the number of congregants leaving the church swelled to 181,000 in 2010, with the increase blamed on revelations of sexual abuse by German priests.

Alarmed by their declining congregations, the bishops were also pushed into a