In Scientology: Is there a spiritual component to giving the church your money?
Is there a reason for giving money to the church, like separation from goods and wealth or willingness to support works?
Why can't the Church give free exorcisms or corrections or... whatever to poor people? Why not have Misters Cruise, Travolta and Smith pay to help others reach nirvana? That is the way that other religions work: each person gives what they can so that the Church can help those who need it, regardless of income.
Can people choose to give their money to other charities that are less well funded?
Are people really employed by the Church and given commission for selling these services?
In short: Why does the Church of Scientology need all that money?
There is a spiritual reason..This site reveals L. Ron Hubbards connections to Satanism and his connection to his mentor, Allister Crowley
http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/NewAge/Hubbard_Occult.htm
Scientologists are not interested in helping anyone, they are only interested in money. The only "charities" they are involved in, are not charities at all, since people have to pay to receive their "charitable" services (such as Narconon). Scientologists do like bragging about their "good works" though.
As an example, when one of their members (at that time) asked what are they doing about the homeless, they said: "Scientology makes the able more able. We'll have to get them next life time". http://ocmb.xenu.net/ocmb/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=33383&p=386022
Scientology recruiters do receive a percentage of some of the "donations". Actor Jason Beghe mentions how his recruiter received several thousands of dollars for signing him up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNUjMz9-W2I
The "church" of Scientology needs all that money to invest in real estate. You can always see them bragging about all the new buildings they have bought. They also need a lot for paying legal bills and Private investigator fees, since they are often filing lawsuits and digging dirt on anyone that dares to criticize them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology_controversies
I buy Scientology services because i want them. No one has to buy anything in Scientology. I choose to because I personally have seen it work and want it for myself. If you don't see what Scientology is and why someone would pay for it then that's your scene. I can't believe the big brouhaha that people make over the cost of something they're never going to buy anyway or believe will help anyone. it is really not logical that this would even come up, unless someone DOES see the service as something valuable that he or she wants, and just wants it given to them without exchange for those who have to keep the Church there to deliver the services that people are asking for.
I exchange for what I receive, which has been tremendous and priceless. You appear to advocate a welfare system not unlike Marxism or Communistic views - make those who are making it go right to earn a living support those who are unwilling to. Criminals think that way with an attitude of entitlement without doing anything to earn it. To give these services away would be further enabling the criminal mentality. Even so, there are many free services in the Church including opportunities to receive counseling from counselors-in-training. Even the basis texts are free to read in the public libraries and the Church libraries. You could learn the full research track and basic technology of Scientology for free. The courses and counseling are for when you wish to receive counseling from professionally trained counselors (auditors).
What is missing in every complaint about money is that service is given for it. If you have no concept of the benefits of those services, it would be more fair to find out what we get for our donations, rather than expect a Church to give services at the expense of someone else. That's criminal and a socialist point of view.
Members enjoy sharing what we have with others and wanting others to have the gains we now have, to share in our success. To get a small return on that that can go for more services to help us get even better is an awesome system. Everyone wins. I realize that this may be a hard concept to work with if you've been raised in an environment that despises betterment activities where all involved can prosper and flourish as a result of having applied the principles to our lives.
Here are the programs we support with our donations:
It is true that Scientology has various fixed donations for it's services. The amount depends only on the cost to deliver them and support the specific Church or Mission that is doing so.
The reason for this unusual financial set up for a Church is that Scientology is a new religion, less than 60 years old. It does not have hundreds of years of accumulated wealth and property like other religions. It must operate and establish itself in the world according to the economics of today's society.
It selected the donation system it has as it's primary method of funding itself because it is the most equitable (fair) method.
Those who want the training and individual spiritual counseling should be the ones who contribute most to maintain the facilities and staff that provide it.
The Church of Scientology has to pay it's bills like every one else and remunerate it's dedicated staff members. (who are basically volunteers who are not paid a fixed salary.)
The Church also provides free on line courses, a free counseling clinics and services and very inexpensive Life Improvement Courses.
Scientologists also donated money to provide the Self Help Sections of libraries (globally) with all the basic Scientology books and DVD's.
Scientology members in addition donate to a specific charity, The International Association of Scientologists ( IAS). This Charity creates conducts and funds global and local campaigns called Planetary Salvage campaigns. Some of these include, Youth For Human Rights, Say No To Drugs,
Volunteer Ministers Disaster Relief, The Way To Happiness, and others. You can check these out on the Internet. These donations are purely philanthropic and used to help various societal problems
and individuals in need.
Tom Cruise and John Travolta have personally contributed a lot of their time and money to these campaigns and other philanthropic activities.
Why do we need all that money? Planetary Salvage is a big job and you cannot get anything effective done in today's society and help those in need without money. The more we have the more we can get done. Most Scientologists donate their time and expertise as well as money to help others. We are a very busy and effective group.
Go to WNW.scientology.com for more specifics about what we do to help humanity.
Because it is a scam to fleece people of cash and provide a life of luxury for the man at the top. They own ALOT of property as well as cash.
There is no spiritual element to the money that goes in at all, whatsoever. It is payment for services as simple as that la belled as "donations" to make it seem more respectable. It is not really a donation of course. A donation is by definition given freely and $Scientology does not give stuff away for free.(EDIT): I like the way one bleated that doing so would be "criminal" this is laughable, as that particular person also likes to class $Scientology as a "betterment" activity. If that really was true, people would be helped freely, other "religions" do so. The cult of $Scientology has plenty of money to help people with, the real truth is that it is a for profit company that is more interested in investing in property than actually helping the people it claims to help.
In answer to your last question, the serious answer is property purchase. And David Miscabbage the current leader likes expensive motorbikes.
EDIT: theta always mentioned some "charities" that were donated to by $Scientology. I actually found this question useful as I was wondering about it last week. However, upon further investigation some (and probably all) appear to be a $cytologist run front groups. Here is the information I found on one of them...
In Scientology: Is there a spiritual component to giving the church your money?
