and these are the people you want in charge of whether you live or die? They couldn't organize a monkey feces fight at the zoo.

Tax-exemption is a subsidy, lame-brain.
The Catholic Church is one of the wealthiest organisations in the world - including vast amounts they received from the Nazis before, during and after WW2,
taken from Holocaust victims.The Church has plundered the poor and benefitted from slave-labour: - from all those orphans and young, pregnant girls - thousands of them virtually imprisoned for life until very recently.
Tax them til they scream

tax exemption is the natural state of all mankind. That you see it as something the government "gives" to religious people marks you as a simple-minded fascist who believes the government owns all and just lets people keep whatever they want.

P.S. Look at the "governments deriving their just powers from the governed" as to the reason why this country has succeeded. As opposed to all those peasants that are "ruled" elsewhere.

As a Christian, but not a Catholic, I sorta' disagree with the church tax-exemption thing. I think, initially, it was a good idea gone a' rye. Church should not be a place that accumulates wealth and power, but a place that serves, offers instruction in the Scriptures, a place to worship freely and without fear. If people give so generously that there is excess, it should be used to support missionaries and care for the less fortunate within the Body of Christ.

(sorry if I'm off topic)