Word: murrays
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Lease-Back Loophole. Whatever their personal feelings, lawyers concede that Mrs. Murray's tax-exemption suit is not without merit. She argues that such exemption forces her to pay higher taxes and support churches-in direct conflict with the First Amendment's prohibition against laws "respecting an establishment of religion." All 50 states, including Maryland, repeat this prohibition in some form in their own constitutions. Yet 33 state constitutions also make church property taxfree. All other states accomplish the same end under other statutes...
...Murray sees it, the most blatant constitutional violation is church-owned property that is not used for religious purposes. Many state laws are so broad that churches-and fraternal organizations-may buy such property with leaseback arrangements under which they rent it to the former owners; income from the rents and leases is taxfree. The Roman Catholic Knights of Columbus do not pay income taxes on their rental revenue, which comes from such sources as the land on which Yankee Stadium stands, a Detroit steel warehouse and a Connecticut steel mill. In New Orleans, Jesuit-run Loyola University pays...
Determined to launch equity suits in eleven states, Mrs. Murray has begun at home. Maryland forbids church lease-backs, exempts only property used for church purposes. The state's lawyers will argue that limited tax exemptions are not grants that provably infringe on church-state separation. Moreover, they will claim that Mrs. Murray's financial loss is too small to make her case justifiable...
Some churches-notably the Methodists and United Presbyterians-concede that there is an inequity in the laws and either pay their full taxes or a sum equivalent to levies from which they are exempt. But a majority of the clergy probably agree with Mrs. Murray's Baltimore opponents, who are determined to battle her up to the Supreme Court over what one Roman Catholic lawyer sees as "the beginning of a hostile interpretation of the First Amendment." Says he: "As a person, Mrs. Murray is not important. But what she's trying to do is important...
...curtain Irish, and readily admits that he does not "believe in change just to change." But he is an unpredictable conservative. He voted with the progressives on most issues that came before the Vatican Council, and last fall he took to Rome as his personal theologian Jesuit John Courtney Murray (TIME Cover, Dec. 12, 1960), who had been excluded from council preparations because the Holy Office objected to his views on church-state relations...