VATICAN BANK UNDER INVESTIGATION

Wow! 200 million US dollars in money laundering!

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In every religion, there are some monks who are quite arrogant and conceited. They think they are above the laws of the Land. In fact, some fawning trustees will flatter them to high heavens as “Ah Shin payar, phone ta goe, gyi lo” meaning “O Living God! you are so supernormal.”

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BTW, Lord Buddha’s Vinaya monks’ rules require the monks to also follow the laws of the land, wherever they are. They are in addition to the already stricter monks’ rules. Monks are not allowed to dabble in lay people’s affairs (including church or temple’s administration) or to handle moneys or to accumulate wealth.

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They must focus on the study and preaching of the Dhamma. They are supposed to live by their vows of poverty and celibacy.

In Christianity, Franciscan monks’ code of conduct are stricter than those of the Dominican monks. In that sense, they are more similar to those noble Buddhist monks.

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In Bank Inquiry, Vatican Faces the Modern World – NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/30/world/europe/30vatican.html?_r=1&ref=vaticancity

ROME — When Rome magistrates opened an investigation last week into the Vatican bank over transparency issues, it was not only a bold assertion of state over church, it also pointed to one of the Vatican’s greatest continuing challenges: facing modernity.

As in the sexual abuse scandal, in which for years the Vatican appeared to declare itself outside — or above — civil law, this time the issue is the Vatican’s famously opaque finances, which for the first time are being held to tightened European Union anti-money-laundering statutes.

While Europe remade itself after the Second World War, balancing its powers through treaties and linking itself together through banking agreements, the Vatican remains an anomaly as the last absolute monarchy in the West. But today, its ancient ways are running up against civil institutions that increasingly view the church as they do any other multinational….