Well, here’s a different way of looking at the Church, from the Wall Street Journal:

Is the U.S. Catholic Church in a state of crisis? The bond market says no. In fact, investors increasingly view the collection plate as a reliable source of cash flow. Church debt, which is increasingly packaged and sold as bonds, has even offered sanctuary from otherwise turbulent credit markets.

Pope Benedict’s recent visit to the U.S. inspired more than a few media outlets to wonder about the future of the country’s largest denomination. And the church still has much work to do to ensure that the abomination that victimized more than 13,000 children is never repeated. But despite a scandal that has cost more than $2 billion and continuing concern over shuttered parishes and the availability of priests, the smart money says that American Catholicism is alive and well.

Perhaps more than any other faith in America, Catholicism has “franchise value,” says Patrick O’Meara, whose firm O’Meara Ferguson Kearns advises Catholic dioceses on securitizing their debt. Like Hasidic Jews and Mormons, Catholics generally don’t show up each week because of the special qualities of a particular pastor. Deep traditions mean that parishioners are less likely to stop giving because of the sins of individuals. That translates into very low default rates on diocesan debt. The same has held true for Orthodox Jewish congregations that have suffered a wayward rabbi. What’s more, John Nelson of credit-ratings firm Moody’s Investors Service notes that churches tend to rely on a broad base of small donations rather than a few large benefactors. This yields more stability when the credit markets and the economy hit a rough patch.

What Catholics in particular offer to the market is scale. With 70 million members, the American Catholic Church has significant annual construction needs. Add in the hierarchical structure of the church, which means that bankers can deal with a cardinal or bishop on a large debt offering covering numerous churches, and you can understand the appeal for Wall Street.

But Mr. O’Meara says that it took a while for banks to get into this business. Church debt used to be seen as essentially like real-estate loans, but less appealing than mortgage lending because of the consequences of default. “Who wants to be the one to foreclose on St. Agnes? And after you foreclose,” asks Mr. O’Meara, “what do you do with the property?” The result is that interest rates were often high, or bonds were simply sold from the pulpit to the congregation, limiting the pool of capital.

And many independent churches today still pay high interest rates on bank loans. If an unaffiliated church is led by a charismatic founder, the calculation is blunt: Can the organization continue to pay its bills in the event of impropriety? To be clear, this is not to say that younger, independent churches cannot be wonderful for the soul; only that they are less attractive to the capital markets.

For more established denominations, the breakthrough for church financing came in the mid-1990s when Moody’s Investors Service gave an investment-grade rating to the Catholic Archdiocese of Indianapolis. The trend accelerated after 2000. As long as they are financing projects such as schools, churches can issue tax-exempt bonds.

In 2005, the Archdiocese of Austin, Texas, went to the market with a compelling story: Church revenues had been rising consistently for two decades. Armed with an investment-grade rating from Moody’s and Goldman Sachs as the lead underwriter, the archdiocese raised $80 million to build new classrooms, parish halls and other facilities. Last fall the Diocese of Oakland, Calif., raised $110 million with a bond offering. Mr. O’Meara says that dioceses can typically borrow for 30 years at fixed rates of about 4.5%. Most of the largest commercial and investment banks are now active in the market. “Big institutions are getting into this market because it’s huge,” he says.

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