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The suddenly jobless person — a lifelong Catholic who had worked for a couple of different Catholic schools — did what most in that situation would do. They went to see about getting unemployment while looking for another job.

“I contacted the state of Missouri to get unemployment benefits kicked in,” the person told me. The person asked that I not use their name as they feared retribution in their own parish for criticizing the church. “I found out the Archdiocese doesn’t pay unemployment.”

Indeed, churches in nearly every state are exempt from paying into unemployment insurance programs, though many — including many Catholic dioceses — participate voluntarily.

Not so in St. Louis.

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“There’s the law, and then there’s what’s morally correct, and in the church that’s always a problem,” said Bob Fehey, 66, of Fenton, after losing his job in 2009.

Loos said then, and repeated this week, that the decision balances out the need to provide other benefits and be good stewards of donors’ funds.

“It comes down to an economic decision,” he said. “If magically I had another quarter of a million dollars, there would be a clamor for how to best invest that money.”

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