I assume you're getting the $170 billion figure from this article: http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2012/08/catholic-church-america http://www.economist.

I assume you're getting the $170 billion figure from this article: http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2012/08/catholic-church-america http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2012/08/catholic-chu... I think it's worth noting that over $147 billion of that number is spent by Catholic hospitals ($98.6 billion) and universities ($48.8 billion). The number more representative of what most people mean when they refer to "churches" would be Parish disbursements ($11 billion). $11 billion is nothing to sneeze at, but when you consider that there are about 17.5k parishes in the US (many of which have schools) it's a less impressive number.