EDITORIAL

...There has been improvement of late in the practices of some religious groups, primarily through the initiatives of the Interf aith Center on Corporate Responsibility, at National Council of Churches headquarters in New York City...

...CHURCH MONEY The case of the Security National Bank of New Jersey has all the makings of an Auchincloss novel: mannered people with considerable international sums seeking to take over a small and, until recently, relatively obscure bank...

...There should be a justifiable social dimension not only in- how profits are made and used, but also in how they are sought...

...Their concerns have ranged from agribusiness, to strip mining, to equalemployment opportunities for minorities and for women, and their successes have been significant The Center, for instance, was instrumental in securing from International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) an agreement not to sell equipment to ponce and military in South Africa...

...The Security National Bank case does not appear to be a repeat of the Pallottine financial adventurism of the sort that exploded in newspapers last winter...

...It would take an international team of investigative reporters to sort out the claims and counterclaims of the respective parties...

...and now the beginnings of a federal investigation into possible manipulation of loan funds...

...In the story line, allegations that the bank at one time routinely made unsecured loans to agents of the FBI...

...Spicing the whole, imposing church dignitaries and the suspicion that as much as three-quarters of the takeover fund comes from religious sources: one million dollars from a Rome bank in Switzerland with a link to the Vatican, and a half-million from a New Jersey Catholic order...

...And if it does not speak as directly as did the Pallottine case to how sums raised for the needy are ultimately put to use, it does say something about the obligations of investors...

...And the task is not made simpler when those who should be the most sensitized are sensitive not at all...

...Some twelve Protestant denominations and eighty Catholic organizations are affiliated with the Center and involved in programs such as stockholder challenges concerned with the social impact of corporations at home and abroad and the application of social criteria to investments...

...These obligations are no less than those of the corporations themselves, whether banks or steel mills...

...In other words, the criterion is not as attributed to one of the parties in the New Jersey bank case whether the investment of religious funds is as safe as if it were in General Motors, but whether investment, return and uses are truly contributory to the common good...

...Nevertheless, enough has been conceded for the Security National Bank case to loom as another lesson on the necessity of more responsible uses of the moneys of religion...

...Except, of course, there is little or no fiction involved in this scenario...

...The press' focus has been largely on the loan aspects of the case, but equally intriguing is the seeming involvement of religious funds in the attempted take-over...

...As we said, the perfect stuff of fiction...

...more mannered people, one with a high papal decoration, seeking to block the take-over...

...Precisely such a case has been in federal court in Newark in recent weeks, and on the front page of the New York Times...

...But the work to be done is major before responsible investment becomes a reflex that outdoes anxiety for profit...

...It is much more subtle and, financially, much more modest...

...One of the truisms of modern finance is that religious groups have paid too little attention to the moral and ethical dimensions of their investment practices...