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The Church has been funnelling money, equipment and lately even troops in support of a decidedly Chaotic rebellion in an allied nation. The idea is to gain a foothold there when the current, Lawful Good rulers bite the dust.
documents arising, proclaiming the progenitor of the religion (first priest/prophet, etc) was actually something else entirely
Someone busts the local thieve's guild operating out of the basement of the church. Or perhaps people who spoke out against the church are mysteriously found dead with the religon's symbol carved into them, by the hand of an extremly zealous LE priest.
Just the first things off the top of my head.
-Harark
An over-zealous Inquisitor Tried and Executed somebody for Heresy, but evidence turned up later proving their innocence.
Just read a good newspaper :)
- Have priests abuse Acolytes because of their celibacy, make the conservative church try to cover up the issue.
- Make some high priests very polygamous abusing their position as spiritual leaders (if the church has no celibacy).
- Have an epidemic of STDs because the church forbids the cure as sacrilege.
- Corruption within the church.
- Have the church manipulate the king to undo necessary and progressive reforms because they think it threatens their beliefs and they generally hate progressiveness, an open mind and change.
- Have them scold a progressive, totally sane, scientific discovery because it conflicts with their beliefs. Have them send out inquisitors after innocent people.
just to name a few things piety leads to :)
Lawful good church in a (mostly) lawful good kingdom. For in-game reasons, I´m looking for a thoroughly vile, nasty scandal that would be deeply discrediting to the church. There´s going to be a struggle between those who want to cover it up (we must protect the Church!) and one or more would-be whistleblowers.
The obvious answer is a sex scandal, but that seems a little bit on the nose. In a fantasy context, it could be something like demon worship. That could perhaps work, but it´s not perfect -- it would be too easy for the church to write it off as one or two bad apples, corrupted by the Abyss. Ideally, I´d like something that (1) makes the whole church look bad (whether it´s really the whole church´s fault or not), and (2) could plausibly be covered up.
Thoughts?
Doug M.
To have a scandal, you would first have to tell us about the dogma of your LG church. That determines what the norms are. Then we could come about with scandal ideas.
In the real world, the lower end Catholic Church is more NG, with the upper end more LN. I live in a heavily Catholic area, and their charities are huge here. They keep a lot of people off the streets, and in homes, or getting treatment.
The upper end, aka the Pope and Rome, is about adherence to strict ideology. There might even be a few LE types running about there, wouldn't surprise me.
But to create a scandal, you have to know what the dogma of the faith is. To use a real world example as I have been doing, the Church recently tried to argue that a fetus wasn't a person, so it wasn't responsible for denying treatment to a young pregnant woman. The woman nearly died, and her fetus certainly did. The Church argued this mostly because it would save them money. HOWEVER, this directly contradicts their previous nearly 75 year stance that fetuses are people, and thus it is murder to abort a fetus. This created a scandal.
See what I mean?
As a great vampire once said, "I'm sorry, I didn't recognize you without little Timmy glued to your crotch.".
Step 1 Building Fund
Step 2 ...
Step 3 Profit
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The church's Black Ops. It all happened a while back, so nobody currently in the mainstream is losing powers over it. But some of them know about it, and it horrifies them.
A while back, things were grim. There was trouble in the land, and of course the church was helping out. But playing it straight and narrow wasn't enough; the enemy was too powerful to confront directly.
So a small group was formed, to use less-pure methods to attack the enemy. They did some questionable things. For the greater good of course. But it stained them; maybe a few of them burn in hell now for the things they did.
If word got out about this ruthless action, it could shake the faith of the common people, who believe the church doesn't stoop to those methods. But keeping quiet about it is also keeping church leaders from sleeping soundly.
(intentionally left vague: insert paranoid government secret weapon research conspiracy theory here)
The easiest way is to have it be a LN deity, but the kingdom be LG.
Then the church can have some practices that are LN, but which are considered evil by the kingdom. For example, necromancy, certain sexual rituals that are considered degrading (or involve inappropriately aged partners, or animals). All of this goes on behind closed doors, and isn't against the god's alignment, it's just against the kingdom's social mores. The church goes to some lengths to keep this from becoming public knowledge. The best way to handle this is to have a sub-sect of the LN god's worshippers have gained control.
Think of it like this, assume God A has one main church, and 3-4 off-shoot sects. The main branch of God A is LG, while the off-shoot sects are LN or even LE. The LN or LE sect gains control of church. All the kingdom thinks the LG sect is in charge, and it would be the end of the church if it got out that the LE sect actually managed to take over the church.
You can always go with deception. Members of the clergy who are tricked into evil by an outside influence would still 'register' as good.
Example: A visiting priest/bishop/etc arrives who is evilly motivated. He convinces the local priests in town to participate in a ponzi scheme. (The local priests are trusting of this "higher ranking" guy and/or are low level without detect alignment.) They fall for it, excited about all the good they can do with the interest they'll earn. In turn, these priests convince other clergy at a bigger church and their congregations to participate. Eventually it all crashes and the evil guy escapes with ten years worth of donation baskets!
For a different take on deception...
The LG church has been around forever. Folks travel from all over to visit their largest and most famous cathedral because it houses "The grave of Saint Shiversbegone", a long dead martyr. They go to kiss the stone coffin in the hopes that it will make them well. Unfortunately the coffin is actually empty and it's all been a hoax set-up by the church founder five hundred years ago to get tourist money. All of the current clergy are blissfully unaware of the hoax and as such, aren't evil. Unfortunately someone falls to hard and breaks the thing open, SCANDAL!
Just a couple of ideas, hope they are helpful. Good luck!
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The church is LG, all nice and stuff. During the last civil war, nobody attacked them because attacking the obviously LG church is a clear sign you're the bad guy.
What people don't know is that the church hired assassins to kill the leaders of one of the sides of the civil war, in order to end it sooner.
If people found out, that would be bad. For one, because it might damage the faith of ordinary people to learn what their church is willing to do. But also, during the next war, the church won't be left alone again because apparently you can't afford to ignore them. And a church can't just hope there won't ever be another war again, they have to take the long-term view...
Read R.A. Salvatore's Demon War books. The church in that series fits the bill pretty well.
This is fairly mild for a scandal, but you could have a separatist movement within the Church. See the Separatist archetype.
As others have noted, it is hard to pull this off without the church's deity being part of the "scandal" since in the Pathfinder world the gods take an active interest in every single individual priest of their faith. It is not merely unlikely that a church could somehow have a bunch of corrupted priests, it's pretty much impossible unless the deity himself has been compromised.
The best approach I've seen is the LN church in a LG kingdom doing something completely acceptable to the deity, but not completely in line with the kingdom's laws. Some of the church members might even be willing to report the activities to the authorities because of the laws potentially being broken. Others might adhere to a "higher law" of their deity.
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To build off of Ascalaphus suggestion...
A certain priest in the fringes of society has been proclaiming a message, that while not outside of the purview of the Deity, is perhaps outside of the acceptable dogma of the Church leadership.
Taking a known example from actual Golarion Lore, there's a Priest of Erastil who is still receiving her powers, but teaching a more egalitarian model of the faith than many of the more conservative number of her church adhere to.
But in your world, the LG Church has a batch of Inquisitors, chances are they're LN because of their need to bend some of the rules (not laws, rules). These Inquisitors are sent to correct this priest, but they cross the line. They kill the priest, and try to cover it up. But there were witnesses and these witnesses start disappearing as well.
Now the Church as a problem, these Inquisitors have gotten out of control. They've lost their powers and they've made deals with LE Devils to replace their powers. The Church has to acknowledge that they authorized these Inquisitors to intimidate this rogue priest and then regretfully admit that these Inquisitors overstepped their bounds and fell. Or they have to disavow any of this happened and try to pay off the witnesses or hunt down the rogue Inquisitors (now Devil Worshippers) to save face.
BOOM! Put em in their place Chris!
Schism.
Perhaps a fundamentalist sect spins off, or a militant wing of the church marches onto the city or a neighborhood.
The Kingpriest of Istar and the stuff that he did was pretty scandalous.
There is a good example of heresy in Death's Heretic by James L. Sutter.
I've been working on a way to portray LG outsiders in a way that makes them potential enemies to a good party. What I have so far is this: in the battles between angels and demons (or devils) mortals becomes the chess pieces, with some of them becoming disposable pawns. LG immortals sending mortals to their death for a higher purpose blurs the line between good and evil. Likewise, working the church into this, a high ranking member of the clergy becomes a bishop - a chess piece that can be used to greater effect by sacrificing a pawn. To a nosy, kick-in-the-door group of adventurers, the clergy becomes subjectively evil.
I like Arbane's idea too, where religion and politics bump heads. However, I've been waiting years and years to use outsiders as more than powerful NPC messengers or monsters waiting in a room.