INSIDE SCIENTOLOGY
The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion
By Janet Reitman
444 pp. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $28.

RENDER UNTO ROME
The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church
By Jason Berry
420 pp. Crown Publishers. $25.

We do not need these books to tell us that money and religion make for a poisonous combination. But it is of some interest to see that ancient truth confirmed in both a church as relatively new as Scientology and one as ancient as Roman Catholicism. Even religious leaders develop a certain swagger when they know they are backed by bundles of cash. When a French court fined Scientology nearly a million dollars, one of its officials shrugged that off as ‘chump change.