Church's Wealth

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DianJo

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I need some help!
My husband is not Catholic and has a conspiracy theory mind set about the Church. He was accusing the Bishops of some serious politickin’ as they are about to elect the next pope! He made the statement about the Church being the “wealthiest organization in the world” yada, yada, yada…He commented on the “vast” real estate and property, etc. In the conversation, I made the comment that it was probable that the Church did own lots of real estate and property but that there was nothing wrong with that since the Catholic Church has done more for the world than any other organization on earth! I told him if he didn’t believe me he could look at the Vatican’s financial spreadsheets on line. They’ve operated in the red for the past few years! Well, he certainly didn’t believe that the Vatican would post their TRUE worth on the internet - that I shouldn’t believe it just because it’s on the internet! Of course, this so called conversation disintegated and he began shouting his points at me! UGH!!!

Well, he finally blew a gasket and got downright pissed (excuse my french!) and I had no proof to show him. I have pretty easy access to any other topic but that one - figures! I have spent the morning looking through old threads because I remember reading some information concerning this very issue. Someone listed all the charities, properties and holdings and such as well as some historical information on everything the Church provides - but I just cannot locate it.

Can someone here give some information or websites that I can access? Any help would be appreciated!
 
I really dont think you can do anything to convince your husband about the Catholic Churchs wealth real or imagined. If you should show him in black and white the financial state of the Church , he sounds like the type of person whow wouldent believe it. He sounds like one of those people who see a conspiricy in everything that happens mespecially the Catholic Church, GOOD LUCK
 
Your husband has already expressed his unwillingness to believe any evidence that is presented to him. That being the case, you should cease to throw your pearls before swine on this topic until he changes his attitude. Practice your faith to the best of your ability and pray for him (1 Cor. 7:10-16); if he tries to goad you into arguing about this, politely decline until he shows he is willing to act like a rational being. God willing, with your example and patience you will, like St. Monica and Elizabeth Lesuer, eventually win him over.

Good luck; you are in my prayers.
 
You can assure your husband that yes, there are probably plenty of corrupt people in the Catholic Church.

Remind him though that even Jesus chose Judas, who in Scripture was stealing from the purse.

You are always going to get a Judas, even Jesus did. Don’t expect to get around that.
 
I could probably claim that the wealthiest organization in the world was the U.S. government. It surely has the biggest cash flow. Among the top in total assets. And also one of the biggest debts. Honestly, I would guess some big companies, e.g. ExxonMobil, have more total assets and income than the church. And even if the church is by some accounting the wealthiest organization, it is also the largest in terms of membership, except for the People’s Republic of China (if you want to call that an “organization”)

The church certainly has real estate and art and architecture that are “valuable”, but not necessarily liquid assets, or even things you could put a price on. They do have some prime real estate in cities around the world, but do you really expect the church to sell an old basilica so some other rich developer can tear it down and build a shopping mall or a hotel?

Also “the church” is more complex than he’s probably thinking. Each diocese is basically an independent entity, at least for financial purposes. And yes, a lot of them in the US are in the red. My diocese, for example, is reportedly bleeding away its endowment at an alarming rate… they said they’re not using collection money to pay off lawsuits, so this is how they’re doing it. They’re spending down the principal, so within a year or two their income from these investments will be nil. If you ask me, they should require seminarians to learn some basics of financial management, since as pastors they will be faced with managing the day-to-day finances of individual parishes, not to mention the bishops who oversee the finances of whole dioceses.
 
Actually I don’t believe the full wealth of all the facets of the Catholic Church is available anywhere. The financials of the Vatican is far from the complete picture.

For example, some financials were revealed for the Boston diocese some time ago, in connection with a bond that was being issued to fund a building project. The Boston archdiocese listed its assets at Six Hundred and Thirty-five Million ($635,891,004), which is 9.9 times its liabilities. This leaves a net worth of Five Hundred and Seventy-one million dollars ($571,704,953). It is not difficult to discover the truly astonishing wealth of the church, once we add the riches of the twenty-eight archdioceses and 122 dioceses of the U.S.A., some of which are even wealthier than that of Boston.

Further the Vatican has a known set of investments in stock of over $500 million.

Some idea of the real estate and other forms of wealth controlled by the Catholic church may be gathered by the remark of a member of the New York Catholic Conference, namely ‘that his church probably ranks second only to the United States Government in total annual purchase.’ Another statement, made by a nationally syndicated Catholic priest, perhaps is even more telling. ‘The Catholic church,’ he said, ‘must be the biggest corporation in the United States. We have a branch office in every neighborhood. Our assets and real estate holdings must exceed those of Standard Oil, A.T.&T., and U.S. Steel combined. And our roster of dues-paying members must be second only to the tax rolls of the United States Government.’ "The Catholic church, once all her assets have been put together, is the most formidable stockbroker in the world. The Vatican, independently of each successive pope, has been increasingly orientated towards the U.S. The Wall Street Journal said that the Vatican’s financial deals in the U.S. alone were so big that very often it sold or bought gold in lots of a million or more dollars at one time.

The Vatican’s treasure of solid gold has been estimated by the United Nations World Magazine to amount to several billion dollars. A large bulk of this is stored in gold ingots with the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, while banks in England and Switzerland hold the rest. But this is just a small portion of the wealth of the Vatican, which in the U.S. alone, is greater than that of the five wealthiest giant corporations of the country. When to that is added all the real estate, property, stocks and shares abroad, then the staggering accumulation of the wealth of the Catholic church becomes so formidable as to defy any rational assessment.

Where I think the critics are wrong, but I am not sure, is that the Vatican directly does not OWN all this. FOr example, the Boston Dioces is its own legal entity. So it’s a very decentralized bunch of subsidiaries. Maybe the Pope implictly controls it, but he does not have legal right to it. I ebeliev this is correct from what I have read.

So the assets of the entire Church are clearly more than any single corporation - it has a branch office in every neighborhood, and it owns all the land. No one person owns it or controls it.
 
My mom, a great lady, sometimes goes on and on about the material wealth and treasures of the Church. I’ve explained several times that if the Church hadn’t patronized artists, musicians, etc., much of the beauty of Western culture wouldn’t be extant. She bought that, but it still crops up occasionally, as in “think of what could be done for the poor!” (as though Holy Mother Church does nothing for the poor). I’ve taken to answering,“Yeah, you’re right. So how much do you think the Pieta would fetch on Ebay? Ooooo, we could probably get a couple of luxury condos out of the Sistine Chapel! And when we sold off all the art, what will we do for the poor then?” We’re a bunch of wise mouths in my family.
 
If the Church started off with the equivalent of $100, and invested it at a measily 1.5% interest, after 2000 years they should have over 800 trillion dollars, which is more money than exists in the world, and that is with no other gifts or donations. A few things are obvious from that calculation.
  1. It is not all about money or they would own everything in the world, instead of an insignificant amount of real estate.
  2. The Church gives away much much more than they keep.
 
Next time you see him drinking a Coke, tell him Coca-Cola is one of the richest companies in the world, and all it does is make people sick, cavities, hyper, etc, and take it away and enjoy it.

p.s. I love cherry coke, and barqs
 
Aren’t the United States government, and the state and local governments more wealthy than the Church? For starters, the US Government owns much of the District of Columbia. How much is the White House worth alone? That is one building amongst tens of thousands of state, federal, and local government buildings. Then when you go through the land the United States Government owns… Anyone want to buy some scenic land in Yosemite National Park? Let’s sell off all the mineral despots in the federal land. How about selling off the Sequoia National Park to logging? Huge redwoods and the great sequoias are very valuable.

I propose selling the Lincoln Memorial for scrap. It uses up alot of marble. Marble = $$$ We can keep the statue of Lincoln, it has to be worth something to somebody.

The City of New York alone owns billions of dollar worth in real estate. They own the Metropolitan Museum of Art building (not the art), City Hall, Central Park, and other expensive parks, buildings, and monuments. Sell them all. Real Estate prices are high now, so now is the best time to get rid of all that wealth.

The governments could trillions upon trillions, if they sell off all the federal land, along with allowing the trees to be harvested.

If I were to catalogue everything the US government, state, and local governments could sell, I’d be here for a few years listing them all.

All this money could be given to the poor, but the greedy government will not sell them! :eek:

Just the Federal Owned Lands:

(This map does not include US states’ owned land)

http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/technical/land/lgif/m5554l.gif
 
CNN was saying that the Vatican and all the treasure are insured for 1 euro

st julie
 
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Fidelis:
Your husband has already expressed his unwillingness to believe any evidence that is presented to him. That being the case, you should cease to throw your pearls before swine on this topic until he changes his attitude. Practice your faith to the best of your ability and pray for him (1 Cor. 7:10-16); if he tries to goad you into arguing about this, politely decline until he shows he is willing to act like a rational being. God willing, with your example and patience you will, like St. Monica and Elizabeth Lesuer, eventually win him over.

Good luck; you are in my prayers.
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This is what I have traditionally done but it gets so frustrating - and that is what I have considered continuing to do! You are right!
 
Someone mentioned on the news the other day that the annual budget of the Vatican for running the world-wide Church is approximately equivalent to the budget of Chicago, Illinois.
 
Bobby Jim:
The church certainly has real estate and art and architecture that are “valuable”, but not necessarily liquid assets, or even things you could put a price on. They do have some prime real estate in cities around the world, but do you really expect the church to sell an old basilica so some other rich developer can tear it down and build a shopping mall or a hotel?

Also “the church” is more complex than he’s probably thinking. Each diocese is basically an independent entity, at least for financial purposes. And yes, a lot of them in the US are in the red. My diocese, for example, is reportedly bleeding away its endowment at an alarming rate… they said they’re not using collection money to pay off lawsuits, so this is how they’re doing it. They’re spending down the principal, so within a year or two their income from these investments will be nil. If you ask me, they should require seminarians to learn some basics of financial management, since as pastors they will be faced with managing the day-to-day finances of individual parishes, not to mention the bishops who oversee the finances of whole dioceses.
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I brought this up in our conversation as well but it didn’t make an impact. He insisted that he was not talking on local level but global - in other words, it didn’t wash - UGH! He had a problem with our “other” collections (2nd collections) saying that our one collection is not enough for the church - it just always wants more! In other words, the church can’t manage the money they get on one collection to cover everything the church wants to do! Double UGH!
 
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JKirkLVNV:
My mom, a great lady, sometimes goes on and on about the material wealth and treasures of the Church. I’ve explained several times that if the Church hadn’t patronized artists, musicians, etc., much of the beauty of Western culture wouldn’t be extant. She bought that, but it still crops up occasionally, as in “think of what could be done for the poor!” (as though Holy Mother Church does nothing for the poor). I’ve taken to answering,“Yeah, you’re right. So how much do you think the Pieta would fetch on Ebay? Ooooo, we could probably get a couple of luxury condos out of the Sistine Chapel! And when we sold off all the art, what will we do for the poor then?” We’re a bunch of wise mouths in my family.
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HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! This is great! Thanks!
 
Catholic Dude:
Next time you see him drinking a Coke, tell him Coca-Cola is one of the richest companies in the world, and all it does is make people sick, cavities, hyper, etc, and take it away and enjoy it.

p.s. I love cherry coke, and barqs
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Wow! Good thought! Personally, I’m partial to Diet Coke!!!
 
st julie:
CNN was saying that the Vatican and all the treasure are insured for 1 euro

st julie
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Wow! Any explanation go along witht that stattement?
 
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adstrinity:
Even though it’s not true, why does your husband care?
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Well, as any other non-Catholic, he looks for any opportunity to try to prove the Catholic teaching and the Church herself wrong!! We just can’t discuss anything when it comes to this subject because he will not hear the truth - no matter how much of it is staring him in the face! It’s amazing to see, actually, he’s such a logical person, very intelligent, but when it comes to the Church - all of it goes flying out the window!
 
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jturnbull:
I really dont think you can do anything to convince your husband about the Catholic Churchs wealth real or imagined. If you should show him in black and white the financial state of the Church , he sounds like the type of person whow wouldent believe it. He sounds like one of those people who see a conspiricy in everything that happens mespecially the Catholic Church, GOOD LUCK
Click to expand...
Yup! You said it exactly!! Unfortunately.
 
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