You don’t think that even a small donation counts? That helping one child eat for a day is important? IMO helping one person does matter, it is as important as saving a million.
Um, here’s the thing. Perhaps you didn’t quite understand. . .if the Pope and the cardinals don’t own the various items, **how do you expect them to sell them???
**As a Catholic Christian I
own these items just as much as the Pope does. . .in fact,
you, abbynormal, own these items as much as any one person does.
Furthermore, all the people who have lived through those centuries (some of those ‘treasures’ are very ancient indeed) **owned them too.
**And all people yet to be born as long as earth endures ‘own’ these things too.
Now, would you like to explain to us:
- How you are going to get ‘permission’ from everybody (including the departed and the not-born) to sell those items.
- Just exactly how, assuming you met the conditions in #1, and were indeed able to find ‘purchasers’ for those treasures at **fair market value **(keeping in mind that many ‘treasures’ like relics would not be ‘worth anything’ to a nonCatholic. . .
just exactly **how much you think would be raised, and how you would ‘distribute it to the poor’?
**Look at Haiti, for pity’s sake. Aid is streaming in by the millions and is it going to the people who need it most? Not without a big ol’ cut to the ‘powers’ that are going to get even richer ‘skimming’.
Your idea is that we deprive humanity of treasures held in trust for them in order to supposedly ‘enrich’ the poor right now this minute January 16, 2010. . .
And then what? Maybe. . .just maybe. . .some poor man (after all is said and done) would get $5. That’s it. . .$5. Are you going to be able to stand over him and insist that he spend the $5 wisely, and not in drinking, drugs, or sex instead? And suppose he does buy enough food for the year. . .the next year, there’s a drought and he’s back to where he started. . .and worse, because there’s no ‘possibility’ of another ‘windfall’, and he (and all humanity) are deprived of that which was meant for God and his people and which is now languishing in the museums of the already obscenely wealthy (the **real wealthy who actually ‘own’ things, unlike the Pope and the Church).
**So are you ready to ‘steal’ from all humanity to supposedly, for one brief ‘moment’ in time, make a donation that isn’t yours to make because you think that right now, ‘one person’s full belly’ is worth ‘more’ than sacred art (which I repeat, is in trust for all, including you, even if you don’t think it’s worth anything except for what it can do 'for the poor).
In closing, might I recommend you prayerfully consider this Scriptural passage?
Matthew 26: 6And when Jesus was in Bethania, in the house of Simon the leper,
7 There came to him a woman having an alabaster box of precious ointment, and poured it on his head as he was at table.
8 And the disciples seeing it, had indignation, saying:
To what purpose is this waste? 9 For this might have been sold for much, and given to the poor.
10 And Jesus knowing it, said to them: Why do you trouble this woman? for she hath wrought a good work upon me.
11 For the poor you have always with you: but me you have not always.
12 For she in pouring this ointment upon my body, hath done it for my burial.
13 Amen I say to you, wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, that also which she hath done, shall be told for a memory of her.
14 Then went one of the twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, to the chief priests,
15 And said to them: What will you give me, and I will deliver him unto you? But they appointed him thirty pieces of silver.
You’re funny! Especially when you advocate bible-editing. But then again, that is part of your church’s history, isn’t it?