"The Church loves ART but neglects the POOR"!

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How many of us here have heard the nauseating statement “why does the Church spend so much on art while neglecting the poor?”

Aside from the fact that the Catholic Church is the largest charitable organization in the world, as an artist, I get particularly annoyed at this claim.

So tonight I made a little graphic in Photoshop about this. If you want to you can share it on Facebook or whatever. 🙂
 
Remind them that the art payed for by the Church is money from donations, often from the poor themselves.
 
Ah, the modern iconoclasts! Their simplistic excuse for an argument disgusts me!
 
Singled out from over 41,000 Christian denominations (14), the Catholic Church has typically been an exclusive target. Many Catholic adversaries have contended that the Vatican should sell all its artwork, buildings, Churches, museum artifacts and relics donated over the past two thousand years and give the proceeds to the poor. Aside from being a novel approach for dismantling a nemesis; should we also liquidate all our great museums (such as the Museum of Natural History) and give all the proceeds to the poor? All these artifacts are on display for the millions people who visit the Vatican every year to view our Catholic Heritage. Notwithstanding these criticisms, the Catholic Church is still the largest charitable organization in the entire world. Adding up just Catholic Charities, Food for the Poor, Catholic Relief Services, St. Jude’s, and America’s Second Harvest alone total $5,570,000,000, which is greater than #1 on the list for America (15). “The nonprofit health-care system includes 637 hospitals, accounting for 17% of all U.S. hospital admissions. The Catholic Church runs 122 home health-care agencies and nearly 700 other service providers, including assisted living, adult day care, and senior housing. Catholic hospitals alone have annual expenses of $65 billion and account for 5% of U.S. health-care spending. Catholic Charities USA consists of 1,400 agencies that run soup kitchens, temporary shelters, child care, and refugee resettlement” (16).

ArguingWithAtheists.com
 
First - Great post, Steinway. Just to build on this a little: our Bishop has compiled a brief but compelling listing all the charitable/service ministries in which our diocese is engaging. I believe he’s sending it to every town mayor/manager/board of selectman in the diocese so that they can be informed of the services the RCC provides. It’s also printed in the diocesan publication. When you see it in one place it’s quite impressive.

Second - I think people who criticize the RCC for its art are missing a key point, and that is that the poor have a right to beauty, too. The theme of the 1912 mill strike in Lawrence, MA that is considered a major landmark of the labor movement in the USA was “Bread and Roses”, based on a poem by James Oppenheim. The idea was that those most impoverished not only need basic sustenance for their bodies but also their spirits (people on the left who criticize the RCC will be hard pressed to argue with this reference). The RCC provides this with its art and much (but not all :eek:) of its architecture in addition to its charities. My wife and I were blessed to have been able to go to Rome last spring. We both thought it was great that anybody could go into the great basilicas of Rome and have their lives enhanced by the extraordinary paintings, sculptures, architecture, etc. our Church offers the world.
 
BackToTheRock said:
First - Great post, Steinway. Just to build on this a little: our Bishop has compiled a brief but compelling listing all the charitable/service ministries in which our diocese is engaging. I believe he’s sending it to every town mayor/manager/board of selectman in the diocese so that they can be informed of the services the RCC provides. It’s also printed in the diocesan publication. When you see it in one place it’s quite impressive.

Second - I think people who criticize the RCC for its art are missing a key point, and that is that the poor have a right to beauty, too. The theme of the 1912 mill strike in Lawrence, MA that is considered a major landmark of the labor movement in the USA was “Bread and Roses”, based on a poem by James Oppenheim. The idea was that those most impoverished not only need basic sustenance for their bodies but also their spirits (people on the left who criticize the RCC will be hard pressed to argue with this reference). The RCC provides this with its art and much (but not all :eek:) of its architecture in addition to its charities. My wife and I were blessed to have been able to go to Rome last spring. We both thought it was great that anybody could go into the great basilicas of Rome and have their lives enhanced by the extraordinary paintings, sculptures, architecture, etc. our Church offers the world.
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Not only that, due to technology we can experience this beautiful art, architecture and priceless antiquities from our homes via the Internet. Now this is NO substitute for being there but were these same pieces and structures held privately, they would not be accessible to the world.

Funny thing I came to this thread expecting that I would be in strong disagreement with the OP but instead the opportunity to encounter many kindred souls.

BTW LOVE the idea of listing all of the many charitable actitvities of the Church in a particular area and sending to politicians who think that government programs are the only solution to social ills.

Lisa
 
🤷 :banghead::rolleyes: …but don’t you know how wastful the Catholic church is with all those “gold” chalaces they use to simply store “horrible little crackers” or how the Pope “lives in a palace and owns all that stuff” thanks to his “man made religion” which “is really just Pagan sun worship”, maybe if Catholics “got off their knees and did something for their fellow man” the world would be a better place without all the “unnecessary fairytails and superstitions” taken from a " bronze age work of fiction" that gets perpetuated by “a bunch of old old guys” who have “deluded themselves into believeing in a “””""“FLYING SPAGEHETTI”""""" monster" but if they were “intellectually honest with themselves” they would realize “just how childish and illogical” they were being.
 
Steinway said:
Singled out from over 41,000 Christian denominations (14), the Catholic Church has typically been an exclusive target. Many Catholic adversaries have contended that the Vatican should sell all its artwork, buildings, Churches, museum artifacts and relics donated over the past two thousand years and give the proceeds to the poor. Aside from being a novel approach for dismantling a nemesis; should we also liquidate all our great museums (such as the Museum of Natural History) and give all the proceeds to the poor? All these artifacts are on display for the millions people who visit the Vatican every year to view our Catholic Heritage. Notwithstanding these criticisms, the Catholic Church is still the largest charitable organization in the entire world. Adding up just Catholic Charities, Food for the Poor, Catholic Relief Services, St. Jude’s, and America’s Second Harvest alone total $5,570,000,000, which is greater than #1 on the list for America (15). “The nonprofit health-care system includes 637 hospitals, accounting for 17% of all U.S. hospital admissions. The Catholic Church runs 122 home health-care agencies and nearly 700 other service providers, including assisted living, adult day care, and senior housing. Catholic hospitals alone have annual expenses of $65 billion and account for 5% of U.S. health-care spending. Catholic Charities USA consists of 1,400 agencies that run soup kitchens, temporary shelters, child care, and refugee resettlement” (16).

ArguingWithAtheists.com
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👍:clapping::tiphat::tiphat::tiphat::tiphat:
 
BackToTheRock said:
My wife and I were blessed to have been able to go to Rome last spring. We both thought it was great that anybody could go into the great basilicas of Rome and have their lives enhanced by the extraordinary paintings, sculptures, architecture, etc. our Church offers the world.
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And just to lend even more clarity to my original post; people can go into any of these basilicas, including St. Peter’s, for absolutely no charge. Where else can anyone walk in off the street and be in the presence of centuries old beauty for free? My wiife has a membership to the Museum of Fine Art in Boston and I can assure you that it’s not free.
 
In the OT, when the Temple was built at the commandment of the Lord, it was exquisite and very detailed in design and talent.

When the penitent woman cried with true repentance and poured expensive ointment on Our Lord to show her
love for Him, she was criticized for not selling the ointment and giving the money to the poor. Our Lord defended her.

There is enough money for the poor, and enough for building uplifting churches and creating masterpieces of art in paintings and music to inspire others and give glory to the Lord.

We can all make sacrifices for the poor who do not have enough to live a decent life. We can dig a little deeper and help them according to the need.
 
LisaA said:
BTW LOVE the idea of listing all of the many charitable actitvities of the Church in a particular area and sending to politicians who think that government programs are the only solution to social ills.

Lisa
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Some might think I’m taking this a step too far, but I think this sort of thing is important for every diocese to do. I think we can legitimately consider this to be part of the new evangelization. Rather than "hiding our light under a bushel) we can let society know all the things we’re doing, not out of our own righteousness, but because of what God has done for in in the RCC.
 
Steinway said:
Singled out from over 41,000 Christian denominations (14), the Catholic Church has typically been an exclusive target. Many Catholic adversaries have contended that the Vatican should sell all its artwork, buildings, Churches, museum artifacts and relics donated over the past two thousand years and give the proceeds to the poor. Aside from being a novel approach for dismantling a nemesis; should we also liquidate all our great museums (such as the Museum of Natural History) and give all the proceeds to the poor? All these artifacts are on display for the millions people who visit the Vatican every year to view our Catholic Heritage. Notwithstanding these criticisms, the Catholic Church is still the largest charitable organization in the entire world. Adding up just Catholic Charities, Food for the Poor, Catholic Relief Services, St. Jude’s, and America’s Second Harvest alone total $5,570,000,000, which is greater than #1 on the list for America (15). “The nonprofit health-care system includes 637 hospitals, accounting for 17% of all U.S. hospital admissions. The Catholic Church runs 122 home health-care agencies and nearly 700 other service providers, including assisted living, adult day care, and senior housing. Catholic hospitals alone have annual expenses of $65 billion and account for 5% of U.S. health-care spending. Catholic Charities USA consists of 1,400 agencies that run soup kitchens, temporary shelters, child care, and refugee resettlement” (16).

ArguingWithAtheists.com
Click to expand...
Checkmate to the anti-Catholic polemicists. 🙂
 
BackToTheRock said:
Some might think I’m taking this a step too far, but I think this sort of thing is important for every diocese to do. I think we can legitimately consider this to be part of the new evangelization. Rather than "hiding our light under a bushel) we can let society know all the things we’re doing, not out of our own righteousness, but because of what God has done for in in the RCC.
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Absolutely and this is something I am passing on to “the powers that be.” Even we Catholics sitting in the pews every week aren’t always aware…until there is a second collection 😃 But this is exactly the reason we give to the Church to support these missions.

Lisa
 
This is very simple. Jesus gave the church a mission to preach and spread the word of God. Not to feed the poor. In fact, when faced with this very question, Jesus told Judas that the poor will always be with us. The buildings, the possessions, the artwork, are all for the glory of God and for further spreading of the Word of God. Back in the day, when most of the people in the church were illiterate, artwork was one of the ways of telling the story of God and Christ. That artwork spread the Word of God, as Jesus commissioned the Apostles to do.

If the church were to sell everything, gave all the money to the poor, there would still be poor. But how would it spread the Word of God? How would it teach the faithful, how would it provide the sacraments?

The church does a lot for the poor, as posters have pointed out. Its help to the poor shouldn’t be questioned.
 
The Church creates an atmosphere within the parish that is befitting the High Priest. The adornments are not for members or priests but to pay homage to God and His kingdom. Another misunderstanding held by those outside the Church.

As for not helping the poor…I know one of the first places people go to in my city is Catholic Family Services when they are in need of food or housing. They also offer ESL classes and have a special ministry designated for refugees.
 
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