Vatican Storing Wealth for Themselves?

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Seeksadvice said:
RE Walmart - it’s starting to get beaten up by Amazon, et al. Guess what, there’s a cheaper way of doing things than Wal-Mart, and now, since being “low price” is the only card it has, it’s kind of screwed.
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That is the power of capitalism. If you try and screw the customer, the market always strikes back.

We don’t solve the world’s poverty problems by redistributing existing wealth but by helping people participate in creating new wealth.
 
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This is from Australia. The source is the Melbourne paper The Age. It is not anti-Catholic. It practices traditionally balanced journalism. It gives an indication of the sort of assets that exist at diocesan level. Most wealth is tied up in land. Its use can drain funds if it not sold. If you can’t sell it it is only a theoretical asset. But for an organisation so worried about some types of scandal, the risk of scandal around wealth is poorly managed.
 
PetraG said:
I don’t think this is about small businesses. I think this is more about outfits like Walmart, who has put both workers and their vendors over a barrel. It isn’t to keep Walmart alive. It is so Walmart can squeeze every penny up to the top that it can.
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To be fair, Wal-Mart has voluntarily raised its starting wage twice in the past five years. It currently sits at $11.00/hr, far above the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hr.
 
Heck, look at the UN. They send aid to places, only for it to be hijacked by the local militants.

It’s not a money problem, but rather a logistics and international unity problem.
 
Yes, Catholic hospitals do. I work at one, and I used to process applications for financial assistance.

Amish (we have quite a few in my area) will not take government assistance (such as Medicaid), and they get a special discount (as a community, they cover whatever is left of the bill) since they do not use insurance or government assistance.

Uninsured get a 40% reduction right off the top.

Then there’s financial assistance, which uses a formula to determine how much is written off (up to 100%). This applies to both people with insurance (especially for those high deductible plans, this is needed) and without insurance. A person applying for financial assistance needs to provide income info, expense info (housing and utilities), and the percentage is pegged to family size/federal poverty level and percentage over that level–so the lower the income, the greater the write off.
 
Seeksadvice said:
Fortune many times has to do with getting off one’s rear and doing something.
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Fortune or basic need?
Were you born into " the masses" to explain how easy it is to sleep and study under a tin roof with a hole outside as a bathroom?
Some do not zip up their pants,but make room for children.
Some do not just zip up their mouths before speaking about the most unfortunate and rejected
 
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I read a book by a doctor who works among the Old Order Amish in Lancaster County. He talked about how two Amishmen came to a local hospital with a huge crate of cash in a horse drawn wagon to pay the bill of an elderly member who’d been treated for breast cancer - they paid by literally passing a collection plate. I knew they didn’t take social insurance, but the thought of several thousand dollars in cash blew my mind.

They don’t object to paying FICA or state Medicare taxes, as it falls under being your brother’s keeper and loving your neighbor.

Found that interesting. Back to the thread.
greenrangerx said:
To be fair, Wal-Mart has voluntarily raised its starting wage twice in the past five years. It currently sits at $11.00/hr, far above the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hr.
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That’s more an hour than my junior Airmen make. The only viable difference is our health care might be better, but still.
graciew said:
Some do not just zip up their mouths before speaking about the most unfortunate and rejected
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And to be fair, he didn’t say “fortune always has to do with” X. He said “many times”. Not “every time”.
 
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Seeksadvice said:
You will never “end poverty” by throwing more money at it. The way to “end poverty” is to keep pants zipped and not reproduce like a bunch of rabbits. Famine, disease, war, etc. are all nature’s way of purging the excess population.
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Right. Because the solution to solving human problems is less humanity. :roll_eyes:

Does that really make sense for a more humane world?

Can you see how that is problematic? If you look at human history, every tragic human society has attempted to solve problems this way.
“there is only so much to go around, and the solution to scarcity is to ensure that I get mine by eliminating the competition”.

We just never learn.
 
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The overall " purge" is too much to take.
We are human .Not icebergs.
 
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Believing that others let opportunity pass them by and then blame the system doesn’t make him an iceberg, and I don’t think he is in the least. Maybe a bit cynical, but I can’t fault him for that either. We don’t know his experiences or observations. I’ve seen more than a bit of that myself and I can understand why he’d say that.

(I think Seeksadvice is a he - my apologies if I’m wrong!!)
 
Seeksadvice said:
Let’s look at “fortunate” shall we? Yes, there are those folks who are born with a silver foot in their mouth, but looking at other things. Somebody who has marketable skills should be compensated more than say a burger flipper, yes? The years (decade+) of sacrifice it takes to become a skilled neurosurgeon should be able to commend more compensation than an unskilled toilet scrubber, yes? Somebody who puts in 50-60+ hours per week to make sure that things get covered should be compensated more than the person who barely makes 40, yes?

Fortune many times has to do with getting off one’s rear and doing something.

RE Walmart - it’s starting to get beaten up by Amazon, et al. Guess what, there’s a cheaper way of doing things than Wal-Mart, and now, since being “low price” is the only card it has, it’s kind of screwed.

Also, one wonders what all of the off-shore workers would do if it weren’t for US outsourcing…
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Fortune many times is just that: fortune. What place does fortune have in God’s kingdom?
We are called to work as hard and as faithfully as possible at our tasks, but the idea that fortune comes to those who deserve it is blasphemous.
Tell it to my widowed sister in law who’s husband worked his rear end off and got cancer and died, leaving 4 children beneath the age of 10 to fend in your uber-competitive world.
 
I definitley agree.

We cannot incentivise laziness, but atill need to be merciful.
 
If Jesus Said, “The poor you will have with you always…”
 
I believe the number may have included buying out the warlords who kept food from others.

But that was from 2008 which was a DECADE ago.
 
Seeksadvice said:
Let’s look at “fortunate” shall we? Yes, there are those folks who are born with a silver foot in their mouth, but looking at other things. Somebody who has marketable skills should be compensated more than say a burger flipper, yes? The years (decade+) of sacrifice it takes to become a skilled neurosurgeon should be able to commend more compensation than an unskilled toilet scrubber, yes? Somebody who puts in 50-60+ hours per week to make sure that things get covered should be compensated more than the person who barely makes 40, yes?

Fortune many times has to do with getting off one’s rear and doing something.

RE Walmart - it’s starting to get beaten up by Amazon, et al. Guess what, there’s a cheaper way of doing things than Wal-Mart, and now, since being “low price” is the only card it has, it’s kind of screwed.

Also, one wonders what all of the off-shore workers would do if it weren’t for US outsourcing…
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Top CEOs make abouot 300 times what the average worker makes. Are you saying they deserve to be paid 300 times as much? CEO pay is six times that of the top 0.1% of earners, so this is not a “talent” thing, either.

Not 300% more. Three hundered times as much. I think the figure was $53,200 compared to $16.3 million. A year. There is no greed involved in that? Is that money really deserved based on all the sacrifices these people make? On the financial risk they are taking, such as entrepreneurs make?

If you say, “oh, well, the companies are so big, spreading some of that excessive pay out to pay the workers more wouldn’t make a difference,” I’d say, “I’ll bet those who got it would not say so.”
 
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Angel_Bradford said:
If Jesus Said, “The poor you will have with you always…”
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He also said “woe to you rich.”

St. James wrote: “Behold, the wages you withheld from the workers who harvested your fields are crying aloud, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on earth in luxury and pleasure; you have fattened your hearts for the day of slaughter.” James 5:4-5
 
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Regarding the Vatican’s ownership of artwork, should the Smithsonian, the Louvre, and other museums sell their collections to eliminate poverty? It seems a rational question to ask the person responding to you on Facebook, OP, why the Vatican is being singled out in this way. There is a human value to art and exposure to it that exceeds monetary value.
 
Ahhh, the old “Shoes of the Fisherman” argument (aka the Judas argument).

The Catholic Church is the largest provider of assistance to the poor, hungry, suffering, sick in the world.
 
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