Wealth of the Vatican

[bitznbitez]

But how do you respond to people who say the grandeur has nothing to do with Jesus’ teachings in the gospels?

Another response is that the grandeur of temples in the Old Testament simply isn’t necessary anymore. We are the temples of God and God lives within us. The outer efforts to display holiness, such as abstaining from certain foods, was unnecessary after the death of Christ and many would argue that this certainly applies to grand churches and wealth.

Think of the histories. Where else but in the Churches was such beauty, art, etc. available to the common person ? They had no access to the palace. The Churches gave them beauty. And unless destroyed that beauty lasts eternally, for millenia.

The wealth of the church, generally, goes to helping the poor. They do more for the poor than any other organization on the face of the earth, and yet are attacked for not doing more. My parish just started a new homeless ministry to homeless families. This adds to their ministry of providing somewhere for homeless ill discharged from the hospital but still needing rest before they can be on their own, and with no one to care for them. We did it by endowing the effort. That means collecting an enormous sum of “wealth” and then funding the ministry with the proceeds of that “wealth”. It insulates the mission of charity from the year to year whims of the donors and creates stability. This is a long standing mindset.

Take the benedictine monasteries in Europe others too of course ]. Many were funded by Kings and Nobles to ensure that prayers for themselves were always said forever after they died. While the monastery would indeed say a mass for them each day, they used the wealth to care for the poor and the strangers who came. It was the charity/welfare net.

When the monasteries endowments and benefices were attacked and removed by nobles in the 1500s and later this money did not go to help the poor, in fact the poor were left quite destitute. Just as would happen if my parish’s “wealth” by any small baptist church standards in its endowments were seized or done away with.

 

[bitznbitez]

But how do you respond to people who say the grandeur has nothing to do with Jesus’ teachings in the gospels?

First one must understand the jewish worship and liturgy that was that of Christ and the Apostles. Christ, Paul, etc. in the synagouge, would wear the vestments and they were not plain dull garments. They belonged to the synagouge.

The secret is to understand what jewish worship was, to understand how the church evolved out of it.

 

[JerryZ]

Glory of God but maybe it just looks wrong I guess having all the wealth when people are suffering around the world.

I know the church are the biggest charity in the world and help out millions. It’s the way it looks I guess.

I am all for the Glory of God.

You should point out that:

When you consider that much of the work to actually build all those buildings and statues and paintings was done precisely as a gift to God so that all Christians visiting them would be in awe.
When someone says or bad mouths the Catholic Church for it’s “wealth” what they are in fact doing is bad mouthing GOD Himself, who gave the inspiration, the skill and LOVE for the thousands upon thousands of people that each put a little bit to show their love back to their CREATOR.

And WHO was the first institution to care for the sick and the destitute and orphan children?
Who started the universities and the centers of knowledge in the middle ages after the colapse of the Roman empire?
For that matter who carefully preserved the works of antiquity by copying them etc.

answer: the Catholic Church

 

[tafan]

But how do you respond to people who say the grandeur has nothing to do with Jesus’ teachings in the gospels?

Another response is that the grandeur of temples in the Old Testament simply isn’t necessary anymore. We are the temples of God and God lives within us. The outer efforts to display holiness, such as abstaining from certain foods, was unnecessary after the death of Christ and many would argue that this certainly applies to grand churches and wealth.

This is certainly covered in the Gospels. Directly addressed I would say. Certainly Jesus, in many places addressed almsgiving to the poor and helping the poor. So this was expected of the Church, and the Church has always made it a priority. But Jesus did not say we should focus all of our wealth on the poor in exclusion of all other things. Quite the contrary, when the women took very expensive perfume to bathe Jesus, the disciples rebuked her. The perfume she used was worth 300 silver pieces, likely a year’s wages for a average Jewish person. That would be like going to a store on 5th Aveneu and buying $50,000 worth of perfume and using it all at once. It would be shocking to anyone who us of middle or lower class today, and it was shocking then. It was extremely extravagant, yet Jesus told the disciples to let her be; she was spending the money on something just as worthily as the poor, ie honoring God. Now, you may say that Jesus said “the poor is always among you, I am not”, so now that Jesus is not on earth it is not worth spending the money. But no, Jesus is on earth, in the Eucharist.

 

[Sultan_Of_Swing]

I think people associate The Vatican wealth with the Vatican Bank which has been a source of scandal and secrecy for decades. It’s still one of the largest challenges inherited by Pope Francis. It’s been reported as a source for money laundering and because of it’s secrecy there are only estimates of how much is really there. It’s also listed as “non profit” yet not even The Pope reportedly knows how much comes in and goes out. Making the operation more transparent would tell people where the money goes.I don’t think the buildings are the issue.

Why do they keep it so secretive? What’s there to hide?

 

[tafan]

Why do they keep it so secretive? What’s there to hide?

Like all financial instutitions, they tend to be secretive until some authority forces them to be otherwise. The Vatican Bank is no exception. But the actual financials of the Holy See itself, and all of the Diocese are actually quite transparent. The need for a Vatican Bank is certainly up for debate, there are good arguments made either way. It has suffered from corruption at times (but not the financial management of the Holy See itself, that is a different thing), and I would come down on the side of doing away with the VVatican Bank. It certainly was necessary at one point, in order to assure the Holy See’s independence, but it no longer serves that purpose.

 

[Celtic_Maiden]

Well since you are about transparency, and you feel the Vatican should reveal all, you know the saying Do as I say but not as I do, I hope you are not like that, so then since transparency is your thing could you please tell everyone on the Forum what is your Annual Salary, your name and the State you live in.

Any monies coming into the Vatican, which does not include going into the Vatican itself as its free to all and every generation, what a gift that we don’t have to pay in to view some of the treasures, but how do you think the Church pays for all the Charities around the world, yes part of that is from royalties of book sales and donations , for Hospitals, Schools etc.
As a Christian do you give part of your money to Charity ? Don’t expect of others what you don’t do yourself.

Remember if we love the Lord only the BEST WILL DO, APART FROM THE LORD Requiring it, as many of the previous Testaments quotes, put it in another way if you were to give your mother a present for her Birthday would you not pick the best flowers in the shop you could or would you pick a weed and give it to her, when we love someone we give them THE BEST so it is with the Lord, ie The Vatican. All can come to the Vatican and feel the experience of the breath of the Lord in the Eucharist there. Speak Lord for your Servant Heareth.

 

[Jessie5000]

Iguess you have not heard of Peters Pence and the fact the church runs a deficit…

 

[R1ch4rd]

Well since you are about transparency, and you feel the Vatican should reveal all, you know the saying Do as I say but not as I do, I hope you are not like that, so then since transparency is your thing could you please tell everyone on the Forum what is your Annual Salary, your name and the State you live in.

If I were a non profit organization, this would be a matter of public record. As it is, you and I are required to report this information before April 16th of each year. If we feel our “donation” is not going to good use, we can’t just stop donating or the IRS will want to know why. As a board member of my Church, we want our parishioners to know what we have, what is needed and where it goes. It’s not being nosy, it’s good management of what I collect as an usher.

I guess you have not heard of Peters Pence and the fact the church runs a deficit…

Your correct, The Church runs a deficit but the Vatican Bank does not. Tens of millions have been reportedly sent to US Dioceses to help offset the cost of abuse payouts and while officially not part of the church, it was instituted by Pope Pius XII and still reports to Pope Francis.

The bank also makes up the deficit the church runs on because if we ran a deficit every year without making it up some way, more churches would be closing then are now. If we have nothing to hide, we should at least work under the same accounting practices as all other banks.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Exactly. I think many of the beautiful churches were built by people that looked at them as a reflection of heaven. In other words it was a beacon of hope against the toil and drudgery of their daily lives.

The story is that the pagan ruler of Russia adopted Greek Orthodoxy because his representatives in Constantinople, upon attending services in Hagia Sophia reported that they “could not tell whether they were in heaven or on earth”, so beautiful it was.

This topic reminds me of a conversation I had with a man on a church building committee. His thoughts and mine were very different. His position was that churches should become “intimate worship spaces”, closed in, plain.

My position was that boys and men in particular need to experience something “greater than themselves”. Boys are Huns by nature, and are not captivated by “intimate worship spaces” in which they, in their imaginations, dominate. They are captivated by grandeur; by something vastly “greater than themselves”. That was the whole thought behind Greek and Roman architecture. It was the thought behind Washington D.C.'s architecture, and that of many places.

We didn’t end up agreeing, of course, except to the fact that boys (he has two) are, indeed, Huns by nature and require magnificence of some kind to turn them from Hunnic ways. We continued to disagree about whether expression of that in church is appropriate.

Protestantism, of course, opted for plainness, and there is no surprise to that. Emphasizing personal interpretation of God’s word and the private formulation of morality, they did not not need, or want, overwhelming grandeur outside themselves. Subjectivity is inward-turning. Objective truth is outward-turning.

 

[Sultan_Of_Swing]

Well since you are about transparency, and you feel the Vatican should reveal all, you know the saying Do as I say but not as I do, I hope you are not like that, so then since transparency is your thing could you please tell everyone on the Forum what is your Annual Salary, your name and the State you live in.

Any monies coming into the Vatican, which does not include going into the Vatican itself as its free to all and every generation, what a gift that we don’t have to pay in to view some of the treasures, but how do you think the Church pays for all the Charities around the world, yes part of that is from royalties of book sales and donations , for Hospitals, Schools etc.
As a Christian do you give part of your money to Charity ? Don’t expect of others what you don’t do yourself.

Remember if we love the Lord only the BEST WILL DO, APART FROM THE LORD Requiring it, as many of the previous Testaments quotes, put it in another way if you were to give your mother a present for her Birthday would you not pick the best flowers in the shop you could or would you pick a weed and give it to her, when we love someone we give them THE BEST so it is with the Lord, ie The Vatican. All can come to the Vatican and feel the experience of the breath of the Lord in the Eucharist there. Speak Lord for your Servant Heareth.

Actually most Protestant churches give their members a fiscal report every year and try to be as transparent as possible.

You would expect even more so from the visible structure of the Body of Christ.

Why would the administration of the Body of Christ keep things from the Body itself? One part of the Body cannot keep things from the rest. That’s not how it should work.

 

[Cardinalsong]

It isn’t the rich who built the great churches of the world. Ask the poor Irish immigrants who built St. Patrick’s Cathedral whether they’d rather worship God in the same shack where they spend the rest of their week.

And many of the folks who started on the cathedrals didn’t live to see the completion. They knew they would never see it but built it out of love for our Lord and his Church. It certainly wasn’t about great monetary wealth.

 

[Joe_5859]

Actually most Protestant churches give their members a fiscal report every year and try to be as transparent as possible.

You would expect even more so from the visible structure of the Body of Christ.

Why would the administration of the Body of Christ keep things from the Body itself? One part of the Body cannot keep things from the rest. That’s not how it should work.

There are a lot of accusations about a lack of financial transparency and I haven’t seen any evidence to back up such assertions.

Any parish or diocese I have ever looked at provides annual reports for all to see.

Let’s not condemn the Church based on hearsay.

 

[bitznbitez]

Why do they keep it so secretive? What’s there to hide?

Why don’t you personally publish your financial details to the world ? For the same reason.

 

[CalCatholic]

Actually most Protestant churches give their members a fiscal report every year and try to be as transparent as possible.

You would expect even more so from the visible structure of the Body of Christ.

Why would the administration of the Body of Christ keep things from the Body itself? One part of the Body cannot keep things from the rest. That’s not how it should work.

You can find out about the Vatican finances online: www.news.va/en/news/holy-see-financial-statements-for-2011

The Vatican (which is a sovereign state) which administers to a global Catholic population of 1.2 billion people, operates on an annual budget of 1/4 of that of Harvard University.

 

[R1ch4rd]

There are a lot of accusations about a lack of financial transparency and I haven’t seen any evidence to back up such assertions.

Any parish or diocese I have ever looked at provides annual reports for all to see.

Let’s not condemn the Church based on hearsay.

Joe, I don’t think we’re talking individual churches, Dioceses or even The Vatican but there is no doubt about the secrecy and questionable practices regarding the Vatican Bank.

nytimes.com/2013/05/31/world/europe/vatican-bank-looks-to-shed-its-image-as-an-offshore-haven.html?_r=0

foxnews.com/world/2013/05/31/vatican-bank-chief-havent-rendered-good-service-to-holy-father/

catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1302393.htm

If your not convinced by these, just Google Vatican Bank and you’ll find page after page…

 

[R1ch4rd]

You can find out about the Vatican finances online: www.news.va/en/news/holy-see-financial-statements-for-2011

The Vatican (which is a sovereign state) which administers to a global Catholic population of 1.2 billion people, operates on an annual budget of 1/4 of that of Harvard University.

This is correct for The Holy See. Now try to find the assets of the Vatican Bank and you’ll find it’s anywhere from as low as 6 BILLION to as high as 12 BILLION. If it were not a major issue it wouldn’t be one of Pope Francis’s top priorities (and problems).

 

[Sultan_Of_Swing]

Why don’t you personally publish your financial details to the world ? For the same reason.

Because I am not a Church responsible for over 1 billion people. These people are all members of this Church, of this Body, and have a right to know how money is used and managed. This is the Body of Christ, and like I said the administration of the Body should not be keeping things from the Body itself. While the Vatican may have some authority over the earthly Body, they are still a member of this Body and should not be keeping secrets from the other parts of this Body.

 

[PetrusRomanus]

You can always invite them to remove the log out of their eye as they criticize the Vatican in their air conditioned, comfyand safe, disease free house as they type up their nonsense behind a fancy computer on the internet, and ask what they are doing and have done to feed the worlds poor.

…and then, it doesnt compare at all to what the Church has done for the poor throughout the ages.

 

[tafan]

Actually most Protestant churches give their members a fiscal report every year and try to be as transparent as possible.

You would expect even more so from the visible structure of the Body of Christ.

Why would the administration of the Body of Christ keep things from the Body itself? One part of the Body cannot keep things from the rest. That’s not how it should work.

Actually, every Catholic Parish and Diocese gives it members a detailed fiscal report every year and are quite transparent.