Brooklyn:
How much do you think you could get for a cardinal’s hat? It is my general impression (though I am sure it’s not universal) that most of the “fancy” things worn by the clergy are given to them by lay people who simply want to be generous and, in their way, to glorify God by the work of their hands. I know for a fact that every last vestment our parish priest has was a gift from one parishioner or another. Every one. Some things have to be accepted in the spirit with which they are given, and for the reason given. If your child gives you a tie for Christmas, is your first thought to sell it at a garage sale in order to give the proceeds to the poor? Are the feelings of the child nothing? I will add that my parish priest otherwise lives in extremely humble circumstances. Some things have a certain psychology behind them. Why the fancy vestments at Mass when a feed sack with holes in it might do? Because human beings, being creatures of sense as well as intellect, react in certain ways to things of dignity and beauty. Those vestments give us a sense of the dignity and majesty of God. Why does a cathedral have a high ceiling instead of a low, brooding one? To draw the spirit of man upward. People have emotional reactions to things. It’s part of our natures. To push our faces always in the mud does not give us a sense of the sublime. And why did Jesus allow Mary to anoint him with the expensive ointment. Judas, of course, protested. It should have been sold and the money given to the poor, Judas said. Jesus told him to be quiet; that the poor would always be with us but that He would not. Why was Mary (and Jesus) right and Judas wrong? Because Mary did it to glorify God and to show her solicitude for Him, in the same way some Italian felter makes a Cardinal’s hat for one who, to him, is the representative of God. Judas, of course, would tell the hatmaker to sell the hat and give the money to the poor.
As to the Vatican, you might also ask why the United States government does not sell Yellowstone Park to developers who would cover it with condos. Perhaps a commercial group would buy the Grand Canyon as well, and the government could use the proceeds to help fund Medicaid. But the government doesn’t do it, because it is deemed the heritage of all the people, not just some asset to be sold. The Vatican serves a similar purpose. All the artifacts, etc represent the heritage of all the Church. Would we really all be better off if Michaelangelo’s Pieta was resting in some billionaire’s living room in Singapore or Riyadh? Would the people of the Church be better off for that; to be deprived of their inspiring majesty forever?
Then all that marble on the U.S. Capitol; the Supreme Court building,etc. It could be stripped off and replaced with that chicken wire and putty stuff they put on cheap buildings nowadays. Why doesn’t the government do that? Because we are creatures of sense and emotion, not simply of intellect. We tend to reverence the law more if it’s chief court is housed grandly. Perhaps we are all shallow in reverencing things of beauty; of wanting to preserve them; of wanting to have them in the public domain in some way. If so, we are also shallow to enjoy the birds singing in the treetops when we could be watching the worms squiggling in the mud.
Catholics throughout the world, through their giving, dwarf what the Church could get by cutting up the paintings from the Sistine Chapel and selling them to Hugh Hefner or some Columbian drug dealer. It is, in part, because the Church inspires; because, in part, of the sense of eternal mission the Church imparts in providing a refuge from the mundane and often ugly manifestations of the modern world, that people feel inspired to give.
I claim my right to give to the poor what I give to the poor, and to give my parish priest or some cardinal whatever I choose to give him. I claim my right to give a bejeweled tabernacle to my parish church if I wish, and to suppose, if it seems so to me, that some child might be inspired to a greater understanding of the majesty of God by seeing it. I claim my right, approved by Jesus Himself, to “waste” expensive ointment by putting it on His head, and to account to Him, not to Judas or anyone else, for what else I might have done with the money it cost.
