Wealth

[MoreCoffee]

You also make good points here. Sometimes an entity either sets up, or is given, something that subsequently rises tremendously in value - witness the Salvation Army offices in London EC4, within sight of St Paul's Cathedral and just on the edge of the financial district. That office must be worth a fortune (in fairness I don't know if they own it or rent it). Assuming they own it, in theory they could sell it to raise money for their cause, but then they'd have to find another office (hugely expensive), move all their staff out (also an expensive process) and potentially end up not actually liberating a whole lot of cash.

It would be a tragedy to destroy ancient artwork just for the sake of box ticking. At the same time the church does seem to be in a curious position of being wealthy yet apparently impoverished. I don't know about the Catholic Church but in the UK at least it seems the Anglican church is reckoned to be very wealthy and yet church buildings struggle to raise money for repairs. I don't know if the perception of wealth is wrong, if the wealth is largely illiquid, or if there really is some kind of system that sucks wealth upwards and seldom lets it trickle back down again.

One thing I've often found is that the people who shout the loudest about not having luxuries because the money could be used to help the poor totally miss the irony in doing their shouting on the luxury that is an internet forum and ultimately usually fall back on arguments like the fact they use the library, or (more usually) mummy and daddy are paying for the internet because little Jimmy hasn't left home yet. Apparently for him the internet is a necessity whereas for everyone else it's a luxury. Even using the library fails because if you really want to take the line that luxuries are bad and should be sacrificed for the sake of the poor then you might as well be consistent and accept that luxury use of free time is equally bad, given the free time could be used to help those less fortunate.

But going back to your point MC, it does sometimes seem like another case of people expecting Someone Else to give before they give, merely because Someone Else has more to give. That didn't hold the widow back in Mark 12, and Jesus noticed what she did and gave her greater recognition than those who put in incomparably more money.

The Vatican was a cemetery when saint Peter died, when it was given to the Catholic Church by Constantine it was empty but Constantine had a Church built there - the First Saint Peter's - over the many centuries since then it was expanded and new buildings built and finally the current Saint Peter's was built about 500 years ago. Similar stories go for Notre Dame in Paris, for the Pantheon (now a Catholic Church) in Rome, and for nearly all the old and ancient church buildings owned by the Catholic Church. 2,000 years is a lot of time for buildings and artifacts to appreciate in value - many artifacts have become priceless antiquities over those 20 centuries. But antiquities need to be maintained and church buildings do too so there is a cost incurred to maintain them that is often very high indeed. They could be turned over to the nation in trust but then no wealth would be forthcoming from their "sale".

My own parish is a good example of wealth given to the church. A wealthy lady who had been a member for more than 50 years died with no surviving family so she left her wealth to the local parish and to the archdiocese. The wealth that my parish received was a money bequest of more than a million dollars and ownership of several commercial properties in the local town centre. As a result my parish no longer has any debts. Instead there is income from the commercial properties as well as the generous giving of the people and what do we - as a perish - do with it? We give $20,000 a year to the diocese to support parishes that cannot support themselves, we give $2,000 a year to support the curia in Rome, we give $100,000 a year to missions in Papua New Guinea and East Africa, and we give another $75,000 to $100,000 to the poor in our locale. Other collections for missions and hospitals in poor nations gather abound $50,000 each year from the parishioners. We maintain voluntary organisations for helping the infirm and elderly with transportation, meals, visits for company, gardening, shopping, and numerous other small things that matter when you can't do them for yourself. We are able to give thus because we have no debts and we have income that offsets many of our expenses. We also actively support many Catholic charities.

As an aside, not many member in my parish tithe to the church most give generously to charities, programs to help the poor, and other Catholic organisations (monastic orders and the like) who serve the poor and diseased in lands where no other help is at hand. I myself give more to charity than to the parish church.

None of this makes us better Christians than others who choose a different way and give a tithe to their congregation's leadership. Yet none of it makes us worse either.

 

[psalms 91]

This is where I think the whole concept of giving needs to come under closer scrutiny. In many ways this whole concept of tithing is an easy option. We dutifully hand over 10% to "the church" (whatever that means) and figure we've done our bit. Sometimes that seems like such a soft option, just write a check and let someone else do the dirty work of loving the unlovely and looking after the people who smell bad and we'd rather not get too close to.

Just to be clear, this isn't intended as a comment against you personally Bill because I struggle with this exact thing - my inclination is to write a check and let someone else do the dirty work - and for all I know you may do far more for the needy than I do.

I think MC has hit on a really good point here. It's easy to look at Someone Else who has More Than We Have and figure that they should be doing more for the needy. Hey, they've got a lot of money, they can afford it. And along the way we overlook the fact that maybe we have a spare bedroom that might get a homeless person off the streets, even if only for a few days. Maybe we have some spare time that we could volunteer to teach basic life skills to those who can't get a job because they can't read or write, or home economics to someone who lost their home because they didn't understand the concept of a budget and didn't pay their rent. Maybe we could spend half an hour with an elderly person who is financially just fine but who lives on their own and never has any visitors and gets desperately lonely. But for as long as we're focusing on what we think Someone Else should be doing, we're not focusing on what we might be doing.

What Jesus said about the widow's mite strikes true today as much as any other time. We'll never get "the rich" (whoever they may be in the context of any given rant) to pay "their fair share" (another vague term useful for rabble rousing but otherwise utterly meaningless), but we can lead by example. It may take billions of dollars to fund research into malaria to save however many children in Africa but it might only take $50 to make a huge difference to the single mother down the road who is doing the best she can but who desperately needs a new tire for her car so she can continue to go to work.

We can all do more was my point, I also in addition run a program called Bountiful Blessings which gives non food items to prople in need and also help at the food bank. I am sure that many here do things like this as well

 

[psalms 91]

The Vatican was a cemetery when saint Peter died, when it was given to the Catholic Church by Constantine it was empty but Constantine had a Church built there - the First Saint Peter's - over the many centuries since then it was expanded and new buildings built and finally the current Saint Peter's was built about 500 years ago. Similar stories go for Notre Dame in Paris, for the Pantheon (now a Catholic Church) in Rome, and for nearly all the old and ancient church buildings owned by the Catholic Church. 2,000 years is a lot of time for buildings and artifacts to appreciate in value - many artifacts have become priceless antiquities over those 20 centuries. But antiquities need to be maintained and church buildings do too so there is a cost incurred to maintain them that is often very high indeed. They could be turned over to the nation in trust but then no wealth would be forthcoming from their "sale".

My own parish is a good example of wealth given to the church. A wealthy lady who had been a member for more than 50 years died with no surviving family so she left her wealth to the local parish and to the archdiocese. The wealth that my parish received was a money bequest of more than a million dollars and ownership of several commercial properties in the local town centre. As a result my parish no longer has any debts. Instead there is income from the commercial properties as well as the generous giving of the people and what do we - as a perish - do with it? We give $20,000 a year to the diocese to support parishes that cannot support themselves, we give $2,000 a year to support the curia in Rome, we give $100,000 a year to missions in Papua New Guinea and East Africa, and we give another $75,000 to $100,000 to the poor in our locale. Other collections for missions and hospitals in poor nations gather abound $50,000 each year from the parishioners. We maintain voluntary organisations for helping the infirm and elderly with transportation, meals, visits for company, gardening, shopping, and numerous other small things that matter when you can't do them for yourself. We are able to give thus because we have no debts and we have income that offsets many of our expenses. We also actively support many Catholic charities.

As an aside, not many member in my parish tithe to the church most give generously to charities, programs to help the poor, and other Catholic organisations (monastic orders and the like) who serve the poor and diseased in lands where no other help is at hand. I myself give more to charity than to the parish church.

None of this makes us better Christians than others who choose a different way and give a tithe to their congregation's leadership. Yet none of it makes us worse either.

Awonderful testuimony of Gods provisdion and charitable giveng. I think this is wonderful and a few million that produces wealth that is given is much different than having billions but perhaps the church uses that money much as your parish does, I dont know but the figure is staggering

 

[tango]

We can all do more was my point, I also in addition run a program called Bountiful Blessings which gives non food items to prople in need and also help at the food bank. I am sure that many here do things like this as well

And a very good point it is, we can all do more before we worry about what other people are doing.

In many ways helping at a local level is the best thing to do. It's easy to just write a check and hand the problem to someone else, but how often does that money just get absorbed into some form of quasi-corporate structure that sucks it upwards and ends up not using it as efficiently as we might use it on the ground? And in so many cases how would we even know?

If you're helping at something local like the food bank you'll soon figure out if someone is turning up in a new Mercedes S-class to collect some free food. You'll also be more likely to find out about non-financial needs they have. I remember an older man at my former church - when his wife died he was totally lost. Financially speaking he was just fine, his wife had been very good at managing their household budget, but week after week after week at church it was clear that what he needed more than anything else was just some human company. It's hard to see any centralised system meeting such a need, most systems identify a need, figure out what it's worth in dollars and cents (or pounds and pence, depending) and hand over the calculated sum of money. They break down completely when someone has needs that don't readily convert into sums of cash.

If your food bank is anything like ours, you probably know exactly what I'm talking about

 

[psalms 91]

And a very good point it is, we can all do more before we worry about what other people are doing.

In many ways helping at a local level is the best thing to do. It's easy to just write a check and hand the problem to someone else, but how often does that money just get absorbed into some form of quasi-corporate structure that sucks it upwards and ends up not using it as efficiently as we might use it on the ground? And in so many cases how would we even know?

If you're helping at something local like the food bank you'll soon figure out if someone is turning up in a new Mercedes S-class to collect some free food. You'll also be more likely to find out about non-financial needs they have. I remember an older man at my former church - when his wife died he was totally lost. Financially speaking he was just fine, his wife had been very good at managing their household budget, but week after week after week at church it was clear that what he needed more than anything else was just some human company. It's hard to see any centralised system meeting such a need, most systems identify a need, figure out what it's worth in dollars and cents (or pounds and pence, depending) and hand over the calculated sum of money. They break down completely when someone has needs that don't readily convert into sums of cash.

If your food bank is anything like ours, you probably know exactly what I'm talking about

Yes I do and have prayed with many and listened