Tags
church finances, Exploitation of the Credulous, Mother Teresa, Red Cross, St Vincent de Paul, Strikes in France, The Church's raison d'être
I love France which has been my home for forty of my last fifty years. My nom-de-plume is “Frank O’Phile” : a fair dinkum Aussie whose francophilia led him to become a French citizen. I think I know France better than most of my former compatriots; I even published an article in the Sydney Morning Herald (March 13, 1998) entitled “Let’s Be Frank About France”, in which I sang my adopted country’s praises. But France has its faults. For example, I have an idea that revolutionary France invented strikes. In 1964, when I arrived in Rome having traveled from Sydney, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok and about to complete the last leg of my journey to Paris, I discovered that I could not. Paris’ airport, Orly, was, as usual, on strike.
After Air France’s pilots’ strike last week, this week France’s pharmacies closed and pharmacists staged a massive, and for them rare, strike. The reason, of course, was the threat to their livelihood : supermarkets, as in the States, may put them out of business if they are allowed to sell off-the-shelf pharmaceutical products. The chemists claim to be consultants, not just shop-keepers. Their slogan : “Your health is not a business.”
Of course it is. Surgeons, doctors, nurses, paramedics and pharmacists all make a living from our need for medical and health care. They may be good, generous, dedicated, competent professionals, but they are not the Red Cross. They may have had the purest of motives in choosing their profession, but they expect, rightly, to be paid for their services. Today in France pharmacists face potential commercial competition. Many want a piece of the pie; you don’t need a diploma to sell aspirin.
Some readers may at this point be tempted to rush off to post a comment on the pros and cons in a debate concerning what is only an analogy, as they did recently with my example of the Sainte Chapelle as a “house of glass”, my metaphor for the Church, as a glass-house in which people are advised not to throw stones. In the present context, strikes and pharmacies are NOT the point. The point is, as you thought when you began reading this post : Is the Church “just a business” ?
Please don’t expect me to come out with all the tired broadsides against the Church, accused of being a mere means of making money. The Church, in a way, IS a Red Cross, a spiritual philanthropy. It is dedicated to helping people find the true meaning of their lives, to spreading Jesus’ revelation of the depth of God’s love for all mankind, to encouraging people to love one another, to lead lives built on the Beatitudes, to prepare themselves for Heaven, the reward of the just. The Church is called, by its very nature and mission, to be an exemplar of the brotherly love it preaches, an institution committed to sharing with the world the Good News, the Joy and Hope of the Gospel, and to incarnate the love of God by feeding the hungry, healing the sick, educating the ignorant, reinforcing faith in Jesus’ redemption, sustaining the courage of believers in face of adversity and guiding them along the Way of Christ to eternal life.
I think that is a fair mission-statement of the Church’s raison d’être. To provide a living for its clergy, volunteers all, it must give them a modest salary and take care of their material needs. The Church is financed by the generosity and charity of its own members. St Vincent de Paul, Mother Teresa and the Church today could not care for the poor, the sick and the dying without the income provided by the collections and contributions of its Faithful. But the Church is not a business. It is not a multinational dedicated to enriching its investors. It is, to use the cliché, a “charity”, not just a non-profit organization but a philanthropic association more like “Doctors without Borders” than a business like a local pharmacy or a pharmaceutical giant. It is true, unfortunately, that some of its “Pastors”, “Overseers” (the etymological meaning of “Bishops”), and even its Supreme Pontiff, the “Holy Father”, “the Servant of the Servants of God”, sometimes use their too generous income and acquired personal wealth to live lives of lavish luxury. But these are the exceptions. It is grossly unjust to condemn the Catholic Church as though it were essentially an institution dedicated to milking the poor and conning the credulous into giving its ministers a free ride.
“His dictis” – all this having been said – the real problem with the Church is its usually sincere and well-intentioned exploitation of the credulous. The Faithful are paying for the perpetuation of comforting (and sometimes frightening) myths, and the exploiting of their ignorance, fears and wishful thinking. In spite of the good faith and generous, selfless dedication of the majority of its clergy, it continues to promote groundless, irrational, silly beliefs, silly rules and silly rituals. Some critics, like Christopher Hitchens, go so far as to say that as an institution of religion, it “poisons everything”. True believers naturally will never accept this, and are happy to contribute to the only “business” they recognize in the Church : saving immortal souls. The problem is that indestructible “souls”, supposed to survive death, do not exist, any more than the God who they believe created them and the imagined eternal life He is said to have promised them. Believe it if you like. Pay for the Propagation of the Faith if you wish. It makes no sense to me.
P.S. Congratulations on persevering to the very end of this post, instead of just harrumphing at the title and dismissing the article, before even reading it, as another vicious, hate-filled attack on the Church. But just between you and me and the gate-post – apart from the final paragraph – you DID expect me to trot out the usual stuff, n’est-ce pas ? Judging a book by its cover or an article by its title is called “prejudice”. We all have prejudices, atheists and non-atheists alike. Recognizing them can make discussion of controversial subjects a little more rational.
RIDENDA RELIGIO
Blind Faith: Blind Folly 
The 5th para almost had me reaching for the Holy Water – almost. Frank was clearly a great loss to the Franciscans and the Church generally, whatever you think about it being a business. And sadly I have to say that at long last I finally disagree with Frank – well in part anyway – at least in a business sense.
The jewel in the crown of the British legal system is often claimed to be creation of the “company” as a legal person or entity – the creation of legal existence where none existed before. Rather like an act of God I suppose. And rogues, scoundrels, carpet baggers and others have been exploiting the legalities of “incorporation” ever since. But Frank is correct. The Catholic Church is not a legal entity – at least not here in Australia. Sydney’s former Archbishop, Cardinal George Pell, now happily managing Vatican finances in Rome, successfully argued, through his lawyers, who were acting on his advice and with his explicit approval, that the Catholic Church did not legally exist here in Australia. There was of course a very good commercial reason for this business strategy – the avoidance of paying hard cash to a victim of sexual abuse by a Church employee. The good Cardinal later recanted, well sort of, but not before the precedent had been established which the Church lawyers were at pains to insist would be used again if the need arose – again good business strategy. The Vatican’s finances are perhaps in good, well let’s say capable, hands in Rome with George.
One of the principal obligations of a corporation or company or business is to avoid trading whilst insolvent. For this, if you are a business or corporation, you need cash, loot and usually lots of it. For this you need money-men – money changers. Christ tossed them out of the Temple (what became of the cash ?) but there have been some colourful money changers in the temples of the Catholic Church in recent times. Cardinal Francis Spellman bankrolled the Vatican and much of the Catholic Church during the papacy of Pius XII. Spellman also bad-mouthed the radio-priest Bishop Fulton Sheen, also a dab hand at money raising, to Pius. Sheen came out on top and in the process vindicated the judgement of one of Spellman’s seminary supervisors of him as “that fat little liar”. Spellman also managed a rather unconventional but quite active sex life (J Edgar Hoover’s files had all the necesary dirt on anyone who mattered). The pugilist Archbishop Paul Marcinkus also managed to mix it with some unsavoury types in the Banco Ambrosiano affair in which Roberto Calvi ended up dead – hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London – punching Paul could tell us more but it would not be good for business. Some of the Vatican’s investments are/were also a bit suss. Investing in condom manufacturing enterprises doesn’t mesh all that well with official teaching banning birth control – but what the heck – a buck is a buck as Gertrude Stein might have said. And then, yes and then, there was the charismatic wheeler-dealer Father Marcial Maciel Degollado who dragged in the dough and the seminarians in unprecedented numbers and quantities – helping himself along the way to a small fortune and fiddling with the boys on the side as well as fathering three kids to different women. Saint Pope John Paul II loved the guy – who wouldn’t? And protected him – maybe JP2 was gaga by this stage. Pope Benedict XVI couldn’t avoid the scandal when JP2 finally passed into eternal glory. That and other scandals finally convinced Benny that he had to pass the baton before he too passed to eternal glory. That decision by Benedict will go down as one of the most rational decisions by any Pope of any era. He was past it – he had had a gut full and he wanted out. A very sound commercial business decision. But he hasn’t gone completely. Business succession plans require the former incumbent to disappear in order to give the new boy a free hand to run the show as he wants. Benny is still living in Rome – still dolls up in papal white – and is still known as Pope Emeritus. Poor Frank, Pope Francis that is, must wait until Benny finally cashes in his chips before he can get on with the business of running the show the way he wants – which he has clearly signalled is likely to be a little bit different from his predecessors.
So the point of the above trip through the corridors of Church power is not to denigrate the good work done by the many dedicated men and women in the various institutions affiliated with the legally non-existent Church but to demonstrate that the Church is indeed a business made and run by men. It has its bankers, lawyers, investment advisers, public relations gurus, shady operators, standover men and hard workers. It has a corporate plan. It controls enormous wealth.
Sorry Frank, it is a business..
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The Church, we agree, is staffed, for the most part, by “many dedicated men and women” who do “good work”. We agree too that there are “exceptions”, like some of those you mention. In this blog I have had occasion to speak of Archbishop Marchinkus and his shady dealings which resulted in his protective self-incarceration in the Vatican to avoid arrest by the Italian police (only readers of this Blog would know that he was also the confidant close enough to Pope Paul VI to be able to accelerate the granting of my dispensation from the priesthood). Flamboyant Fulton Sheen, never accused of wrong-doing, I mention twice in my book, as our model as a preacher (p.36) and for his “Life is Worth Living” mentioned in the book’s final paragraph (p.230).
But your point is that the Church IS a business. Mine is that it needs to be financed, and its finances need to be managed, but that its raison d’être is not “to milk the poor” and to provide “its ministers a free ride”. Wheelers and dealers like Spellman and Degollado I would put in the debit column; they brought no credit to the Church and its image. Most Catholics love the splendor of the Vatican, its art treasures, its pageantry, its magnificently choreographed liturgy. But it remains an anachronism and an embarrassing reminder of its sometimes outrageous past, including the financing of its reconstruction by the sale of indulgences. Its unique status as a State, its functioning as a multinational organization, its investments in real estate and airlines and other businesses including the one you mentioned …, the enormous sums of money it has to handle, the scandal of the bankruptcy of certain dioceses due to the court-ordered indemnities incurred by pedophile priests, all contribute to its exposure to criticism from within and from outside the Church. It remains true that the Church, in the main, is faithful to its mission. It is also true that that mission is a misguided one, where the blind continue to lead the blind to the blindfaithblindfolly you, Thom, and I both regret and condemn.
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Well I’m glad we got that straight – and straight from the orsus orrifus (that’s Latin for horse’s mouth by the way).
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Church ?
This blog is about religion ?
– The “jewish church” has been created to give power to the leaders, to improve business if you want ; it remains an important motivation nowadays. If I look around me, jews who practice are more numerous than jews who believe (it’s the contrary for catholics)
– The catholic Church was created to diminish that power. In France all the studies I red concluded that priest is a very bad job, lot of hours of work and one of the lowest income ; I suppose that we cannot consider that the final aim of l’abbé Pierre who worry about ‘SDF” his whole life was to improve property developers’ benefits ….
– The muslin Church ? if we follow the most radical one it will not remain lot of businesses,
I like to look at “les guignols” on C+TV. There are funny sketches where the “world company” uses the pope and it’s weakness to develop business effectively. They mock the capitalism more than credulity
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Outside France, much of what you say would be incomprehensible. Hopefully everyone knows the saintly Abbé Pierre and his life-long work for the homeless, the SDF, the “Sans Domicile Fixe”. But “les guignols on C+TV”, I must explain, refers to a hard-hitting TV program on Canal Plus cable channel featuring “guignols”, animated puppets, which lampoons everyone and everything, including the Vatican.
Yes, Laroche, this blog IS about religion, all religions and their silly beliefs, silly rules and silly rituals. The question is whether the Catholic Church’s purpose is “to milk the poor” and provide “a free ride” for its ministers. Apparently you believe the problem, as usual, is Judaism whose sole purpose is to “improve business” and that the Catholic Church “was created to diminish that power”. I have already stated what I consider to be the raison d’être of the Church. But you are right in implicitly reminding us of Jesus’ violence against the intrusion of money-lenders in the Temple.
I do not share your fixation on Judaism as the cause of all our problems with religion. When I repeat “Ridenda Religio” or even “Delenda Religio”, I am speaking of ALL religions, but naturally with most of my examples drawn from my own knowledge and experience of Catholicism. My readers, I’m sure, are almost all exclusively Christians or ex-Christians. Jewish and Muslim Believers on the Brink are most welcome, but I doubt that they read what you and I write.
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Thank you to try to make my post a little more understandable Franck
I make no fixation on Jews, I love them, chiefly the one that promised me to buy my flat !
But I am ? a little angry to read attacks on Catholics because of their relation to business ! In France we used to teach that the main real difference between Catholics and Protestants was … money : Catholics even did not dare to speak of it while Protestants created the first French banks. These banks have now few influence compare to the American ones, created by ??? (Goldman sachs, etc …).
If we search for factual actions, I bet that the catholic church is the less implicated in business life
For me, this religion is easily criticized each time it relies on “god action” such as birth control. In less than 100 years we grew from 1 to 6 milliards on our little earth. Which religion studies this problem ?
I am not a believer but I give money each month to 3 catholics organizations, comprising “le denier du culte” (to pay priests)
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Félicitations, mon ami ! Your English is improving, though there are some mistakes you could easily avoid. Here’s an example : “Priests do not earn MUCH money; they usually have very FEW (not very MANY) euros in their bank-account.” “Many” and “few” are used when you are talking about separate objects which you can count, for example, coins and banknotes (although we do also say that we count … money). The following examples may be clearer : “I do not consume MUCH sugar; I use only a FEW spoonfuls in cooking”, or “I do not have MUCH clothing in my wardrobe, just a couple of suits and a FEW shirts and ties.”
The Church possesses great capital, MUCH money. It has MANY art treasures and MUCH real estate, MANY properties, some of which are churches and presbyteries, as well as others which are rent-producing investments. Thom and I have expressed somewhat different opinions about the Church being a business. But I would have to agree with him, and disagree with you, about the Church being “less implicated in business life”.
Generous and ecumenical of you, a non-believer, to contribute to the upkeep of the clergy. The Information Technology company which employed you and me, Capgemini, purchased a former Jesuit seminary as the site of its corporate University. The Château of “Les Fontaines” in Chantilly, purchased after World War 2 by the Society of Jesus, had been the home of the Baron Rothschild, a distinguished Jewish doctor famous also as a playwright and for his fidelity to the family tradition of philanthropy. His mother, an obsessively devout practitioner of orthodox Judaism, was extremely generous. Discreetly, she covered all the personal expenses of the local Catholic priest ! She was an insufferable autocrat but a model of Jewish ecumenism, long before Vatican 2 encouraged Catholics to respect other religions . . .
You are concerned about overpopulation and wonder whether “religion studies this problem”. I can’t speak for our three monotheisms, naturally, but I can refer you to my own brief reflections on the subject, both in my book, pages 82 and 103, and to the post in this Blog of August, 2013, “Inferno : Hell, Nonfire”. “Inferno” (an anagram for “nonfire”) you will recall, is the title of Dan Brown’s book based on the theme of the very real threat of overpopulation and the vindication of Malthus.
Thank you FOR TRYING (not “to try”) so courageously to master my infuriating mother-tongue (pronounced “tung”, not “tong”). I dare to hope that our Blog may have, not “FEW influence”, but “SOME” influence on your English expression.
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I shall refer to a common remembrance of a Capgemini meeting : one of us, a swiss one I believe, presented the book he just wrote to glorify the american press, the deepness of their study, etc …
This was the year when thousands of Americans were discovering that they were ruined, following the bankruptcy of Texaco?, previously praised by the press, and chiefly, the year when Bush was telling everyone that the Iraqis, that they were embargoed for 10 years, had weapons of mass destruction!
I was ashamed for him
Are you really impressed by the land resources of the Catholic church Frank ? These are just fillers!
The survival of many churches that people are willing to visit but that they do not want to maintain (can not) is not a business !
And during that time, Islam harvest oil money!
Once more, you focus on a point where catholics are the weakest !
I knew the French were champion in self scourging ; I wonder if they are not beaten by former Catholic austaliens ?
PS : about my english, it follows the progresses of google translation (lol)
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Just one clarification : outside France, the Church owns churches and church property. It sells the ones no one goes to anymore as discotheques.
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I ate also in superb churches transformed in restaurants. Doesn’t it show that “business” is gone since and for (?) a long time for Catholics ?
In Alsace, I believe that churches are maintained by the State (a “benefit” of war that let some german laws). Otherwise, old churches are often transferred for 1 symbolic euro to town to avoid this maintenance
Another example of the weak importance of the “business” catholics actions : schools ! they were perhaps created with the aim to enforce religious believes and to earn money …
These last years, the relative frequentation of these private schools is increasing in France. It has nothing to do
. Nor with some increase of faith
. Nor with the need of money (this activity depends principally of state’s subventions)
For that educative action as for lot of others, I find no reason to hound against Catholics
Remark : My five children were almost the alone to attend public schools in my town between Trappes and La Verrière (a mix of north Africans and Africans) ; thanks to their friends I know that religious teachings were facultative … and few used … which is not at all the case for jewish schools)
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