Posted on 08/05/2014 11:54:37 AM PDT by NYer
Ping!
I don’t watch CNN at all - but my estimate now is that since they have beat the drums of this issue, I can expect to see it in print on our local, lefty newspaper any day now.
In the Diocese of Salt Lake City, the Bishop’s Residence is a fabulous home, with a HUGE parcel of land in one of the most tony neighborhoods in the city. That is what the press would print. The rest of the story: The residence was donated to the diocese a few years ago by a very wealthy convert. The Bishop spends 1 MAYBE 2 nights a week there. Otherwise, he has a modest apartment next to the cathedral. The residence is used mostly for gatherings; when the Bishop or diocese is hosting.
The rectory of St. Pat’s is lovely. Why not? The cathedral is lovely, too. Compared to Europe, though, it is quite modest.
And who cares, anyway? That Catholics have a great eye for beauty is a plus not a minus - that’s part of the Italian heritage. And I speak as someone who loves the protestant church architecture in America (I mean circa 18th century).
Just another dopey attack.
Yeah, mine too. Our bishop (I live in the seat of a tiny diocese, big in land but small in population) lives in a couple of rooms in an ugly rectory built in the 1960s behind the Cathedral. He’s Cuban born and arrived here as a child refugee and grew up with a foster family in Indiana.
But that doesn’t matter. Catholic = bad.
St. Francis was a rich man's son; that's a little different. The wealth he renounced remained with his father, the owner.
(Why be nitpicky? Just because I can!)
Despite all the smoke in the article these bishops are living in a splendor the Christ never had on earth. It is worldly, as are their costumes.
“CNN published an inflammatory and provocative piece of link-bait over the weekend criticizing the Catholic Church”
CNN might as well be talking about big blocks vs. small blocks. Since they don’t know $hit about religion and they don’t $hit about engines makes them credible about neither. I suppose it would be a lot like me talking about what it’s like to be a homosexual or soccer...
So are you, unless you're living on the street or moving from one friend's couch to another's, with an occasional stop at your Mom's.
I really have no issues with the opulence, art, wealth, buildings and treasures of the Church. In fact I enjoyed seeing them at the Vatican.
I start to take issues with the leadership of the Church when it insists that we turn blind eye towards illegal immigration. They don’t pay for that.
Jesus obviously lived the way anybody else of his class did until he started his ministry. He was what we would now consider either self employed or a small businessman, who worked in his father’s carpentry/home handyman business, but he obviously lived somewhere stable and went to shul and had a good Jewish education.
Most bishops are middle class, and they live generally at a somewhat lower level than that. Some may live in a bishop’s palace, but most don’t, and even the few that do are usually trying to escape it and turn it into a museum or a hotel. In many countries, actually, huge mansions were built for bishops at the behest of clergy and laity...and then the bishops refused to live in them because they were too luxurious.
If you go to Astorga in Spain, you’ll see a palace designed by Gaudi for the bishop of the place...which the bishop never lived in because he felt it was too spectacular and also it was completely impractical for meetings or even hosting visitors.
Here’s a link to an image of the Boston cardinal’s residence. It’s the big building in the middle of the aerial shot. Yes, part of it is office space, but the other part is said to resemble ‘a penthouse at the Ritz’.
http://www.boston.com/globe/spotlight/abuse/stories4/071303_residence.htm
[There’s no need to flame me for posting the link. I lived in Boston during Cardinal Law’s tenure, and at one time I read that he had twelve servants. That stuck in my mind as excessive. So when I saw this thread I looked up the image & saw the residence for the first time. It’s described as an ‘Italian Renaissance palazzo’. It seemed pertinent to this thread, and that is why I linked it.]
Wow, Tax-chick, great response. Can I steal it?
“So are you, unless you’re living on the street or moving from one friend’s couch to another’s, with an occasional stop at your Mom’s. “
I don’t purport to be in a direct Apostolic succession from Christ or in full-time ministry...
2. The article compares the bishops to the idle rich, but in truth, the bishops are some of the most hard-working people in the world. In addition to attending to the administrative and judicial matters of their dioceses, bishops are also the leaders of multi-million-dollar charitable foundations and endowments and serve as the public face of the Catholic Church in the media....
4. Perhaps CNN can run a hit-piece on the practice of many Protestant and secular charitable foundations which provide their leaders with multi-million dollar condominiums as a tax-free fringe benefit. Just this weekend, a Protestant charity purchased a Manhattan office building for $13 million. The same building also houses office for the NAACP and Big Brothers Big Sisters. Meanwhile, Trinity Episcopal Church–a mere parish, not even a diocese–owns real estate in Lower Manhattan estimated at around $2 billion, with a “B,” as in bling. Cardinal Dolan’s $30 million residence is chump change by comparison.
Another hit piece on Protestants! BTW, look up the definition of "corporation in sole" within the context of Catholic archdioceses sometime. It makes for fascinating reading in regards to the bishop not owning his own personal residence.
Of course!
I live in unimaginable luxury, too. I have air conditioning, three bathrooms with flush toilets, hot and cold running water, antibiotics when I need them, and a very up-to-date dentist.
When I was a child, the wonderful White Fathers of Africa (missionaries) lived in a run-down Victorian house in NJ. The sisters, The White Sisters of Africa, lived in an OK building. I remember when I was about 10, those lovely women feeding me potato chips - which they had never tasted. I hated to tell them that they were stale. I think they were poor - but certainly happy women.
If you were in full-time ministry, would you have to live as a primitive mendicant?
Thank you for permission!
Yes, we are certainly blessed.
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