[NYer]

Ping!

[PGR88]

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.

[Andyman]

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.

[miss marmelstein]

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.

[Tax-chick]

... the example of Saint Francis, who was a rich man ...

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!)

[aMorePerfectUnion]

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.

[areukiddingme1]

“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...

[Trapped Behind Enemy Lines]

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.

[Fantasywriter]

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.]

[Alex Murphy]

They’re residences, not homes. The mansions included in this article are not the personal property of the bishops, but belong to the diocese. Every diocese in the world maintains a cathedral (sometimes multiple co-cathedrals), a chancery, and a residence for the bishop. In poorer countries, these are often the grandest buildings in the city. Typically these buildings are in close proximity to one another. Many of the cities included in this list happen to be some of the largest metropolitan areas in the country, also with the highest property values. Compounding this effect, the cathedral is usually located in a prominent location on a major street. Many of these residences were also built a century ago and the Church certainly doesn’t have to pay a mortgage for them.

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.

[miele man]

for later reading and venting my spleen

[tiki]

Not counting his managerial and fiscal duties, our bishop tries to be at each parish on their namesake’s feast day, so that’s 60+ days away from home each year. He also does confirmations each year. Of course, he does the masses at the cathedral unless he is out of town.

Ours is the largest diocese in the US by land mass and he has to travel hundreds of miles.

[Gamecock]

How the 'Bishop of Bling' spent $43 million renovating this house

[cloudmountain]

The mainstream media has always loathed Catholics and evangelicals. This isn't new.

[RichInOC]

That CNN article actually makes me even more sympathetic to the bishops. If those are the worst CNN can come up with (and I suspect they’d have posted more impressive piles in lieu of San Antonio, Cincinnati and even Hartford if there were any), this is a smaller problem than they’d like anyone to think. If bishops need to sell residences to make diocesan finances work, fine. If they want to, if they believe they’re called to, great. (Cardinal O’Malley and Archbishop Chaput, as Capuchins, for example, most likely did it for both reasons.) Just because some CNN reporter wants to sit there in judgment and do the Colbert finger-wag at them? Absolutely not.

[Heart-Rest]

Here's a quick look at some interesting information on just a few of the prominent protestant leaders. (I couldn't find any of this information on CNN.)

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

• 
  
  "Rev. Billy Graham - Net Worth - $25,000,000"

  ---

• 
  
  "Rev. Jesse Jackson - Net Worth - $10,000,000"

  ---

• 
  
  "Rev. Al Sharpton - Net Worth - $5,000,000"

  ---

• 
  
  "Rev. Creflo Dollar - Net Worth - $27,000,000"

  ---

• 
  
  "Pastor Joyce Meyer - Net Worth - $8,000,000"

  ---

• 
  
  "Rev. Jeremiah Wright (and his mansion) - Net Worth - $??,???,???"

  ---

• 
  
  "Kenneth Copeland - Net Worth - $1,000,000,000 (billion)"

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

[Zionist Conspirator]

And yet those bishops still support the Democrats and the Left.