Posted on 08/27/2014 3:30:10 PM PDT by NYer
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of general interest.
This is a forum for conservatives. You’re on the wrong forum.
Trying to confuse them with the facts, eh?
Good try.
Come visit my parish ... we have folks from all over the world ... Honduras, Guatemala, Kenya, Nairobi, Vietnam, Phillipines, etc. Yes, mostly white (Dallas suburbia), but a lot of the others. We even host an African mass on occasion.
Segregation? Not here.
Some years later I ended up moving to that town and ended up going to that church. It was a good Parish, just lacked the looks. I loved the old churches and I am glad they are making a comeback. Thee was one in that same town that completely rebuilt and it was a real beauty. Spent a pretty penny I might add. Of course there were some that whined about the money. But I will tell you that they had been investing the building fund at that Parish for years and years and never had to take any money from any of the charities to build it.
I was asked recently about the splendor of the Vatican. At the time it was late at night and I did not have a good answer. I am now reminded of that one show on EWTN, the one with the young priest and the old priest Fr. Bob. He was asked that question. He said that all that gold and whatnot has been given to the Church through the years by the faithful. Some were quite wealthy, some not so much. Many people leave all their worldly goods to the Church when they die. Might be as small as a golden candlestick.
Someone up this stream complained about the poor not being allowed in a parish. That never happens. All are welcome. The poor come dressed in their best. The wealthy often show up in shorts.
NO..............to correct you, it is NOT bragging, just telling the TRUTH. The King would be very pleased.
Thank-you for making my morning with that! God Bless!
Slowly the old, beat up racecard is getting more decline messages and folks are not listening.
Our church was built in 1995:
Funny true story: the rector interviewed four architects - three Catholics and a Presbyterian - and asked for preliminary drawings. He specifically asked for a design that was contemporary but incorporated traditional Catholic symbolic elements - cruciform footprint, bell tower, elevated sanctuary, choir loft, etc. Three of the architects didn't listen but just provided the typical Catholic Prayer Barn. The fourth (the Presbyterian) did as instructed. His firm got the bid, and we got a nice Richardsonian Romanesque-Revival church.
. . . and for those griping about the expense - ANY building is going to cost a bundle, unless you go with a prefab steel shed. Might as well lift everyone's souls to God.
The poor are often the ones giving their money to support having a beautiful church. They need the hope and inspiration such churches provide as much as they need anything else.
The Roman Catholic Church is the largest non-government provider of health care services in the world.[1] In ancient times, the early Christians were noted for tending the sick and infirm, and priests were often also physicians. Christian emphasis on practical charity gave rise to the development of systematic nursing and hospitals. As Catholicism became a global religion, the Catholic religious orders, religious and lay people established health care centres around the world. In 2010, the Church’s Pontifical Council for Pastoral Assistance to Health Care Workers said that the Church manages 26% of the world’s health care facilities.[2] It has around 18,000 clinics, 16,000 homes for the elderly and those with special needs, and 5,500 hospitals, with 65 per cent of them located in developing countries.[3]
Catholic involvement in the field of health care is born of the teachings of Jesus Christ and of Catholic social teaching. Jesus, whom the church holds as its founder, placed a particular emphasis on care for the sick and outcast - such as lepers - and his Apostles reportedly went about curing and anointing the sick. Jesus identified so strongly with the sick and afflicted, that he equated serving them with serving him. The Benedictine rule of later centuries holds that “the care of the sick is to be placed above and before every other duty, as if indeed Christ were being directly served by waiting on them”. In 2013, Pope Francis likened the mission of his church to “a field hospital after battle”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caritas_%28charity%29
http://www.forbes.com/top-charities/
And I challenge anyone to show me a Church organization that does more for humanity than the KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_of_Columbus
For their support for the Church and local communities, as well as for their philanthropic efforts, Pope John Paul II referred to the Order as a “strong right arm of the Church.”[6] In 2013, the Order gave over US$170.1 million directly to charity and performed over 70.5 million man-hours of voluntary service. [7] Over 413,000 pints of blood were donated in 2010.[8] The Order’s insurance program has more than $90 billion of life insurance policies in force, backed up by $19.8 billion in assets,[9] and holds the highest insurance ratings given by A. M. Best and the Insurance Marketplace Standards Association.[10] Within the United States on the national and state level, the Order is active in the political arena lobbying for laws and positions that uphold the Catholic Church’s positions on public policy and social issues.
I was just thinking about your comment about how the poor need us to sell off the churches and take care of their needs.
I can see where you're coming from, but I don't think it quite meets the reality, which is more complex. Back where I came from, an old Snow-Belt Rust-Belt Catholic Industrial city (Erie, PA), the big, beautiful churches were built by the poor, 100 - 140 years ago, and they were their pride and joy.
I'm not taling about the welfare-EBT card poor: those things didn't exist. I'm talking abnout the immigrant-poor, the Irish, Slavs, and Italians, who moved to Erie to work in the industries: Hammermill Paper, National Forge and Steel, General Elecric, National Sterilizer. They shook $5 bills and $10 bills out of their thin, thin wallets to build those churches.
Italian stonecutters made the altars. German woord-carvers made the altar rails. Construction trades people worked all day at their jobs, but worked evenings and weekends on the church. Catholic cops and waitresses, nurses and laundry workers (like my father) were glad to blow a week's wages at the annual Church Festival to pay down the building debts.
Back in the day, this expressed people's sense of propriety, their idea of the "fittingness of things,": they provided the ebst they had, to build the most beautiful churches for the love of God.
Do not make the mistake of thinking that people of modest means, necessarily would rather have free sandwiches for their picnics, than stained glass windows for Christ Our Lord.
Auction off old, consecrated church buildings --- to whom, a Saudi prince? --- so you can give the money to the panhandlers in the city park, and the Saudis can install minarets on a gutted, whitewashed, deconsecrated Church of the Blessed Sacrament??
The architecture and art treasures are, in a sense, a public trust maintained by the Church for our common use and enjoyment (that is, not set up for public tours for a cash admission charge!) --- and not readily convertible to liquid assets. If all that were converted to cash, and given away, it would be gross cultural vandalism, unethical alienation of property, and a violation of fiduciary trust --- or I should say, rather, the unethical violation of the sweat and labor, and hope and intentions of the people who raised those churches, and their children and grandchildres, for whom --- in God's name -- they raised them.
The Catholic Church is selling of dozens of churches annually in the East and Northeast. Instead of evangelizing the neighborhoods on which those churches sit. It's a crime and a sin.
Well said!
Nice looking Church!
Wow! That was a big cut and paste - and brag. The widow who gave two tiny mites never told a soul and Christ said she had given more than the others.
So while everything your post named is good, that isn’t the basis Christ uses to evaluate giving. Others may give substantially less and it will count as more - and there will be no accompanying clanging gong.
The Catholic Church been practicing what Christ instructed it to do 2,000 years ago. End of story.
Do you actually know anything about history at all? Do you understand where segregation started, and what the predominant religion is in that part of the world?
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