|
The wealth of the church
“All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their property and possessions and divide them among all according to each one’s need.” -- Acts 3, 44 It is common knowledge, according to conventional wisdom, that the Catholic Church is one of the wealthiest institutions in the world. The Vatican seems to possess an almost limitless array of priceless treasures and many of us have personally seen the dazzling contents of the treasuries of the great cathedrals of Europe. Bu the Holy See cannot be expected to operate on the proceeds of the sale of St. Peter’s Basilica or by realizing the monetary value of Michelangelo’s Pieta. These are the inheritance of Western civilization of which the present Holy Father is merely the good steward. And, in fact, far from providing operating income for the Church, it takes a rather large sum of money to care for these treasures. So, we must look elsewhere for the wealth of the Church. The Catholic Church has been in existence for a long time now and the faithful around the world number in excess of one billion souls. Surely, one would think, the Church, through its regular offertory collections and its various holdings, must have considerable real useable, monetary wealth. It may come as somewhat of a surprise, therefore, to discover the actual sums of money the Church depends upon to fund the activities of the Holy See. According to the 2001 edition of the CIA Worldfactbook, the annual operating budget of the Holy See is slightly less than $200 million. Now, $200 million represents a lot of widow’s mites to be sure, but it is important to put this large sum in perspective. $200 million is about half the annual budget of the University of South Carolina and approximately the amount of the annual deficit in the budget of the Philadelphia public school system. This is in fact a rather paltry sum to finance an institution with the worldwide reach of the Holy See. But what of the financial holdings of the Vatican built up over the centuries. The Jesuit scholar of Vatican affairs, Father Thomas J. Reese, in his book, Inside the Vatican, gives the figure $460 million for the official net assets of the Holy See. This figure, according to Fr. Reese, may underestimate the true value of the holdings by as much as $1 billion. Compare even this higher figure with the endowment of Harvard University at more than $19 billion or Yale at more than $10 billion and the financial health of the Holy See begins to come into clearer focus. In fact, more than three dozen American universities have endowments greater than the net assets of the Holy See. In the final analysis, there is no pot of gold in Rome or anywhere else to support the work of the Church. To fund these good works we must look to ourselves. We are not asked any longer to sell all our possessions and give everything to a communal fund as the Acts of the Apostles tells us was the practice of the early followers of Jesus. But we are all asked to share a portion of the riches with which God has blessed us to support the good and necessary works of the Church. In his Palm Sunday homily, Pope John Paul II reminded the faithful “The Cross is the sign of the Redeemer’s total self gift for us.” How should we receive and respond to such a gift? Bishop Robert J. Baker has told us that we should never be selfish with a God who is not selfish with us, a God who, in truth, has given us everything. Efforts such as the annual parish stewardship renewal and the Bishop’s Stewardship Appeal offer us the opportunity to contribute our fair share of time, talent and treasure to support the essential ministries of the Church. After all, we are the Church. Ours is the call to conversion and discipleship and to a commitment to full Christian stewardship in our lives. In the end, the true wealth of the Church must be found in us, its people. To contribute to the Bishop’s Stewardship Appeal, send checks to the Diocese of Charleston – BSA, P.O. Box 300, Charleston, SC 29402. Pledges are encouraged instead of one-time gifts. Contributions may be made through cash, check, credit card or securities. Jim Myers, Ph.D., is director of Stewardship for the Diocese of Charleston. |