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Churches were social security centuries ago: You contribute a tenth of your income and in exchange the church will look after you if you when disaster strikes (

by nroets 3y ago

Churches were social security centuries ago: You contribute a tenth of your income and in exchange the church will look after you if you when disaster strikes (illness, crop failure) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tithe_barns_in_Europe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tithe_barns_in_Europe

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
Indeed, the disestablishmentarian State has usurped many functions that used to pertain to the Church. It was the Catholic Church who founded the university system as we know it today, and the hospital system we depend on. When colonists made it to the New World, who was there to educate the children? The Catholic missionaries and religious institutes founded schools and created whole districts to educate children (yes, even Native and Indigenous children such as we vilify them for in Canada.) Parents would often have at least one child set aside to dedicate to the Church, as a priest and/or a professed religious. Children would enter the seminary, monastery, or convent. In return, those insitutions would care for the underprivileged and the powerless. Many monasteries provided services to the Church and to the general public: brewing beer, cultivating gardens, baking bread, you name it. But as all these services and more are privatized and nationalized, it sort of makes the Church redundant, an NGO without purpose, if you're on the outside looking in. So why perpetuate non-profit status of these mere charities when the State can provide entitlements far beyond what meager donations can provide? It's definitely a Sophie's choice, when you get right down to it.
- reaperman 3y ago
  Catholic Universities are still thriving. The Catholic Churches globally hoard around $100 billion and could absolutely create a world-class endowment for a huge university if they prioritized that. It’s not the states’ fault they choose not to.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    More like 30 billion dollars, and a large swath of that is tied up in completely illiquid assets like churches or gold in reliquia [1]. [1] https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mje/2022/05/24/the-finances-behind-vatican-city/ https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mje/2022/05/24/the-finances-behi...
    - dmurray 3y ago
      That source is garbage. It cites a study estimating the worth of the Church in Australia at A$30bn, uses that number as the global number (though now in US dollars, for no obvious reason), and then spends the rest of the article talking about the finances of the Holy See. And on that matter, it attributes the Vatican's budget deficit to "falling gold prices", as if the Church's main asset was a gold mine that produced a set amount of gold each year - not to mention that gold is up about 50% over the time period they consider, 2013-2022. I'd expect a more diligently written article from an average ten year old.
- coliveira 3y ago
  Of course, this was just another method for social domination from the Catholic church. Education was the churches method to model the elite of the next generation so they would be catholics instead of what they are now (mostly non-religious). And "teaching" native Americans was essentially forced conversion as everyone knows.
WeylandYutani 3y ago
Yes this is why church attendance collapsed in Europe. The State took over these duties. There's no materialistic reason to be a member anymore.
NickC25 3y ago
The problem is, the Church, on a macro scale, has largely abandoned the notion that they will look after you in hard times. We've had some relatively hard times in this country in my lifetime, and not once have I seen the Mormon Church step up in any noticeable* way, even to help tithing members. I define "noticeable" as a measure of the Church's proportional amount of donations relative to its income or supposed amount of cash reserves. At the same time, the Mormon Church spent 3.6 million dollars (6.7 million in today's dollars) in 2000 to lobby the state of California against LGBTQ protections. While that is clearly pennies (or less) for a fund that supposedly is over $100 billion, the point still stands. If the Mormon Church stepped up during COVID, any Hurricane/Wildfire/Storm or similar times of need to the tune of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, and a lot of that went to non-members, the Church would be shouting it from the rooftops "look how charitable we are! we help non-tithing members! we help the outside community!" but that didn't happen, did it?

by nroets 3y ago

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago

Indeed, the disestablishmentarian State has usurped many functions that used to pertain to the Church. It was the Catholic Church who founded the university system as we know it today, and the hospital system we depend on. When colonists made it to the New World, who was there to educate the children? The Catholic missionaries and religious institutes founded schools and created whole districts to educate children (yes, even Native and Indigenous children such as we vilify them for in Canada.) Parents would often have at least one child set aside to dedicate to the Church, as a priest and/or a professed religious. Children would enter the seminary, monastery, or convent. In return, those insitutions would care for the underprivileged and the powerless. Many monasteries provided services to the Church and to the general public: brewing beer, cultivating gardens, baking bread, you name it. But as all these services and more are privatized and nationalized, it sort of makes the Church redundant, an NGO without purpose, if you're on the outside looking in. So why perpetuate non-profit status of these mere charities when the State can provide entitlements far beyond what meager donations can provide? It's definitely a Sophie's choice, when you get right down to it.

reaperman 3y ago
Catholic Universities are still thriving. The Catholic Churches globally hoard around $100 billion and could absolutely create a world-class endowment for a huge university if they prioritized that. It’s not the states’ fault they choose not to.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  More like 30 billion dollars, and a large swath of that is tied up in completely illiquid assets like churches or gold in reliquia [1]. [1] https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mje/2022/05/24/the-finances-behind-vatican-city/ https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mje/2022/05/24/the-finances-behi...
  - dmurray 3y ago
    That source is garbage. It cites a study estimating the worth of the Church in Australia at A$30bn, uses that number as the global number (though now in US dollars, for no obvious reason), and then spends the rest of the article talking about the finances of the Holy See. And on that matter, it attributes the Vatican's budget deficit to "falling gold prices", as if the Church's main asset was a gold mine that produced a set amount of gold each year - not to mention that gold is up about 50% over the time period they consider, 2013-2022. I'd expect a more diligently written article from an average ten year old.
coliveira 3y ago
Of course, this was just another method for social domination from the Catholic church. Education was the churches method to model the elite of the next generation so they would be catholics instead of what they are now (mostly non-religious). And "teaching" native Americans was essentially forced conversion as everyone knows.

WeylandYutani 3y ago

Yes this is why church attendance collapsed in Europe. The State took over these duties. There's no materialistic reason to be a member anymore.

NickC25 3y ago

The problem is, the Church, on a macro scale, has largely abandoned the notion that they will look after you in hard times. We've had some relatively hard times in this country in my lifetime, and not once have I seen the Mormon Church step up in any noticeable* way, even to help tithing members. I define "noticeable" as a measure of the Church's proportional amount of donations relative to its income or supposed amount of cash reserves. At the same time, the Mormon Church spent 3.6 million dollars (6.7 million in today's dollars) in 2000 to lobby the state of California against LGBTQ protections. While that is clearly pennies (or less) for a fund that supposedly is over $100 billion, the point still stands. If the Mormon Church stepped up during COVID, any Hurricane/Wildfire/Storm or similar times of need to the tune of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, and a lot of that went to non-members, the Church would be shouting it from the rooftops "look how charitable we are! we help non-tithing members! we help the outside community!" but that didn't happen, did it?