Keith asked:Why doesn't the Church sell all of its wealth and assets and give it to the poor?Patrick Madrid replied:"...What I would do ... would be to ask ... the person who made that tweet [referring to a nasty remark on the Pope's Twitter social media page], did you sell your house and your cars? Did you liquidate your 401K program? Have you sold all your furniture and your computer and your iPhone and your clothes? Have you liquidated everything and given all that money to the poor? You personally? Have you done that?I'm gonna guess ... that that person will probably ignore your question because he doesn't want to give you the answer. But you and I both know that the answer is no. He hasn't sold his house. He hasn't sold his car ... but yet he'll wag his finger at the Catholic church or the Pope for not having done something similar... The Pope doesn't own the things that we see, for example the Vatican. That's not the Pope's personal property... This is part of the patrimony of the whole Church... Would you rather have these precious works of Christian art and other art forms that are in the Vatican museum for example, would you rather have those in a Saudi Arabian sheik's living room because he bought it for three or four billion dollars? ... Or should it be available for everyone in the world to visit and be inspired by and encouraged by?... When people make this claim I have to wonder if they're doing it out of spite and they really know the truth or they're just ignorant?... People so often fail to recognize that the Catholic church...by far it dwarfs any other organization including the federal government of this country, it dwarfs the philanthropic efforts of any other institution in the entire world when it comes to things like building hospitals, and orphanages and soup kitchens, and clothing and food banks, and homeless shelters, and free medical clinics. You name it, the Catholic church is doing that every where... Copyrights:© 2012 Immaculate Heart Catholic RadioEditor's note: This is an excerpt of the answer provided. For the complete response download the podcast. |  Click icon for archived podcast answering this question in its entirety. Show air date: December 17, 2012 Question appeared in show: 40:00 |
