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RE: Obscenely Wealthy
Arguably, the wealthiest man in the world today is Pope Benedict, himself.
We talked about that last night too..I just decided not to use the Catholic Church itself, because it is more like a country than a single individual.
RE: Obscenely Wealthy
Scott, that argument pretty misplaced. Ok, so arguably the Pope has control over the holdings of the Catholic Church around the world. So what? For one, he also has the liabilities--you are only looking at one side of the ledger. What do you suppose it costs the Church to keep all those churches around the world open and the upkeep?
Secondly, it is trivially simple to prove the charity work that the Church does with that money. Everyone likes to bash the Catholic Church, but if you look at the history of, say, Nicaragua, as well as several other neighboring Central American countries and the Philippines, it was the Catholic Clergy that were the Catholic Church that was in the lead for social justice.
That second part is important, because do you really believe the Pope can just arbitrarily spend that money as he choses? He can't just liquidate a few chapels and go buy himself a Benz. He is not obscenely wealthy at all. If he is the titular head of some massive empire, then he sure is getting the shaft out of the deal, because he cannot use any of it himself. This obviates the "obscenely" and makes them just wealthy. That said, I think the opulent and grandiose aura the Catholic Church presents brings it this kind of attention.
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RE: Obscenely Wealthy
Arguably the wealthiest man in the Old Testament was Solomon.
Even if we don't look to unconfirmed folk history, they're ignoring a really glaring pertinent fact. Arguably, the wealthiest man in the world today is Pope Benedict, himself. The church is still organized as if it were a monarchy, with the Pope as monarch, and the RCC is an absurdly wealthy organization, when you look at its overall assets.
It has massive investments in some of the wealthiest banks around the world - the Morgan Bank, the Chase-Manhattan Bank, the First National Bank of New York, the Bankers Trust Company, and others. The Boston Archiocese alone had an estimated worth of over half a billion dollars about a decade ago, and it isn't even the richest - and there are twenty-eight such archdioceses and 122 dioceses in the US alone. A priest once said on a syndicated talk show that the church's assets "must exceed those of Standard Oil, AT&T, and US Steel, combined." They buy and sell gold in lots of a million or more dollars at a time.
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