On Churches and Money sent to Rome

Does anyone know how much each church must send to Rome? Is it a percentage? How much of a percentage?

reply to post by jiggerj


It is not that easy! Churches send all their money to the Diocese. The Diocese send the clergy a stipend or pocket money if you will.

Each Diocese have investment Portfolios to add to or draw from. It is only the Arch Bishops and such that would be able to answer this sort of question.

Then there are all of the 'Charities.' These all go by different names like the Salvation Army. These also have large property holdings in Portfolios and much the same things happen.

Every Priest, Brother and Nun live in houses and all of these houses are owned outright by the Church via some form of holding company. They invest in office buildings and other major assets, most of which cannot be traced directly to them. The sheer wealth on a global scale is staggering!

Hope that helps a little. You will never get a straight answer and you will never get a truthful answer. It also varies country to country.

P

Discloser: I'm on the finance committee of a Catholic parish, and was a year ago on the finance committee of a Protestant parish (I converted from United Methodist to Roman Catholic in April 2012. You get about a ten minute reprise from being on the finance committee once they know your expertise, lol.)

There is surprisingly little difference between the two -- both provide expenses and salary to the pastor/priest, and both send a set amount (based on the size of the congregation) to the higher level of administration (diocese, in the Catholic side, district, in the Protestant side.)

The Catholic side occasionally has "Second Offerings", which is money that is raised separate from parish finances, and is dedicated to a specific cause. My Protestant church had something similar, a half-dozen named offerings for world missions of various sorts.

My parish doesn't have an attached nunnery or monastery, so that probably figures in, but otherwise, it's remarkably similar.

I'm happy to answer direct questions, regarding either side of finances, as best I can.

reply to post by pheonix358

Allow me to correct some of your errors there, please

Originally posted by pheonix358
reply to post by jiggerj

 

It is not that easy! Churches send all their money to the Diocese. The Diocese send the clergy a stipend or pocket money if you will.

No, that is not correct. The church maintains its own budget and pays the local priest(s), lay employees and any other attached clergy directly. A set amount is paid to the archdiocese monthly, which "trickles up" and helps to pay for everything from the support of local, non-attached clergy, to missions and diocese projects, to ivory backscratchers for the Pope*.

(* - that's a joke, by the way )

Each Diocese have investment Portfolios to add to or draw from. It is only the Arch Bishops and such that would be able to answer this sort of question.

Yes, that's true, and I haven't been involved in church finances long enough to know how transparent the holdings of the archdiocese are, though as a tax exempt charitable organization (at least in the United States,) it's likely far more transparent than you represent. Locally, the finances, including investment holdings, of the church are open to inspection by anyone who wants to look, though no one ever does, because anyone who knows anything about accounting gets roped into the Finance Committee, lol.

Then there are all of the 'Charities.' These all go by different names like the Salvation Army. These also have large property holdings in Portfolios and much the same things happen.

The Salvation Army is not a Catholic charity -- it is, in fact, a Protestant religion. There are, of course, a lot of different charities that are under the Catholic umbrella, but that's due more to the structure of the church (see below.)

Every Priest, Brother and Nun live in houses and all of these houses are owned outright by the Church via some form of holding company.

The local clergy lives in a building called a rectory, which is owned by the local parish, a legal entity.

Monks, friars, nuns and all other non-attached clergy either live in their own homes or they live in buildings that are maintained by their orders. Much of the church is organized by different orders, or groups, which have their own assets, mostly fund themselves, and generally have different missions. Some groups are the Jesuits, Franciscan, Benedictines and Dominicans.

Yes, the Roman Catholic Church is a very wealthy organization, as one might expect from an institution that has been receiving donations for 2,000 years, but the majority of that wealth is in assets that cannot be just sold off arbitrarily, like artwork or real estate (the church sees themselves as custodians, rather than owners, of the former, and the latter is mostly churches, cemeteries and associated buildings that cannot be disposed of easily.)

You will never get a straight answer and you will never get a truthful answer. It also varies country to country.

Yes, it varies from country to country, but I hope that I've helped you to realize that if you ask the right person, you will get a straight and truthful answer, at least as regards the things that they know.

Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's

so the churches are claiming both the things belonging to caesar and god?

would this not indicate they are one and the same?

reply to post by adjensen


I do not mean to be offensive.

Your answer could have been scripted from The Vatican. Everything covered to make the Church look saintly.

I live in a small State of Australia and I have seen a full list (property only) of the Catholic Church's holdings circa 1980. They are the single biggest owner second only to the Government's infrastructure.

I especially liked the bit about holding million $ art treasures as 'custodians of the people.' Nice one!

What the hell happened to "Give up all, and follow me" How about sell the art treasures and make restitution to the abused, feed the poor and starving, and all the other things they preach repeatedly and never get around to doing.

Yes, you can have a look at the books, sure here you go. It would be headed "Sanitized list for the consumption of fools and the flock."

P

Originally posted by pheonix358
reply to post by adjensen

 

I do not mean to be offensive.

Um... sure. You're calling me a liar, but you don't mean to be offensive. Okay, thanks for your consideration.

Your answer could have been scripted from The Vatican. Everything covered to make the Church look saintly.

My answer is the truth, as represented by my role on the Finance Committee in a parish in the midwestern United States, as well as my experiences on the same committee in a Protestant church for about five years. As I said, it may vary from country to country, but what I've laid out is the way it is here.

I especially liked the bit about holding million $ art treasures as 'custodians of the people.' Nice one!

What the hell happened to "Give up all, and follow me" How about sell the art treasures and make restitution to the abused, feed the poor and starving, and all the other things they preach repeatedly and never get around to doing.

How much do you figure that would raise? Sending all of the collected works of the past 2,000 years into the hands of private collectors, rather than shared with the world? Well, the heavy lifting has been done for you -- Peter Watson, anti-religious historian, figures that it would be $17 billion, about the amount already being spent by Catholic Charities USA over four years (they spent about $4,000,000,000 on charitable services in 2008.)

And how far does he think even such a sum as $17 billion would go in ridding the world of poverty? It would be a drop in the ocean; and once it had soaked into the desert, like water from a leaking tanker in the Sahara, it would be gone forever, leaving bare walls and a basilica without Michaelangelo’s Pietà: a simpler but a less spiritually powerful place. And surely, the idea of those great religious works hanging in the houses of rich men for their private amusement is deeply unattractive. Even Watson says that part of the point of the Vatican is its art, “glorious achievements of the age of faith”: and the point of that, surely, is that that massive accumulation of artistic achievement is an evidence not merely of the spiritual power of the idea of faith but also of the truth of its objective content. (Source)

Yes, you can have a look at the books, sure here you go. It would be headed "Sanitized list for the consumption of fools and the flock."

Again, you are calling me a liar in this statement, and that is not the case. You may not understand accounting -- I do, and the finances, as published by my committee, are honest, correct and complete.

reply to post by tinhattribunal


Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's


Mark 12:17
Then Jesus said to them, "Give back to Caesar what is
And Jesus answering, said to them: Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. And they marvelled at him.

Matthew 22:21 "Caesar's," they replied. Then he said to them, "So They say unto him, Caesar's. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.

Luke 20:25 He said to them, "Then give back to Caesar what is
And he said unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things which are God's. American King James Version ...

This parable is in three of the four Gospels.

Please read one or more of them and come to the correct conclusion before flying off the handle with a skewed and juvenile comment about the subject, if you are capable of that and will.