If the Catholic Church Were a Country, It Would Be the Third Most Populous After China and India.

[ancianita]

Last edited Mon Feb 8, 2021, 12:49 PM - Edit history (1)

This is important to note because Pope Francis has noted it.

In 2015, he presented "Laudato Si," a 40,000 word encyclical on reckless consumerism, ecological degradation and global warming.
In it, he interprets the biblical story of God giving humans "dominion of ... the earth" as something like moral responsibility for the "harm we have inflicted...," calling for the replacement of fossil fuels "without delay," and that wealthy countries be accountable for their "ecological debt" by their exploitation of poorer countries.

Now, according to environmental economist Herman Daly, he has many enemies -- the Heartland Institute, Jeb Bush, James Inhofe, Rush Limbaugh, and libertarian commentator Greg Gutfeld who, on Fox, called Francis "the most dangerous person on the planet."

The Church is the world's largest non-government provider of health care, humanitarian aid and education.
The Church, furthermore, is probably the world's largest non-state landowner. The assets of the Holy See combine with those of parishes, dioceses, religious orders, include not just cathedrals, convents and art like Michelango's Pietá, but farms, forests and nearly two hundred million acres of land.

The two hundred million affected by climate disasters live in Central Africa, the Amazon Basin and Asia, where the Church has more leverage than government. So there is no way to address the climate crisis or biosphere loss without the Catholic Church engaging with its own lands and property.

This timely and brilliant piece is about how the Church, with no cartography department, had lost track of its vast land holdings, and how the brilliant Molly Burhans used its databases with ArcMap to produce a working 3-D world map of where the Church can work to make "Laudato Si" the 'seed pollinator' for world governments.

Biden knows and listens. Now if other leaders will listen to both him and Pope Francis.

From this week's New Yorker, Annals of Geography, "Promised Land" by David Owen

https://www.newyorker.com/auth/complete?code=MnG1b_MD8JF2GDH3jcfyfC8IyDMZ-VwvYc-KSmju9Yq&state=%7B%22redirectURL%22%3A%22%2Fmagazine%2F2021%2F02%2F08%2Fhow-a-young-activist-is-helping-pope-francis-battle-climate-change%22%7D

[pwb]

1. Catholic charities are giving away food everywhere

around here. They are great.

[ancianita]

3. Good to know. "Not by faith alone" says the Church, "but by works."

[roamer65]

2. The Roman Empire still exists.

It transformed into the Catholic Church.

[ancianita]

5. Well,

that would be an interesting read if you've a source. I've never considered that.

[MineralMan]

4. That was a very interesting article in many ways.

I read it in the paper copy of the magazine. What was striking was that the RCC does not know exactly what its global assets are, where they are, nor does it have documentation of those assets in a central location.

The RCC is still living in the 1960s, apparently, and has not fully moved into the computer age.

[ancianita]

6. It was.

But to my mind the best thing to read is how the Church is willing to act on the what it's learned from its past mistakes about science, now fully embrace all the tools it can to be engaged in climate mitigation. It seems willing to push its resources in that direction by seeing itself as a part of Earth, not apart from Earth. (One cynical take is that in this global situation, it knows its wealth will come to nothing if it doesn't use it.)

Another best thing in the article, imo, is how just one believer helped the oldest Western institution do that. As an atheist I've broad brushed believers as the bane of the planet, but I realize I have to take all that back.

There are some leaders who lead from behind. So perhaps this believer's influence in the Church's massive move to climate mitigation will help its leaders connect to other mitigations.
Example:

In his Easter letter last year, Pope Francis observed that the pandemic had hugely exacerbated economic stresses that were already being endured by people all over the world. “This may be the time to consider a universal basic wage,” he wrote—advice that the Church has yet to apply to itself.

[MineralMan]

9. Yes. I was completely impressed with the young woman who has

made this her life's work. Remarkable. Now, if the RCC will stand up and use its resources to help save the planet, I may be able to return some respect for that organization. Of course, there is much else it needs to do to end its history of patriarchy and misogyny.

Great article, and more than worth the cost of my subscription.

Thanks for sharing it here!

[DFW]

7. In the sixties, they even had a Jewish guy composing music for them......

[ancianita]

10. Nah, he did that on his own. And why did you post this?

[DFW]

16. Because, after having lived in Spain in the 1960s and my wife's awful experiences with them

I decided to go for humor rather than what I really though of the institution.

My wife grew up in a Catholic family whose roots go back to the 15th century (not unusual here). What the Church did in Spain in the 1930s to make it what it was when I was there, and my wife's hair-raising experiences with them in the sixties and early seventies, was so overpoweringly negative, I preferred not to present them in all their gory details.

Suffice it to say, I'm glad I don't live in China, India, or Cattòlica.

[ancianita]

18. Thanks for sharing.

I don't see the need here to focus on the church via free association mocking, though.

Nice try, and duly noted, but I'm not feelin' it.

I don't like the way the US government has killed off millions of Indians, either, but I still appreciate its working toward climate mitigation as part of its repairing its past damage.

This thread is presented seriously, taking a global institution seriously, and I'd like it to be respected that way. If we all took past sins of governments and institutions (e.g., all the vetting and purity tests we detest from party perfectionists) as our excuse for not accepting their current efforts, we might as well give up on the family institution for those reasons, too. And with all that baggage, we couldn't get one single global project accomplished.

[DFW]

19. Everyone's perception of a nation or an institution will often depend on personal experience

If your experience is a positive one with charitable activities and selfless sacrifice, then you will have a point of view colored by that. My experience is being mocked for not sharing their particular beliefs, and having friends whose parents/relatives were shot because they opposed the church's pro-Fascist stance in the Spanish Civil War. My wife was forbidden to play with Protestant kids in her neighborhood because they were of an unclean religion, while some of the priests in her region were kicked upstairs after having been found to have molested both young boys and young girls.

As an American living abroad, I understand your point. People who suffered at the hands of our bombing of Serbia, or at least sympathized with the Serbs (many Greeks, e.g.) have a completely different view of America from those who either experienced or are descended from those who experienced the liberation of Europe in 1945.

It's a question of personal background, not purity. My wife's experience, as well as that of the relatives of my friends in Spain, is no less "pure" than that of someone who benefited from a charity--just different. The family who was saved from starvation is grateful, my wife was so disgusted, she left the church. Neither is right or wrong, they just see things with different eyes.

[ancianita]

20. Thank you for the explanation.

Yes, scars run deep. Mine included but not because of injustices as serious as you recount.

imo, it's not that we have them, we all do. All of us. It's how we go on with them that got us here. Carrying them like baggage will either freeze us or slow us down. Dropping the baggage to get Big Projects done can save all us scarred humans. Once saved we can go back and sort out the dropped baggage later.

I can then also see why Black Americans might not see us as white allies the way we see ourselves, for all the horror and history we didn't experience as they did at the hands of our racial group.

Race, religion, politics, economics. They all do damage at the same time they advance civilization over centuries, the filthy predators with the innocent children beneficiaries.

And when it comes to Big Projects, the extremes of damaged humans seem to be humanity's inertia.

By the time we realize that we will all be dead together if we don't work together, it will be too late.

But the science of climate says we must put that aside, work with whom we can, take allies from anywhere because otherwise we will die everywhere.


Without an everybody in/nobody out approach, those who won't work with anyone -- which could be everyone, really -- but watch and see what happens, might as well say,

[malaise]

8. Thankfully it is not

That is all

[ancianita]

11. I hear you. But

the point of the article is that it has more influence on at least three continents than governments.

So whatever good it can do -- even doing the right thing for the wrong reason -- can help.

[Wounded Bear]

12. I've always thought of the Catholic Church as the first multi-national corporation...

from which modern companies model themselves.

[ancianita]

13. I wonder

if any books have been written on that. I recall that the first corporations were formed by English kings, and so were "chartered." And this was after England itself split from the Pope through Henry VIII and became The Church of England, with banking, trade and everything secular governments did after that.

[Turin_C3PO]

14. I just read the excerpt you posted

and yes, the Church has a lot of influence in our world. That’s why it’s so good we have a Pope that seems to give a damn about the future of the earth and creating an economy that is fair, just and works for all people. They’re still behind the times on issues such as women’s rights but hopefully strides will be made in that department sooner rather than later. Also interesting that the Church doesn’t know exactly how much they own.

[lindysalsagal]

15. All other corporations pay taxes, and submit to government financial audits.

Try opening a school, day care center, or summer camp that isn't church-based. The regulations will strangle you. But the church has none of that, and they can discriminate against non-believers.

Sorry, but with their lack of abuse transparency, I don't share a rosy view of this corporation.

[ancianita]

17. Did you read the article? It doesn't sound like it, because nowhere is the Church presented as

a corporation. As an atheist I'd be the first to go for income taxing churches, or even imposing a wealth tax on them.

But there's no rosy view here, just a noting that a big institution is on board with climate mitigation.

One would think people on DU would be good with any and all participants in climate mitigation, rather than choose or judge who they'll ally with.

[pwb]

21. All corporations do NOT pay taxes?

Don't know where you got that notion. Many pay zero tax and get a refund.