A group of "holier than thou" bishops, who conflate poverty with holiness, pledged on Sunday to live poor, simple lives (but certainly won't give up their jet-setting, traveling ways, but what the heck!
In general terms it means this:
Bishops spurning luxury, rejecting the use of plastics and taking public transportation, as the new-fangled “Pact of the Catacombs” suggests?
Let's be clear, secular clergy only promise obedience to their bishop and celibate chasitity. Many laity love it when priests disobey their bishop and the Church but not so much when we disobey celibacy, but I digress.
Secular clergy do not make a promise or vow of poverty, although if they wish to do so privately nothing is stopping us.
Religious clergy make vows of poverty and in some orders additional vows.
I have to say the bishop I know who seem to live a simpler live, not so much the one that I highlight in red but just a bit more simple than a lot of bishops today was Bishop Raymond Lessard, now deceased, God rest his soul.
He lived in the cathedral rectory, did not like going to fancy restaurants, dressed simply even liturgically. He was not sloppy though. He was meticulous about certain things.
I use to purchase vestments for the cathedral and he wore what the cathedral had. I think he had one chasable that was his alone. It drove me crazy to buy vestments, because he would only wear lightweight ones and ugly ones at that. Some of those vestments I purchased are still at the cathedral. In the 80's these cost $60 to $100!
He had one miter and as it got older even dry cleaning couldn't get the sweat stain out of it. Finally it got a new one.
He was low Church until I became his MC and started to jazz the liturgy up at the Cathedral. He got complaints from some of our Cathedral parishioners because of it but noticed that more people were coming to the cathedral especially for episcopal Masses. So he let me continue with making sure our cathedral had cathedral liturgies.
Just how simply should we priests live? We all know that clergy and religious have a huge travel budget and travel much more than most laity. Should that be cut too?
What suggestions do you have for clergy's poverty?
37 comments:
"We all know that clergy and religious have a huge travel budget and travel much more than most laity."
I have a zero travel budget, aside from what the parish pays for retreat and clergy conference. I'm not sure what you are referring to here...
Mike, personal travel money budgeted for European travel and river cruses. And there are those laity who think your paycheck that provides you these luxuries his their contributions to the offertory. I can tell you that my mom waited 10 years before she returned to Italy in 1966 and I can count on one hand how many times she went back until she died in 2012.
I did not go back to Italy until 1981 after I was ordained seeing all of my relatives there for the first time since I was 3.
A lot of religious I am know, decry global warming, yet fly all over the world, to espouse "social justice", etc. Extreme lack of self-awareness. I suspect most diocesan priests do not have the travel budgets that members of religious orders have or that our bishops do. Think of the money that could go to the poor if they just held the USCCB meetings via video conferencing.
In terms of advice, live in the manner most of your parishioners do.
If you were an Anglican or Episcopal priest, you might expect membership at the local country club or at least some "privileges" there. I guess in Savannah, that might mean membership at the Oglethorpe Club. Here in Atlanta, that could membership at any number of places in Buckhead or Midtown. In fact, after the 1939 dedication of the Cathedral of Christ the King up here, the banquet was held at the then---as now---exclusive Piedmont Driving Club.
Also, what is exactly is a "low church" Catholic? In the Episcopal Church, "low church" would mean among other things the more "Protestant" version of worship---Morning Prayer instead of Holy Communion for the main Sunday worship, cassock, surplice and stole instead of a chasuble or cope.. St. Pauls on Abercorn in Savannah would be an example of "High Church' Anglicanism, St. John's in Savannah more the "Low Church" style (St. Johns has Holy Communion at their main service only about half the year, though they always offer it at their 8am service and 1215 in the chapel).
When I was in Sugusta I was offered a membership in the Augusta Country Club. I declined. It butts up to the Augusta National which the one making the offer also belonged. Now if he had offered me a membership there..,,
Generally low Church Catholicism is a silent Mass with contemporary music, cheap vestments, no incense or Asperges., all vernacular, casual and comfortable.
Should read spoken priest parts Mass not silent.
Father McDonald,
You just described the typical OF Mass - low Church.
Father M, only thing with membership at the National, you probably would have needed a big pay raise---though think of the opportunity maybe to hold Mass at Amen Corner! I wonder if Mass has ever been offered on the grounds there---certainly at Masters time there must be some Catholics playing the course, and not all of them make their way to Monte Sano Avenue (St. Marys on the Hill).
But one issue with belonging to a country club might be history of racial and religious discrimination--a lot of clubs of here in Atlanta for years were known not to have any black or Jewish members. Thankfully a lot of that has changed.
In recent years and I think it continues, priests in Augusta offer Mass there on Master’s Sunday for workers and I guess any Catholic golfer in the clubhouse I think.
I know what my pastor and his associate do day in and day out. I don't begrudge them a perk here and there. They don't make much and really do carry their own personal expenses. This absurd notion that the clergy are living like princes, at least at the diocesan level, is crazy. Now as for Bishops and Cardinals....This Catacomb Pact is foolish. It's as Father M says...they aren't giving up their travel and nice vestments, nor should they. Let the Liberation Theologist/Marxist in the Domo Santa Marta do what he wants but stop the foolishness now.
"Mike, personal travel money budgeted for European travel and river cruses."
I'm still not sure how that applies to "We all know that clergy and religious have a huge travel budget and travel much more than most laity."
I have no travel budget. When I travel - and, yes, I did take a Viking River Cruise Grand European Tour from Amsterdam to Budapest in 2017 with one of my sisters - I pay for it out of my salary. No one "budgeted" this money for me to travel on.
Do you have a "huge housing budget" that you have used to purchase a luxury condominium on Hilton Head Island?
No, you paid for it out of your own pocket just as do my own personal travel. That's what people, including the clergy and religious I know, do when they travel for personal purposes.
Off topic: Three of the Pachamama statues which were placed in the Santa Maria Transpontina church in Rome have been removed and cast into the Tiber! Check it out on "Lifesite News" or on Taylor Marshall.
Mike, I am not speaking about parish budgets but your personal budget wihich funded your Viking Cruise, your travel expense and yes I think clergy travel more on their own money than laity who have families to care for.
Also, as you will recall, under Lessard we were not to travel west of the Mississippi River for parish or diocesan funded retreats, workshops or conventions.
So, under Lessard I hope you did not go to any tea and crumpets workshops or conventions west of the Mississippi!
Allan, what I do with my personal money is my choice. If I save for a vacation, which is how I was able to afford the Grand European Tour from Amsterdam to Budapest on the Viking ship Modi, then what has that to do with "budgets?" It took me about 6 years to accumulate enough frequent flyer points to pay for the plane fare for both of us - my gift to my sister.
And your luxury condominium on Hilton Head, is that an example of clerical extravagance? You have two residences - a small mansion in Richmond Hill and a luxury condo in Hilton Head. Isn't that more than the laity who have families to care for have?
Yes, but I don't have a guilty conscience about it oozing out of me like you to justify my extravagance.
Oh, btw, I am blogging from my balcony over the lagoon where precious lives in HH. No puritanical guilt here in South Carolina's Amazon!
Allan, let me assure you, I am not the least bit guilty about taking a vacation.
Sounds like you are projecting from your luxury condominium balcony in exclusive Hilton Head, South Carolina.
To the point, though, all of us, clergy, religious, and laity, should heed the saying "Live simply so that others may simply live."
There was a time when the Pastor was, in many places, almost expected to drive a fine car and to hob-nob with the social elite. I imagine that for many Catholics, that their pastor was in with the well-heeled crowd was a sign that Catholics in general had "arrived" and were accepted into posh or somewhat posh social circles.
I think we do a much better job nowadays.
Boys, boys. This is getting unseemly.
As I said earlier, it may make sense to live a lifestyle in keeping with the kind your average parishioner enjoys. No?
Also, rich people have souls that need to be saved, so you should be around them. Also, they may donate money for a very worthy parish enterprise or outreach program. Without the rich, we would have less jobs, less money, and rather dull lives. I think Venezuela is finding that out now.
I agree with TJM---I mean, how many poor people have created jobs?
Even our Lord urged us to rest---none of us goes into the next world wishing they had worked another day! Everyone should take a vacation at some time of the year.
"...it may make sense to live a lifestyle in keeping with the kind your average parishioner enjoys. No?"
No.
"Without the rich, we would have less jobs..."
No. We might have FEWER jobs, but we would not have "less" jobs."
"Without the rich, we would have . . . rather dull lives."
No. If your life depends on the rich for enjoyment, uplift, laughter, and overall joy, you are in a bad, bad way.
People who live in poverty don't want to be poor. They're poor for any number of concrete reasons. Making everyone poor doesn't actually give poor people money -- it just makes everyone poor.
Except for the rich, of course. None of them are giving up their stuff.
Marc,
Cynical today, aren't we? St. Francis of Assisi gave up his wealth. But I understand, the Clintons and Obamas are not going to give up their stuff that they "earned" through public "service."
TJM, I work with poor people for a living. My experience tells me that giving poor people stuff will not -- in the vast majority of cases -- get them out of poverty.
Giving up wealth can prevent future help for the poor. I would not feed a starving man all of my seed corn.
Marc,
I agree. It's the old saying, give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and you will feed him for a lifetime. There are complicated reasons for poverty, but if a child grows up in a one parent household, the risk goes up exponentially.
TJM is right about growing up poor in a one-person household...and that is the "big elephant in the room" few will discuss. That is, it is pretty well proven here in the United States, if you at least graduate from high school, get some schooling thereafter and have kids AFTER you have "made that deal" at the altar, well, you changes of being perpetually poor are pretty low. Something the Democrats never talk about, as that would be "judgmental". When was the last time any of the Democratic presidential candidates admitted that most abortions (maybe 80 percent or more) are due to promiscuity? Or that the connection between crime and lack of two-parent families is pretty clear? Here in Atlanta, pretty common for teens,1 5, 16 sometimes even younger, being arrested for crimes---probably few of whom came from two-parent families. But who am I to judge, right?
I remember that idiotic show Murphy Brown where Candace Bergen reveled in being a single Mom. Her father, Edgar, a staunch family man, would have been appalled. Also little Miss Candace grew up affluent and she remained so, so her character was not based on the reality of what most folks go through.
Murphy Brown chose, as an unwed mother, to keep her child rather than to abort it. Yes, she was thrilled to be a mother.
That alone should gain her the appreciation if not the outright praise of the pro-lifers. But, too often they fall into the Dan Quayl(e) trap of initiating an argument with a fictional character.
The "staunch family man" Edgar Bergen left nothing in his will to his daughter Candace. He did, however, leave $10,000.00 to Charlie McCarthy. Nice dad there...
Did that live if simplicity extend to the pedophile Lessard hid? Maybe he could only afford one miter because he was paying the perv’s room and board and keeping him one step in front of the cops?
Anonymous K,
She offered an unrealistic, bad example to young women. No question of marriage. Strange that someone who votes for the Abortion Party cares at all about her choice to keep her baby. With global warming about to engulf us, your side says we should no longer have children.
Edgar Bergen was likely appalled by his daughter's left-wing loonism and knew she didn't need his money. Makes sense to me and doesn't undercut in the least that he was a staunch family man.
Being a single mother and keeping a child from an unplanned pregnancy is a "bad example"?
In what weird, dystopian world is that true?
Our previous bishop, Wilton Gregory, bought a $2 million home in posh Buckhead which raised a bug outcry (it even had an "escape room" where you could go if your mansion was broken into); he bowed to pressure and moved to more modest quarters in an adjoining county (maybe a 400k home). Now he is up in DC, but I don't know where he lives up there. I don't see anything wrong with a bishop owning a house, such as for entertaining donors to a campaign, an annual Christmas party---good to have a place of your own!
Anonymous K,
The true Catholic Church would advise Murphy Brown to marry the father but In your pervert and gay infested world, you would kick out St. Joseph as an unnecessary appendage
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