Total liquidation. It’s what Jesus would do.

It is nice that Pope Francis is a nice man. It is nice that he spends time making personal phone calls to sad people. It would be much nicer if he would fully leverage the power of his huge and powerful global institution to maximize the amount of good it could do for the world’s neediest people (all of whom will be waltzing into heaven as the Vatican’s accountants struggle to thread themselves through the eye of that needle). If the Catholic church wants to be the most Jesus-like institution it can be, it needs to first stop advocating hateful, divisive, and backwards political positions. Then, it needs to spend its wealth properly.

Pope Francis doesn’t need to build any more churches. He needs to start selling churches. Let’s imagine that, by liquidating some holdings of the Catholic church, he could cobble together $600 billion. (That seems like a number that is well below the church’s total wealth.) What could be done with that money? Well, about a fifth of that cash could be used to fully eradicate malaria, a disease that kills almost a million people every year. Then, hell, you could take the rest of it and give a thousand bucks each to every single person in the bottom half of the wealth distribution in Africa, the world’s poorest continent. Or, you could fully eradicate world hunger for a dozen years. Take your pick of causes, really You could do a lot of things, for the world’s poorest people.

And if you sold off all of the Catholic church’s holdings, you could do even more for the world’s poorest people. This would also stop all the lobbying and proselytizing against them having access to birth control and abortion. Everyone wins. Poor people would see their lives materially improved. Denizens of the Catholic church, a wealthy institution, would greatly improve their chances of getting into heaven. Pope Francis could smile on his good works. And the faithful could spend their Sundays outside helping people, rather than sitting inside a stuffy old church. Because the church has been sold.

Total liquidation. It’s what Jesus would want.

http://churchandstate.org.uk