Pope laughing all the way to the bank

recedite

If anyone is feeling the pinch financially, don't worry at least some your nama money is going to a good cause...
http://www.secularism.org.uk/vatican-gets-huge-donations-from.html

ChocolateSauce

I'm highly tempted to simply write *pukes* and leave it at that.....

Galvasean

So now we can blame the Pope for the recession too? Sweet.

Dades

Sweet Jebus that really is sad. Donations to the Vatican? To buy an exclusive trinket?

I mean, what are those people doing, trying to buy immortality or appease their guilty consciences?

Galvasean

Dades wrote: »

I mean, what are those people doing, trying to buy immortality or appease their guilty consciences?

A place in heaven? Although I'm pretty sure the idea of the sale of indulgences is no longer considered canon.

Zillah

They obviously wanted their gold sticker medallion. That way they can laugh at those eijits who only donated 500k and ended up with silver. Suckers!

Rev Hellfire

Wasn't that money for the restoration of the Pauline Chapel ?

Perhaps I'm missing something here, true you have to question the ability of those developers to provide that sort of financial assistance(assuming they were not pre-bust commitments).

sink

In fairness restoration of the Pauline Chapel is a worthy cause, even if it is currently owned by the Catholic Church. It is a historical treasure and it needs to be preserved as part of our cultural heritage. It would be a crime to allow it to lapse into degradation.

Dades

sink wrote: »

It is a historical treasure and it needs to be preserved as part of our cultural heritage.

I'd rather those businessmen showed more concern about the heritage they've left for our kids. And since when was the vatican short of cashola? Surely they could eBay a few jewel encrusted orbs to raise the funds.

It's more the motives of the men involved that annoy me. A little coven of self-satisfied rich men with their medals snuggling up to the befrocked ones.

Zillah

sink wrote: »

In fairness restoration of the Pauline Chapel is a worthy cause, even if it is currently owned by the Catholic Church. It is a historical treasure and it needs to be preserved as part of our cultural heritage. It would be a crime to allow it to lapse into degradation.

God forbid we mortgage some of those priceless relics we have at our disposal! They are magic items! We can't involve those! After all, Jesus did specify that we focus on material (but shiny!) objects rather than our fellow man.

Dades

sink

Zillah wrote: »

God forbid we mortgage some of those priceless relics we have at our disposal! They are magic items! We can't involve those! After all, Jesus did specify that we focus on material (but shiny!) objects rather than our fellow man.

Whether you like it or not religion did push forward the boundaries of art, architecture and engineering from the Parthenon to the Pyramids. I happen to think that they're worth holding onto long after the religions to which they were dedicated have since died out. The same goes for Christian, Islamic and other current religious sites.

I want to get rid of the silly supernatural beliefs, not the great historical treasures. I would rather the Catholic church spend it's coffers on maintaining it's vast Architectural legacy, then on proselytising and spreading misinformation in Africa.

On the one hand you want them to help their fellow man, on the other you criticise them for being motivated only by their need to proselytise, and for attaching strings. I would rather they leave the charity business alone, secular organisations are better suited to it.

ChocolateSauce

sink wrote: »

In fairness restoration of the Pauline Chapel is a worthy cause, even if it is currently owned by the Catholic Church. It is a historical treasure and it needs to be preserved as part of our cultural heritage. It would be a crime to allow it to lapse into degradation.

So let the owners of the building pay for it. If my house was falling into disrepair I wouldn't be out in the streets raising money to fix it, even if I were broke, let alone if I was one of the richest organisations in the world (in fact, if I owned the house I lived in I'd be legally required to prevent it from falling into disrepair, by my own means).

The true crime is accepting donations from men who have been bailed out by the taxpayer for their extravagant misuse of other people's money, when the Church could easily sell one of Ratzingers rings to pay for it, all the while simultaneously refusing to pay their fair share of compensation to their child rape victims. It's practically criminal.

hiorta

Presumably all of the employees of the subcontractors to the donors were all paid in full prior to the outbreak of generosity.

recedite

Galvasean wrote: »

A place in heaven? Although I'm pretty sure the idea of the sale of indulgences is no longer considered canon.

Mass Card anyone? Buy your prayers here!

sink wrote: »

Whether you like it or not religion did push forward the boundaries of art, architecture and engineering from the Parthenon to the Pyramids. I happen to think that they're worth holding onto long after the religions to which they were dedicated have since died out. The same goes for Christian, Islamic and other current religious sites.

I want to get rid of the silly supernatural beliefs, not the great historical treasures. I would rather the Catholic church spend it's coffers on maintaining it's vast Architectural legacy, then on proselytising and spreading misinformation in Africa.

I think religion generally strangled engineering and science.It may have encouraged art, but at what cost to the ordinary people?
Former dictator/president Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan built a gigantic 75 metre high rotating golden statue of himself a few years ago and installed it in the centre of the capital city. Truly a wonder of art and engineering, but I'm not sure what the poverty stricken citizens thought of it. Not religion, I know, but the comparisons are obvious.
I have no problem with the Vatican or some rich donors spending their money or maintaining this splendour. It's annoying though that we and the next generation too have been handed the bill before the money's even spent, while those baboons tycoons take the credit.

To repeat what somebody else said above: Since when has the Vatican been short of cash?

sink

recedite wrote: »

I think religion generally strangled engineering and science.

I differ from a lot of my Atheist brethren on this point, the case is much less clear cut than many would like to believe.

Take the two examples I cited earlier, the Parthenon and the Pyramids. Both are engineering marvels that stretched the boundaries of human knowledge and achievement and they were both built to revere gods. Had there been no religion they would not have been built and the knowledge gained the process would never have come to fruition.

There are many, many examples of this all over the world, from Newgrange to the Aztecs. In the ancient world mans greatest engineering an technological achievements were often religiously motivated.

Now it's not all positive obviously, religion did do a lot hold back science, but it's not as one sided as many claim.

It's a strange irony that the two most historically progressive and constructive facets of human civilisation are at the same time it's most regressive and destructive, Religion and War.

robindch

sink wrote: »

Whether you like it or not religion did push forward the boundaries of art, architecture and engineering from the Parthenon to the Pyramids.

I don't think this judgment can be made unless one can accurately assess the quality and worth of the non-religious work that would have been executed, had the best people not been involved in turnout out religious stuff.

There is no doubt that the quality of public engineering decreased substantially from the time of Augustus to around the time that the Gothic cathedrals of northern France began to appear. Amazing as it might seem, something as simple as the secret of how to make and mix concrete (often used in Roman structures, eg, the Colosseum and the Pantheon in Rome) was forgotten during this time, and only rediscovered in the UK, AFAIR, in the mid 1700's.

Given this, it's not surprising that there are historians out there who claim quite reasonably that the human and financial resources devoted to religious ends increased from the time that christianity assumed control of the Roman Empire to the extent that it became increasingly difficult not only to fund non-religious capital projects, but also to provide the necessary intellectual framework within which smart people could prosper.

sink wrote: »

I happen to think that they're worth holding onto long after the religions to which they were dedicated have since died out. The same goes for Christian, Islamic and other current religious sites.

There's no doubt that they're worth holding onto -- French cathedrals are a favourite of mine -- but one should not forget the unpleasant nature of the society that built them nor, like the Seven Sisters in Moscow today, the brutal nature of the ideology that justified them.

Coriolanus

sink wrote: »

Take the two examples I cited earlier, the Parthenon and the Pyramids. Both are engineering marvels that stretched the boundaries of human knowledge and achievement and they were both built to revere gods. Had there been no religion they would not have been built and the knowledge gained the process would never have come to fruition.

That arguement can't be made if you know the processes that went into building the landmarks. They weren't built as sandbox learning tools (lets see how we can go lads!) but as the culmination of a process of learning. They're considered masterpieces for a reason, and that reason isn't that they were made spontaneously and the methods therein used later applied elsewhere. The methods were learned elsewhere and applied to the building of the Parthenon etc.
I can't remember, but I think it was Vetruvius who mentioned how Roman Legionaires who didn't retire to the farms, often became masons (at least amongst the sappers I guess?) because they had learned an inordinate amount building fortifications etc out in the provinces.
You could make a plausible arguement to say that we wouldn't have the Parthenon etc if it wasn't for war!

Xluna

recedite wrote: »

If anyone is feeling the pinch financially, don't worry at least some your nama money is going to a good cause...
http://www.secularism.org.uk/vatican-gets-huge-donations-from.html

I jumped to conclusions and thought it was to pay off there mass child rape debt. If only atheists were allowed into goverment.We can dream.

recedite

Xluna wrote: »

I jumped to conclusions and thought it was to pay off there mass child rape debt. If only atheists were allowed into goverment.We can dream.

Ah no, that's the indemnity deal; we are already signed up for that one.:(