[quote]dmaddox wrote:
[quote]Sloth wrote:
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
[quote]dmaddox wrote:
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
Plus, once someone in the world pushes the Catholic Church out of first place when it comes to helping the “widows and orphans” maybe we’ll consider getting rid of such epicenters of civilization and culture.[/quote]
Just out of curiosity, how does one measure these things? By total amount of charitable donations and offerings collected worldwide, or by amount actually spent on the aforesaid widows and orphans? Also, if the Church is in first place, who is in second, and by how much are they lagging behind?[/quote]
From the equation should be subtract government handouts?[/quote]
Nah, I’m just interested in a dollar amount of the total donations collected from parishioners worldwide, plus whatever percentage of the Vatican’s considerable tax-free income derived its worldwide real estate holdings and investments in the banking, insurance, chemical, steel, and construction industries. For the sake of argument, we’ll lump the Roman and Eastern Catholics together, and throw in the other Christian orthodoxies as well, even if they aren’t necessarily aligned with the Pope.
Next, I would like to see the dollar amount that actually goes toward charitable activities, specifically the care, feeding, housing and education of widows and orphans.
Once we have that, I would like to see these numbers compares with the same numbers from all the various Protestant denominations and sects, from Muslim organizations. We will disregard donations to and activities by organizations like Medecins Sans Frontieres, which are not affiliated with any religious institution.
Question: do we lump the Mormons in with the Protestants or the Muslims? Let’s say Protestants. Are Anglicans and Episcopalians more Catholic or Protestant? Let’s say Protestant as well, just for laughs. After all, Henry the Eighth, who invented the Church of England, protested the Catholic Church pretty hard.
So now we have three groups, roughly equivalent in size, all of whom take in massive amounts of money, and all of whom help widows and orphans.
I’d want to see the total take from all sources: tithes, collection plates/baskets/bags, charity boxes, along with telephone/mail-in/Internet donations solicited or otherwise, along with deathbed bequests and tax-deductible lump-sum disbursements on the Protestant side, and worldwide collection of zakat (the 2.5 percent of net worth a Muslim must give (think of it as a faith-based charity tax), plus khums a fifth of annual income, generally collected among the Shi’a plus sadaqa, which is all other voluntary donations.
Admittedly, any comparison along these lines runs into a few difficulties. Do we count the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies a “Catholic charity”, a “Muslim charity” or both? It takes in donations from people of all faiths (even those amoral atheists), and helps widows and orphans, infidels and heretics alike. Another problem is that whereas the income and charitable activities of Team Catholic are relatively easy to quantify, inasmuch as it has a relatively organized structure, the other two groups are more fragmented and decentralized in nature. It’s kind of like trying to track the income and expenditures of the Italian and Russian Mafia with that of the Crips and Bloods on one hand, and the Aryan Brotherhood, Hell’s Angels and the Ku Klux Klan on the other. Not that I would ever compare religious organizations to criminal organizations, just illustrating the difficulties involved.
So that is my question. It is one thing to say that Team Catholic is Number One at the the helping widows and orphan game, but without hard numbers and a solid basis of comparison with Team Protestant and Team Muslim, this is a difficult claim to back up. How about it, Brother Chris? I seem to recall you saying something about scientific evidence and the burden of proof. 
[/quote]
Let us know.[/quote]
I am eager to know also. This would be a daunting undertaking.
[/quote]
It is, sorry I have been away. I have been going through several surgeries plus rehabbing from two strokes.
It would be a big task to show that Catholicism is number one trying to figure out all the man hours of all the institutes, from Knights of Columbus to St. Vincent de Paul to St. Mary’s food banks, &c. Then on top of that figure out the funding of Catholic Charities. But, I’ll see what I can do.
Looking at America (hard to find numbers for the world), Catholic Charities is number 5. (The 100 Largest U.S. Charities List)
But, then look at Africa:
1137 hospitals
5375 dispensaries
184 Lazarets
184 houses for old people and chronicly ill
1285 orphanages
2037 gardens for childhood
1673 family counseling
2882 centers for sanity education
1365 institutions for poor’s assistance
67848 Maternal schools
93315 Primary Schools
42234 Secondary schools
Source: http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/world-news/detail/articolo/emergenza-umanitaria-emergencia-humanitaria-humanitarian-emergency-6857/
Plus if you look at Caritas International, you add another $5,715,895.97 to the $4,393,000 from Catholic Charities. But, that is only about 20 minutes of research. Those numbers are pretty high for yearly revenue. I’ll keep adding numbers as I find them.