However, the article also refers to a different retired bishop who spent 500K remodeling his retirement house. That’s the part I don’t get. If he’s retired, I assume he has little or no budgetary authority anymore? Was that church money or his private money? Do retired bishops always get church-provided houses? I guess I kindof assumed they usually joined a communal monastery or something.
The half-million-dollar renovation is being done by the archbishop in Newark. According to this article, the archdiocese is paying for the renovation, out of funds from property sales.
This is so. Although it wouldn’t apply outside the Roman Catholic Church: in that communion Cardinals have the choice at age 70 to spend the next 100 years with the full power and prestige and well-being of that office or to renounce it all and go to wash the poorest of the poor every day in state care homes.
Those types of vows are taken by members of religious orders and those in consecrated life. It can be confusing, because members of such religious orders can be priests; the distinction is between being a diocesan priest and being a priest in a religious order. And of course a member of a religious order does not have to be a priest. A monk can take religious vows without receiving Holy Orders.
And if a person who has taken a vow, such as poverty, is granted the episcopal character – that is, if he is ordained a bishop – the Code of Canon Law, Can. 705, provides that his vow no longer must bind him. And Can. 707 §2 provides that a retired bishop who has served a diocese is generally entitled to reside in that diocese, and the diocese is responsible for his upkeep.
Jesuits do too, although it’s an individual vow, not a collective one, so most Jesuit residences are fairly nicely appointed, even if they’re not luxurious.
As others have pointed out, the vow of poverty is not taken by diocesan priests. But, even for those religious who do take it, it’s not a vow to live in poor circumstances; it’s a vow not to own any property personally, to share property in common. What you surrender by taking a vow of poverty is not primarily material comfort (though you may surrender at least a degre of that); it’s the power and autonomy that comes from possessing even a modest degree of personal wealth. The point about vow of poverty is not that you will never be able to acquire, e.g., a phone or a laptop; it’s that someone else will decide whether and when you can acquire one, and how much you can spend on it. That “somebody else” could be your superior, or it could be your community.
The other archbishop mentioned in the story is John Myers from the New Jersey diocese. He is not currently retired but will retire in 2 years when he hits the mandatory age. He commisioned an addition to the house he uses on weekends now and will live in when he retires. It is a requirement that every diocese provide housing to the retired archbishop.
As Tammy Faye Baker said about the gold plumbing and the air-conditioned doghouse “God didn’t mean for us to have crap.” Given that an archbishop has ulitmate budgetary control over a fairly large amount of money, it’s no surprise if they eventually take on a sense of entitlement. (Something I admire the new Pope Francis for trying to fight). Plus, a lot of items come as gifts. When I was a kid it was common for the local dealership run by a congregation member to donate a car for the parish or diocese.
Also, remember the church is an organization like any other. You don’t get ahead by praying, promotions likely happen with a combination an appearance of quasi-competence and a lot of office politics. This tends to promote the ones who have inflated opnions of themselves and their entitlements. A lot of the Vatican’s internal problems can be traced to these same causes.
I knew Wilton Gregory when he was a young man, just before he was sent to Rome for further studies. Really smart guy. Can’t believe he got caught up in this.
Is that a real Gibbon quotation? I just did a Google search on it. The one thing that claims to give a citation for it says that it’s footnote 57 in chapter XXXVIII. I just checked my copy of Gibbon. That has no relation to the actual footnote. I notice in the search that the only references to that supposed quotation are in things written by someone named Maarten Maartensz and two posts on the SDMB (including the one above). Can someone show that Gibbon actually said that? (Note that I’m not asking you if it sounds like something Gibbon said, which I agree may be true. I’m asking for a citation.)
But they’re not spending $2.5 million on the upkeep of the bishop. They’re spending $2.5 million to acquire a property. The bishop will live in it. When the bishop goes, they’ll still have the property which they can either put to other uses, or sell.
They’re spending $2.5 million for the upkeep of a bishop, no matter that they may ultimately recover some or all of that money. Anyway, that rather misses the point.
