I suppose this can be understood as a naive question…my boyfriend knows his way around the business world and has given me his thoughts on this…but I wanted to bring it here.
The Vatican Exhibit that has been touring, is here in Cincinnati now…one of four stops in the US I understand. Anyway, is the “Catholic Church” making any profit on this? My boyfriend said that it is a small amount they would be making, small enough that he is convinced that this is strictly spreading the historic splendor or the relics on display
But I just wanted to ask, because it seemed ironic that it began the tour not long after the church began to cry poor from the molestation law suits.
I think its close to 20 for admission…people are driving from out of state to visit the exhibit…and I imagine that its the same at the other stops…I think the exhibit lasts about two months.
I don’t know that, even if the Catholic church were to make any money from the exhibit (and I think most of the money goes to the museums), it would have anything to do with the molestation law suits. Those people were suing the dioceses in which the molestation alledgedly occurred, right? And if the Vatican made any money off the exhibits, that money would go to the Vatican, not the sued dioceses.
A minor nit but you may want to specify “Roman Catholic Church.” There are other churches that use the term Catholic with a large C and even we heretic Lutherans refer to being members of the catholic church in the creed taking it to mean universal.
The $20 goes in the first instance to the museum that’s hosting the exhibition. They in turn are probably paying the exhibition organisers, who will be incurring very considerable expenses - the costs of a touring exhibition of this kind are <i>vast</I>.
Some of the money may be finding it’s way back to the Vatican museums, but I would guess not very much. The Vatican museums - indeed, nearly all museums - are probably themselves lossmaking institutions, and any surplus on an exhibition of this kind probably goes to reduce the subvention they required from other sources, rather than enabling them to pay a dividend to the Pope.
If they do pay a dividend to the Pope, then that probably reduces (very marginally) his reliance on subventions from dioceses around the world, some of whom are being sued in respect of child sexual abuse incidents.
The diocesan subventions to Rome do not, however, come out of diocesan assets or endowments, but out of collections taken up annually for the specific purpose. If, say, the diocese of Boston were to be bankrupted and its assets seized, there would presumably be a new structure set up to minister to the Catholics of Boston. It would have little or no assets, but it would have congregations and it could take up collections. It could still take up an annual “Peter’s pence” collection for remittance to Rome.
In practice the priority would be rebuilding the asset base of the church in Boston - buying churches back from the trustee in bankruptcy of the former diocese, that kind of thing. So probably there wouldn’t be any Peter’s pence collection for a while. But I somehow doubt that the receipts from a touring exhibition of antiquities are going to replace that.
So, yes, there is a connection between the touring exhibition and the financing of the Roman establishment. But it’s very tenuous. And there is no way that the surplus from the exhibition, if there is one, could be conceived of as a replacement for funds lost as a result of the sex abuse scandals.
All ye who enter this post, prepare to suspend disbeleif. This is a work of parody.
Oh, the usual stuff. Socks for the Pope woven from the hair of virgins, Mink boots for the Papal Geese. Recent updates for the Vatican’s pornography collection (this is getting more expensive,) new icons of Madonna (no, not that Madonna.) And then there’s the coddling of all those boring politicians who don’t like abortion and gay marriages; oh, woe is the Holy Father, those twits take up way too much time.
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Isn’t it sort of the same with Anglicans as well - I mean, they do not accept that the pope is head of the church, the british monarch is, but beside this, they believe themselves anglican (at least the high-church do) ?[/hijack]
Thank you for the information. I thought, since the Catholic Church is basically an ‘institution’ I had thought there was a relationship. But really thanks for breaking it down.
:):)
