[toyg]

Go to Italy; visit the new shrines to Padre Pio, or go to Rome and look and the industry flourishing around John Paul II merchandise, then let’s talk again about monetisation. They have a law where anyone can choose where to assign the 0.1% of their taxes, and every few years it’s tweaked to assign more and more to the Catholic Church by default - the Church already runs massive TV ad campaigns in tax season and is, of course, the major beneficiary of the money. They own massive amounts of real estate, and a lot of their properties are tax-exempt even when they host businesses and activities completely unrelated to the Church (this is source of continuous political debate and tweaking, year after year).

And then, of course, there is all the stuff about their shady bank, who had to be dragged kicking and screaming into compliance with transparency laws (still not there), and all the stuff about their activities in the ‘70s (Roberto Calvi etc etc).

The Church monetises quite a lot in my book. One of the reasons for current internal unrest is precisely the fact that this new pope doesn’t look as interested in the monetisation efforts as his predecessors, and that donations from the US (which had become, it is estimated, the pre-eminent source of cash over the last century) are drying up.

[baddox]

Thanks for the info! I certainly didn’t mean to dismiss any claims about the church’s hegemony, shady financial deals, or deals with governments, with which I remain very skeptical at best. I was curious specifically about the church’s interactions with (specifically non-wealthy) individuals.

[toyg]

Oh I can go on :)

Besides the tax thing, they get paid unofficial rent for weddings taking place in their churches (yes of course they are just tax-free "offerings" after the ceremony, but not paying will have consequences).

They sell ex-voto (you pay to light candles to your preferred saint), especially the old will likely do it every week or even every day. They also sell images of saints and various paraphernalia, as any religion will - I bought a sticker from a Japanese Shinto shrine to protect my electronics and it seems to work! :D

At Easter and Christmas priests are supposed to go blessing every house, and obviously they won't leave empty-handed (this varies a lot depending on the town and the physical condition of a priest). They often bring calendars to sell on those occasions. To be fair, this is again something that pretty much every sizeable European religion does, as far as I know.

Kids are required to follow weekly indoctrination courses to prepare for holy communion and so on. Obviously they are not free (unless the area is really poor). No course, no ceremony.

In summer, they organise childcare while schools are closed. Because of their legal status, all their workforce is made of unpaid volunteers, but the Church still gets paid a fee. Again because of their status, stuff like their kitchens is not required to follow all rules that private businesses would have to, in terms of respecting hygiene standards and so on. This allows them to undercut and monopolize the childcare market, and to keep the youth close and indoctrinated.

Procedure is the same for pilgrimages of old people to Lourdes, Medjugorie, Petralcina and so on - they organise them because they make money for both shrines and local parish thanks to volunteer workforce. Officially, top Church hierarchies will publicly disdain such activities in public declarations, but then they close one eye (or both) because they generate money.

There is probably more, but I have not really been close to that world for some time now so I probably forget some. The Catholic Church in UK has a lighter approach, because they are a minority (at least for now), so they only really fundraise for specific causes and don't push the superstition buttons too much. If I were Pope-Emperor of the world, the first thing I'd do would be to impose antitrust legislation on religions...

[baddox]

Okay, yeah, a lot of those sound pretty bad, particularly anything involving paying for local religious classes or ceremonies. From what I can remember from my conservative Protestant upbringing, none of those occurred. There were special courses that effectively required purchasing the book being covered and organized trips that cost money, but that’s the worst I can think of. I would assume that the church facility charged money for use for weddings, which doesn’t strike me as unreasonable assuming the amount is reasonable to cover cleaning and ongoing maintenance. At a recent funeral I attended, a family member mentioned that the preacher leading the service was paid $100, which I got the impression was more customary than obligatory. That didn’t bother me much.

[slededit]

There is a reason protestant comes from the word "protest". The catholic church has a lot of baggage.