During at least its first millennium,
Christianity—with the notable exception of Clement of Alexandria—held that
greed is tightly coupled to profit-seeking and wealth. Amid the increased
trade, and profits, during the Commercial Revolution in the Middle Age in
Europe, Aquinas began the trend severing the coupling to allow for greedless moderate
profits, and thus wealth. Also in Medieval Europe, the Roman Catholic
Church allowed monasteries to have collective wealth (including land)
without being subject to having to go through the eye of a needle to enter the
Kingdom of God.[1]
With it supply of gold and real estate, the Vatican could be considered rich in
the twenty-first century. When the exemption for collective wealth justifies those
holdings from the stain of greed is one question; here I look at reports in
2024 that the Vatican was on the brink of bankruptcy, and why, for at
least in one media report, one major reason is curiously left out even though
that reason may have been making all the difference, and may even be considered
just, whether in terms of divine or human justice.
Pope Francis admitted that the Vatican was in trouble financially. “The current system is unable to guarantee in the medium-term compliance with pension obligations for future generations.”[2] According to the Daily Express in late 2024, the Vatican’s “unprecedented financial crisis as of late . . . was caused by a decline in donations.”[3] In 2023, “the Vatican reported an operating deficit of $87 million,” and a larger deficit was the case in 2024 as of mid-December.[4] The question is why.
The Vatican had been “embroiled in debt after the European recession in 2012 and once again during the [coronavirus] pandemic in 2021.”[5] Also, the price of gold decreased in the early 2020s. Some conservative Catholics blamed Pope Francis’ “progressive” policies as “causing a decrease in donation.”[6] But on conservatives’ hot-button issues of abortion and homosexuality, the pope had reaffirmed the Church’s magisterium (i.e., teaching) that both are sins, and opposing climate change was not an unpopular position globally by 2024. As for emphasizing the poor, Jesus in the Gospel narratives does as much, so the pope was by no means an outlier in that respect. In fact, it could be counter-argued that the conservative, theologically excluding policies of the preceding pope, Joe Ratzinger, had caused church attendance, and thus donations, to decline. A church that views itself as more like a hospital than a club of saints will, everything else equal, enjoy larger attendance.
Entirely omitted, however, is
the decreased attendance due to the Roman Catholic priests who had been
molesting and even raping children for decades without being defrocked—Joe Ratzinger
being among the many sordid bishops who reassigned rather than defrocked pedophile
priests for the good of the reputation of the universal Church. The lack of
accountability within the Vatican, such as in the ceremonial role in the
Vatican being given to Cardinal Law by Pope John Paul II, who would be
canonized as a saint by the Church he led, after news had surfaced of Archbishop
Law having protected nearly 100 pedophile priests in Boston at the expense of
550 victims and with court judgments “that eventually topped $85 million.”[7]
Even though the Boston Archdiocese was responsible for paying out the
judgments, the hit to the credibility of the Roman Church from not only there
being so many pedophile priests (and bishops), but also there being so little
accountability—not even a resulting change at the top due to the serial
unaccountability from Rome—led to a marked decline in church attendance.
Besides this meaning less in donations, surely a significant number of the
laity decided not to contribute financially to a religious organization in
which employees thereof had been molesting and even raping children over
decades. In any democratic state, a government covering up and even
harboring so many rapists and their superiors would have faced a no-confidence
vote, yet neither Pope John Paul II or Benedict XVI was pushed out or resigned
for that reason, although it may be that the International Criminal Court made
a deal with the latter pope, Joe Ratzinger, that would drop the charges pending
against him in exchange for that conservative pope breaking with
tradition and resigning, as well as being confined to Vatican City for the rest
of his life. Even efforts inside the Vatican to hide this deal would be consistent
with the efforts to cover-up cases of pedophile priests and their clerical
protectors, such as Archbishop Law of Boston.
In short, no one should be
surprised that the Vatican was on the brink of bankruptcy, though were the
Vatican to sell some of its real-estate and gold the organization’s pensioners might
not have had to fear being left high and dry in a worldly rather than heavenly
sense. Although such fear would not be just for innocent priests and bishops,
the extent of orchestrated covering up by the Vatican since at least 2002 and
even the possible culpability psychologically of clerical celibacy as a church tradition
from the Middle Age regarding the molestation and raping of children as a
result of dysfunctional repression means that in addition to guilty priests and
bishops being defrocked, the Roman Catholic Church was facing natural and
perhaps even divine justice in being on the brink of bankruptcy. That is a
powerful statement—much more so than one blaming the Vatican’s weak financial
condition of Pope Francis, as if his policies were progressive, and if they
really were so, blameworthy too.
To be sure, religion does not
reduce to morality; Yahweh in the Hebrew Bible is more concerned with being worshipped
exclusively and thus in covenant, than in sticking to human ethical principles.
But it is God, rather than Popes and other bishops (and priests), who has license
to trump ethics when needed for theological purposes. When us mere mortals
decide unilaterally to trump the dictates of justice by inflicting harm on
other people and by enabling the perpetrators who are aggressive especially against
the weak, then we can expect that our own suffering is just. Therefore, it is
just that the Vatican was on the brink of bankruptcy at the end of 2024.
2. Alana Loftus, “Vatican ‘On the Brink of Bankruptcy’ Due to Dramatic Decline in Global Donations Under Pope Francis’ Leadership,” MSN.com, December 17, 2024.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Phillip Martin, “The Pope Promises Accountability to Victims Abused by the Church. Where is Cardinal Law?” The World, August 3, 2015.
