Wherever happiness is, it often seems to be at places where this blogger does not fit in, but he has not given up seeking it. It is most certainly not in this blog. Many entries here show his dissatisfaction with the pope, but his dissatisfaction has nothing to do with the pope personally, or maybe it does, but still the dissatisfaction is not so much with the pope himself but more with the splendor of Original Sin in every man that he manifests. Blogging is his way to vent his frustrations with the Catholic Church, a place where the living body of Christ resides and supposedly a place for those who seek Christ's peace away from the noises of society and for those who have lost their way among life's onuses.
Even though the Catholic Church still houses the Holy Eucharist, it is no longer a place of refuge, notwithstanding the fact that it was staged as such by this pope for a number of carefully selected and screened Syrian refugees. The Vatican ought to stand rooted as a pillar of holiness and as an impenetrable shield for all who seek protection from the Enemy, yet it has been transformed into a stage to meet and greet, without much, if any, reverence for or reference to God. Even acting in the capacity of a state, the Vatican cannot separate itself from Jesus Christ and His Church, since without the Son of God, there would be no Peter, the Apostle, no Catholic church and no Vatican. This rather secular pope, a monarch of sorts, has under him more dramas, political, social, administrative and secular, being played out over the period of his papacy than all the occasions of royal pomp and circumstance around the world combined.
Based on his observations, which may very well be biased, this blogger concludes that the Vatican is no longer serving God but itself by partnering with interests that have the backing of money and power to keep itself in "business," so to speak, paying only lip-service to the those who are lost, who need a true shepherd to guide them, not from the stage with a microphone or at a staged event, being watched over by a team of attendants and guards, but who in the pope's own words, is a "'[shepherd] living with the smell of the sheep.'" [1]
The CNN article below, dated September 24, 2015, reveals the state of sacrilege at the Vatican [2]:
The Catholic Church is the spiritual home to 1.1 billion people around the world. It's also a big business that handles billions of dollars.
Here's how it makes money and how it spends it.
1. The Vatican Bank has $8 billion in assets
The Vatican Bank, which has about $8 billion in assets, has often been at the center of scandal and corruption since it was founded in 1942. Pope Benedict began the process of cleaning the bank up, and Francis has continued that work.
Vatican Bank accounts are only supposed to be held by residents of Vatican City and church personnel. But according to Gerald Posner, a Vatican bank scholar and the author of "God's Bankers," these accounts were often awarded to powerful Italian officials looking to stash money without paying taxes.
The bank closed over 4,000 accounts to weed out corruption and currently has a total of 33,400 accounts.
The bank, formally known as the Institute of Works of Religion, has made progress, but still has a long way to go in becoming more transparent.
2. The Vatican had over €1.1 billion off its balance sheet
The Vatican is a separate entity from the Vatican bank, and underwent its own clean up last year.
When it released its 2014 financial statements in July, the Vatican said it had more than €1.1 billion ($1.2 billion) in assets that weren't previously on the balance sheet.
The Vatican has two main entities. The Holy See, which governs the Catholic Church and the Vatican City State, which governs Vatican City.
The Holy See reported a deficit of €25.6 million ($27.9 million) in 2014, even though it received over €50 million from the Vatican Bank. Its biggest expense last year was paying its 2,880 employees a total of €126.6 million.
The Vatican City State is responsible for running the Vatican Museums and in 2014 had a surplus of €63.5 million -- nearly double what it was the year before.
3. The Sistine Chapel is for rent - kind of
In October 2014, [under the Francis papacy,] the Sistine Chapel was rented out for the first time to the automaker Porsche.
Forty Porsche fans paid $5,900 to attend a gala under Michelangelo's famed painted ceiling as part of Pope Francis' Art for Charity project.
Whereas the average visitor is permitted only a short stay in the chapel, for fear of damage to the frescoes, the Porsche guests were treated to a private choral concert and a dinner in the exhibit.
Although money did change hands, the Vatican still contends it isn't renting out the chapel.
"The Sistine Chapel can never be rented because it is not a commercial place," Vatican spokesman Monsignor Paolo Nicolini said.
Instead, he described it as being "visible" for private groups.
But don't try booking the chapel for your birthday or wedding anytime soon -- events are limited to art-related functions.
4. It costs how much to become a saint?!
It's not cheap to get a priest canonized. To wit: The Our Lady of Victory National Shrine & Basilica in Lackawanna, New York, has raised over $250,000 in an effort to canonize its former priest, Father Nelson Baker. [The unofficial figure is $550,000 [3] so he should almost be (halfway) there.]
The funds cover the publication of materials about Baker, prayer cards, communication between the church and the Vatican, travel costs for visits to and from Rome and the fees of a canon lawyer.
The cost of canonization can vary greatly depending on the length of the process and the specific evidence needed to prove that a candidate is qualified for sainthood.
The church first appealed to Rome to have Baker canonized in 1987. The case was approved in 2011, but Our Lady of Victory still has to prove that Baker performed miracles. [4]
5. Tourism in Vatican City has tripled under Pope Francis
Tourism under Pope Francis has nearly tripled since he replaced Pope Benedict in March of 2013.
Over 12 million visitors have flocked to the Vatican for events featuring Pope Francis. And those figures don't even include the attendance for Pope Francis events that were held outside of the Vatican -- that tacks on another nearly 13 million visitors.
Pope Benedict received some 20.5 million visitors during his tenure from 2005-2013. [5]
Is this the kind of church Christ had imagined that it would become as if He did not already know? Why did God allow the Catholic Church to deteriorate? Is it because that popes and cardinals have been given the same Free Will as Adam and Eve and everyone else to sin against God?
It would be a tragedy if a natural disaster flattens the Vatican, but it would be better to start over than to continue down its snaky and damnable road. [6] Perhaps upon the debris will walk a true saint, like Francesco d'Assisi in the early 13th century who heard Jesus say to him, "'[G]o rebuild my Church, which you see is falling into ruins.'" [7] Maybe then will Heaven on earth can become a reality and happiness can be within this blogger's reach without having to live a decadent life trying to find it.
[1] http://www.thecatholictelegraph.com/pope-francis-priests-should-be-shepherds-living-with-the-smell-of-the-sheep/13439
[2] http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/24/news/pope-francis-visit-vatican-catholic-church/
[3] https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2016/09/23/vatican-tightens-rules-miracles-money-sainthood-cases/
[4] This blogger posted an entry on September 25, 2016, entitled New Rules For Sainthood, thinking that this pope wanted the change because he wanted to make certain that unsaintly people do not become saints. This could be pure naïveté on the part of this blogger. After writing this entry, he now concludes that the purpose for this change is not to protect the saintliness of sainthood but to make the process even more expensive, i.e, more money for the Vatican.
To prove that Baker performed miracles, follow the examples of those who had JP2 and Teresa of Kolkata canonized. Find some people and some doctors in obscure corners of the world and pay them lots of cash to say what needs to be said, and pay those who are vested with the responsibility to ascertain the validity of miraculous claims even more cash.
This is how this skeptical blogger views the processes that have led to some of the recent canonizations which can be as corrupt as some individuals that were canonized.
[5] This blogger does not understand why so many more people go to the Vatican under this pope than his predecessor. Had God been replaced? If no is the answer, then the large number of people who have gone to the Vatican under this papacy could not be because of God, since God has not changed, but because of a persona, since that is now different. A show of love for God by visiting the the Vatican ought not to be dependent on the persona of a pope.
Those who serve God are supposed to be as invisible as they can be, to act as conduits for the Holy Spirit to shine through to the people, but the people do not seem to care about the Holy Spirit; instead, they prefer a human being emboldened by a common popularity, even if the commonness is feigned and the popularity belongs to a person who is a savvy meglaomaniac politician fluent in the language of environmental and social secularism. This blogger doubts that many of these people who enjoy this pope would be just as enthusiastic in the presence of the Son of God, Who spoke God's Truth (not the language of relativism and hypocritical secular egalitarianism that they like to hear) and Who was so unpopular in His time that He was crucified. This blogger doubts that the mass mentality back then was any different than the mass mentality today. If Christ were alive in this world, he would not be nailed to a cross (not even by members of ISIL) but he would be crucified with words by the secular media and by Catholics who find Him too (ironically) "unforgiving."
[6] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+5%3A29-30&version=NIV
[7] http://www.capuchins.org/stfrancis.html
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