5133 Roman Catholic Statistics
The Roman Catholic Church has an estimated 665,000,000 members, or about 18% of the world’s population. In the United States, there were 48.8 million Catholics in 1976, or 22% of the US population.
In addition, the Pope commands well over a million ecclesiastics—425,000 priests and 900,000 nuns. There are 4,000 cardinals, patriarchs, metropolitans, archbishops, bishops, abbots and superiors.
Churches number 420,000.
5134 High Points For Administration
An overall rating of 9,010 out of a possible 10,000 points for administrative excellence was given to the Roman Catholic church this month by the American Institute of Management.
The church’s new rating, according to the AIM, puts it in the same ranks—as far as administration is concerned—with such firms as General Motors and Proctor and Gamble.
“There is less of a Roman clique behind today’s decisions in the church and more of a hard-working cardinalate,” the institute said.
—Christianity Today
5135 Wealth Of Vatican
Not only is the Roman Catholic Church the largest religious organization in the world, it is the richest. The securities alone which it holds are conservatively estimated at $6 billion, making it by far the largest single stockholder in the world.
It is virtually impossible to estimate its wealth in ancient buildings and art treasures, which would have to be in the billions of dollars.
According to Stefan Jean Rundt, head of S. J. Rundt and Association, the Vatican has a standing order to buy a half-million ounces of gold every two weeks. The Vatican reportedly has a gold reserve three times that of Great Britain.
5136 Jesuit Wealth
The Jesuit order has rivals among other Catholic religious orders, yet it remains the richest of all the 539 Catholic orders operating in the United States. It is reported that this order has a tax-exempt income of $250 million a year from stocks, bonds, commercial real estate and many “unrelated” business.
5137 Televised Papal Events
The 1.2-million-member Knights of Columbus will pick up the tab for worldwide coverage via satellites of three major papal events annually (Christmas midnight mass, Good Friday activities, and an Easter sermon). The four satellites of the Intelsat system will be used at a cost of about $25,000 for each of the three ninety-minute live telecasts. Networks and stations must negotiate with Italian television, which operates a Vatican TV pool, for the right to pick up satellite feeds.
—Christianity Today
5138 “Empty” Tomb Of Mary
Vatican City (AFP)—Archaeologists have opened the reputed tomb of the Virgin Mary at the Gethsemane in Jerusalem and found it to be empty, the Vatican newspaper L’ Observatore Romano reported.
The empty tomb confirmed the Christian tradition of Assumption—that Christ’s mother was taken up into heaven—wrote the Rev. Father Bellarmino Bagati, author of L’ Observatore’s article.
The tomb has been venerated for 19 centuries. It is in a small, arched room and was recovered with stone slabs in the course of repair work in 1956.
When archaeologists removed the slabs, they found bare rock on which Mary’s body was placed according to tradition.
5139 Pope And Virgin Mary
Vatican City (AP)—Pope Paul VI unveiled—on the day of Immaculate Conception and 10th anniversary of the last ecumenical council—a new prayer written by himself and dedicated to the Virgin Mary. It calls for “reconciliation among people and nations,” the theme of the Pontiff’s Holy Year.
The Pope recited his prayer, not a first by the Pontiff but a rare one, during mass in St. Peter’s Basilica celebration the day concluding Vatican Council II, 10 years ago.
Vatican observers said the Pontiff dedicated his prayer to Virgin Mary and unveiled it on Immaculate Conception day to stress the importance of the Virgin Mary to the church.
5140 American Mariolatry
It was at the Council of Baltimore in 1846 that U. S. Roman Catholic bishops invoked the Virgin Mary as “special partroness” of the American church under the title of the Immaculate Conception. Some 40 miles south of Baltimore, the largest Catholic church in the United States was dedicated as the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.
5141 “Co-Redemptrix”
Mary suffered with Christ “and nearly died with Him when He died,” thus she “may rightly be said to have redeemed the human race with Christ” (Pope Benedict XV, 1918). “The Virgin of Sorrows shared the work of redemption with Jesus Christ” (Pius XI, 1923). Widely held, but not dogma.
“No one can approach Christ except through his Mother” (Pope Leo XIII, 1891). “My salvation depends upon Mary’s mediation in union with Christ, because of her exalted position as Mediatrix of all Grace … ” (catechism in My Sunday Missal). Vatican II used the title and said Mary’s “intercession continues to win for us gifts of eternal salvation,” but added that this shouldn’t detract from Christ as the “one Mediator.”
5142 Images To Be Retained
The Council of Trent decreed that “images were not only to be placed in the temples, but also to be worshipped as if the persons represented thereby were present.” And Pope Pius IV said: “I most firmly assert that the images of Christ and of God and also of the saints are to be retained, and that due honor and veneration are to be given them.”
—J. H. Bomberger
5143 First Survey Of Paradise
Vatican City (Reuter)—Heaven has more Italian saints in it than any other nationality, according to an unofficial Vatican study.
The survey, carried out by Dutch Jesuit Rene Mols, shows that of 1,848 registered saints, 626 are Italians, informed sources said.
Further breakdown of what has been termed “official Paradise,” shows that more than half (1,044) of Heaven’s Catholic saints were priests during their time on earth.
But their number also includes 15 ex-Popes, 14 former married women and eight widowers.
The nation with the second highest number of saints is France (576), followed by the British Isles (271) and the Iberian peninsula (215).
The study was made of all saints canonized in the past 1,000 years and may form the basis of a demographic survey of Paradise to be carried out by the Vatican computer, the sources said.
The computer, housed in the Vatican’s Central Statistics Office, recently calculated that 664,388,000 of the world’s 4.5 billion inhabitants were Catholics.
5144 30 Saints Taken Off Church List
Vatican City (AP)—Nearly 30 saints were dropped in a drastic revision of the liturgical calendar of the Roman Catholic Church.
Among those dropped were St. Christopher, patron saint of travelers and the figure in millions of St. Christopher medals; Saint Barbara, after whom countless girls have been named. Saint Susanna, for whom the American Roman Catholic Church in Rome is named.
The new calendar was issued under a special decree titled “Paschalia Mysterii” (“Of the Paschal Mystery”) issued by Pope Paul VI.
The calendar states the deleted saints were removed from the listing because it is doubtful that they ever existed.
5145 Christmas Loses St. Nick
St. Nicholas, otherwise known as Santa Claus, has been abolished by Roman Catholic officials with one majestic sweep of forty-one saints that “may never have existed,” according to an announcement from Vatican City.
The announcement said that some of the abolished saints had attained their standing more through legend than truth and the decree was to set the record straight.
Included among the scratched-out names was St. Christopher, the patron saint of travelers.
—Moody Monthly
5146 On Peter’s Throne
A committee of experts, appointed by Pope Paul VI to examine the so-called throne of St. Peter at Rome, has now reported that carbon-14 tests made on the wood show clearly that it could not possibly be old enough to have been used by the apostle.
This widely-venerated “chair of Peter” dates back to 875 and was probably a gift to Pope John VIII by the Roman Emperor Charles the Bald, according to the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences.
5147 America’s Catholics
At the start of this century, most U. S. Catholics were in immigrant families from Europe, blue-collar people living in the cities of an overwhelmingly rural country. Today, they are mainstream Americans.
A Notre Dame study finds only 1 in 5 American Catholics living in big cities. Most live in the suburbs, small cities, towns, or rural areas. America’s economic heartland—the Midwest and the Northeast—still claims two of every three Catholic residents.
Many Catholics who live in big cities are new immigrants from Asia and Latin America. Hispanics make up 25 to 30 percent of America’s Catholic population. In California and Florida, more than half of the Catholics are Hispanic.
The Notre Dame study finds Catholic educational attainments and incomes much like those of other Americans. One difference: Catholics under 40 have fewer children than do young Protestants.
5148 Vernacular Mass
On Palm Sunday, Pope Paul became the first pontiff ever to recite an entire Mass in Italian in St. Peter’s Basilica.
5149 An Ad For Padres
According to an article in the 1986 issue of U.S. News and World Report, “college students chuckled at this campus advertisement, in which Father Guido Sarducci of “Saturday Night Live” fame extolled the perks of priesthood—from eating on-the-house cacciatore to getting first crack at parish rummage sales and helping your fellow man.”
But to the advertiser, the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, the world’s shortage of priests is no joke. Twenty years ago, there was 1 priest to every 747 Catholic lay persons in the United States. The ratio now: 1 to 912. Sarducci’s ad may help a bit. More than 1,000 young men asked for more information.
5150 The Apocrypha
The Roman Catholic Church received as canonical at the Council of Trent (1546) all these books except I and II Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh: Esdras, Tobit, Judith, Additions to the Book of Esther, The Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Haruch, Epistle of Jeremiah, the Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Young Men, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, the Prayer of Manasseh, I and II Maccabees.
But from the time of Luther, Protestants have rejected their canonicity.
5151 Powerful And Wealthy
America’s 53 million Catholics constitute the fourth-largest Catholic community in the world (after those of Brazil, Mexico and Italy). It has some 400 bishops, with about 15 new bishops appointed by the Pope annually.
The U.S. Catholic Church has almost 20,000 parishes and some 55,000 priests. Its parochial schools enroll three million. Its network of 232 Catholic colleges and universities, with a combined enrollment of 500,000, is by far the biggest in the world. The American Roman Catholic church is powerful and wealthy.
5152 Divorced Catholics
There are some 8 million divorced Roman Catholics in the U. S., half of whom have remarried in violation of church rulings. Over 15,000 annulments were granted by the Catholic Church in 1976, compared with 700 in 1967.
5153 Priest And Beauty Queen
A 41-year-old Roman Catholic priest in Ceylon sought unsuccessfully last month to obtain a papal dispensation to marry a local beauty queen. The priest, Father Noel Cruz, is well-known in Ceylon for a series of radio broadcasts. He had already announced plans to marry Miss Manel de Silva, a 28-year-old school teacher who was “Miss Ceylon” of 1983.
—Christianity Today
5154 Going Their Own Way
The following report by Time typifies the dramatic shifts that have taken place in U.S. Catholicism since the Second Vatican Council ended in 1965—
Even as Pope John Paul II landed in the United States in 1987, an adult Bible class met at the red brick Our Lady of the Assumption school in Claremont, California.
The 25 participants quickly fell into heated disagreement over two issues: Is it morally licit for couples to live together outside of marriage? Should the church approve the remarriage of divorced parishioners?
A generation ago, members of such a group would not have challenged the church’s “No” to both questions. But at this meeting, a member pointed out: “Everybody had a different opinion. That’s the state of American Catholicism today. People are practicing what they want to practice, and priests are giving individual advice.”
From a Time poll came this statistic: “While 75% of American Catholics see the Pope as an important world leader, 93% believe they can disagree with him and still be good Catholics.”
5155 “Are You A Father?”
A Protestant Minister with a parish among a Roman Catholic population spends an exciting life:
One day the phone rang and a female voice said:
“Are you a father?”
“Of course I am; I have three kids.”
“Whaaat? !”
“Yes, three children.”
“Are you married?”
“Naturally.”
“Let me get it straight: you have three children, you are married and you are a father?”
“Right.”
“Shame on you!”
And bang! Down goes the receiver.
—Nunzio Testa
5156 Equal Pay Sought
Because priests and nuns take vows of poverty, it is common practice in Roman Catholic schools and universities to pay them less than lay members of the faculty. That “clerical discount” can mean a salary differential of 50%. Now the only two priests on the law school faculty of Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., have become fed up with the policy. The two professors, Father Joseph Broderick and Father David Granfield have filed separate suits in a Washington federal court seeking parity with other law professors.
They thus increased the pressure being applied by a growing group of nuns and priests who argue that their vow of poverty means that any unneeded earnings should benefit their orders rather than their employers. In their suits, Fathers Broderick and Granfield contend that the university had promised to abolish clerical discounts but did not, and that they are being deprived of their rightful salaries without due process of law.
—Time
5157 Tetzel’s Boomerang
That shameless trafficker in indulgences, Tetzel, in one instance at least, was caught in his own trap. He sold a gentleman an indulgence for sins to be committed—a free pardon—and the purchaser waylaid the inquisitor in a wood, and after giving him a mild chastisement with a stick, carried off Tetzel’s chest of money.
The injured man took his cause before the authorities; but when the Elector saw the document which the offender possessed, the case was dismissed.
—Selected
5158 Pope Against Flies
We are reminded how, in the Middle Ages, the St. Bernard monks at Clairvoux excommunicated a vineyard as a matter of discipline; how, in the twelfth century, a bishop of Laon gave similar sentence against the caterpillars in his diocese; and, the year after, St. Bernard took the same course as to the flies that infested the monastery of Foigny. And also, in the sixteenth century, the rats of Autun, Macon, and Lyons had pronounced against them the fatal decree by the ecclessiastical court.
5159 Settling The “Mass” Arrears
When Chief Justice Whiteside of England visited Italy, he was struck with the multitude of priests, and asked a Roman Catholic friend what they could possibly find to do.
“Find to do!” answered his friend. “They have more to do than they can possibly get through.”
“How can that be?” was the natural rejoinder. “What have they to do?”
“They have to say masses for the dead,” was the reply. “You see no man in good circumstances likes to die without leaving money, perhaps a hundred crowns, or even five hundred, for masses for his soul—masses to get him out of purgatory. Or, if he loses his wife or his child, he goes to the priest to order a hundred masses for the benefit of the soul of the departed. Now, for all Italy, this makes such an enormous demand, that the priests are always some tens of thousands of masses in arrear; that is, they were paid last year, or the year before, for masses which they have not yet been able to say.”
“But what happens then,” said Mr. Whiteside, “if, as you say, they are always getting into arrears?”
“Oh! then they send a petition to the pope; and he sets it all straight.”
“How does he do that?” asked Mr. Whiteside.
“Oh! he issues a decree once in every two or three years, that so many thousand masses which have not been said shall be entered in the chancery of heaven as if they had been said; and that, you know, makes all right.”
—Foster
5160 Savonarola’s Answer
The Pope requests a Dominican bishop to repair to Florence and answer the abbot Savonarola’s sermons. “Holy Father, I will obey; but I must be supplied with arms.” “What arms?” “This monk,” replied the bishop, “says we ought not to keep concubines, commit simony, or be guilty of licentiousness. If in this he speaks truly, what shall I reply? “What shall we do?” Said the Pope, “Reward him, give him a red hat, make a Cardinal and a friend of him at once.”
Savonarola kindly receives the papal messenger, and for three days listens to his arguments, but is unconvinced. The tempting bribe is then offered. “Come to my sermon tomorrow morning and you shall hear my answer.” How great was the emissary’s surprise at hearing more daring denunciations than ever from Savonarola, who exclaimed, “No other red hat will I have than that of martyrdom, coloured with my own blood.”
—Newman Hall
5161 The Bible Pro And Con
The Council of Trent, which defined the limits of Catholic orthodoxy after the Reformation, distinctly forbade the reading of the Scriptures “in the vulgar tongue” except under such priestly supervision as rendered it nugatory and ineffective.
Pope Leo XIII, on the contrary grants an “indulgence” to those who shall spend fifteen minutes daily in the reading of this work as thus sent forth with his imprimatur to the Italian people. He says in his pastoral that the Bible will “breathe a new purity into the home, a new obedience to children and new patience to the poor.”
5162 Truman’s Will
The will of the late President Harry S. Truman raised some eyebrows when he left bequests of $500 each to fifteen of the sixteen grandnephews and grandnieces but only $5 to one, John Ross Truman of Boston. Contacted by newspapermen, the Truman grandnephew said the codicil to the will was drawn at a time when he was studying for the Catholic priesthood, ruling out acceptance of any inheritance because of the vow of poverty.
The young man later left his theological studies, took a law degree, and is associated with the firm of noted criminal lawyer F. Lee Bailey. But Uncle Harry, a Baptist, never changed the will.
—Glenn Everett
See also: Ecumenicity ; World Church ; Rev. 17:18, 18:3.