I encountered a question yesterday – for what seemed the thousandth time – about how, if Jesus preached against material wealth, the Church can justify all those palaces and castles and art treasures she possesses. It’s an important question, but also a wearying one; the answer is not short or simple, and many of the times it’s been asked have been in a bid to show that there was no answer rather than because the asker thought there was an answer and wanted to know what it was.
Nevertheless, there really is an answer.
First, “Jesus preached against material wealth” is an oversimplified reading of the situation. He certainly preached against giving wealth the status of an idol, or being so attached to it that you’d be unwilling to give it up if it had become a stumbling block to you. One cannot serve God and Mammon simultaneously, but being wealthy is not necessarily service to Mammon, just as being poor is no necessary sign of virtue.
The most famous passage relating to wealth can be found in Jesus’ encounter with the rich man who wants to know how he can be saved (Mark 10:17-25). Jesus tells him the standard things; be good, follow the commandments, etc. When the rich man says that he’s doing that already, Jesus, though pleased to hear it, also tells him that he should also sell all he has and give the proceeds to the poor, thereafter taking up the cross and following Jesus to better things. The rich man isn’t gladdened by this news, and he goes away “grieving.”
This encounter serves as a prelude to Jesus’ warning to the Disciples that it’s difficult for the rich to get into Heaven – like a camel passing through the eye of a needle, in its most famous rendering. In the face of their astonishment, he elaborates, saying that the difficulty lies upon those who “trust in riches” (emphasis mine). That some Christians can still adhere to a “prosperity gospel” in the face of statements like this astounds me, but that’s a discussion for another day. In any event, the point is that wealth is no indicator of merit or assurance of salvation, and can often be a hindrance to both if improperly understood.
Nowhere in the Church’s understanding of her assets will you find any suggestion that having palatial castles redounds to her credit, or is a sign of her divine provenance or authenticity. She just has them, is all, and because she has them, uses them. They don’t just sit around gathering dust.
This question of use is important, too, because we must also remember Matthew 26:6-13, in which a woman brings a very expensive bottle of oil for Jesus to use. The Disciples make the same basic complaint as those asking the question above: why should we have (and keep, and use) luxurious things when we could instead sell them and use the money to help people who have less? Jesus’ answer is clear: “Why do you trouble the woman? She has done a beautiful thing for me. You will always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me.” This is significant in terms of the fate He would suffer shortly thereafter, but it also has broader implications.
There’s the question of the relationship of utility to beauty, for example; in theory the strictly utilitarian is “good enough,” but the lived experience of the human being routinely shows that good enough is not enough. We need ornament and eye-pleasingness, though both can be taken to extremes; indeed, ornament can lose its excellence when it begins to infringe upon the utility that it was meant to augment in the first place. However, that one might crank it up to 11 is no argument in favour of forever leaving it at 0, just to be safe.
There is much to be said for beauty and grandeur put into the service of God. It appeals greatly to the spiritual faculty of the human being, delights artistically, edifies intellectually (particularly when it comes to objets d’art), and does honour to the Church’s particular relationship with Christ. He Himself exists in a glorified body, after all; it would not do for His Bride to be shabby.
Economically, however, there are further important considerations. One of the Church’s chief functions in a temporal sense is as a charitable institution, and in this she has been (and continues to be) extraordinarily successful. One notable source of revenue is the artistic and architectural collection under discussion. The Vatican City tourist trade is a large one, and other sites around the world – whether metropolitan cathedrals that dominate the skyline or tidy little chapels in the middle of nowhere – benefit greatly from the fact that people want to go to them. Not just Catholic people, to be clear; and, even among Catholic people, not just for spiritual reasons.
Much of the money this raises can be (and is) directed towards the charitable ends noted above. Crucially, that money comes in every single year. It’s a constant flow. To sell those buildings and art treasures and so on would secure a one-time cash infusion, but that would be it.
Look at it like this:
Say you have a nice statue. There are hungry people in the world, though, so what good is a statue? Let’s sell it off! Great idea; you just made a million dollars. That will help a lot of people.
But what if we instead keep the statue and charge people a dollar each to come look at it? Woah! A million people came to see it this year! And they’ll come back next year, too, and the year after, and the year after, and so on. Likely not the same people, of course, but the dollars are functionally the same. Now we’re getting that million dollars every year (minus the modest cost of statue polish) rather than just once, and we can pretty much rely on it into the future, too. Excellent.
In the case of the Church, there are thousands of statues, and paintings, and buildings, and more than a mere million people who routinely take long trips just to see them. It would be insane to get rid of them.
Anyway, the alternatives for these particular buildings are not good. Would you rather have some Italian bureaucrat or – alas – shady American investment banker living at Castel Gandolfo? Would you rather see the Lateran and Vatican palaces simply boarded up because the state trust that purchased them from some freewheeling pontiff could no longer secure the funds to maintain them? I sure wouldn’t, but it’s happened to heritage sites before in any number of cities. Their governance by the Holy See guarantees that these breathtaking structures – and the artwork they contain – will remain in good repair and accessible to the public. This is part of the artistic patrimony of the West, and it really would suck to see it dispersed into private collections or neglected into ruin.
Finally, castles and palaces are awesome. Of course the Pope should have one.
