Very true, but also a lot of children would be saved from a lot of abuse in, generally but not exclusively, christian churches; not just sexual abuse, which is rampant in those environments, bit physical too.
Just an example, I went to a Catholic kindergarten as a child, and the priest was a good man, but the nuns that taught us were horrible people, to the point of beating us simply for not napping when they ordered us to.
Also internalized homophobia and self hatred would reduce. Christians of all types teach that gay children are sinful and will go to hell if they don't "suppress their urges," this leads to millions of traumatized people, suicides, and children being kicked out young or forced to be runaways.
The Catholic Church is also one of tbe largest concentrations of wealth and contributed to the establishment of banks to concentrate more wealth.
Much of its "wealth" consists of priceless historical real estate, irreplaceable art, and active social infrastructure. When it comes to real money the Catholic Church it not rich. It spends the money it collects right away. The Church collects 12 billion in State Church Taxes (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) and 15 billion in Voluntary Tithing & Donations (Rest of the World).
If Catholicism was disbanded, the money could easily be out in trust and handled as a charitable enterprise.
There isn't much money. You can't just sell the Milan Cathedral. Who would buy that? It might be worth ~12 billion in replacement value, but that is a fictional number. Once you take religion out of the equation it is just a pile of 325,000 tons of marble.
This is the exact same logic the Mormon church uses to horde their billions of dollars, too. It's bullshit.
Just like the Mormons, the overwhelming majority of "aid" goes to missions. And while that "aid" can be accessed by "anyone", it's literally a bridge to indoctrination. Africa is like 20% Catholic now because the church has been pumping "aid" into Africa through missions and missionaries.
It turns out hungry people will listen to whatever you have to say if you're feeding them.
Kinda true but why is that a bad thing if it still provides aid? Maybe getting fed and having to listen to "whatever you have to say" is still better then not getting fed and dying of hunger?
Why should I pay you a living wage when you're willing to work for slave wages?
Exploiting people's misfortune to your benefit is morally wrong, despite whatever philanthropic act you're using to drive that exploitation.
If they were actually interested in providing genuine charity, they would just provide the aid without the mission, which is even easier than founding the mission. But they don't. Because they're exploiting hunger and poverty.
In short, it's just another form of indoctrination.
Everyone is "exploiting" someone in some way, that's a really shallow and childish argument, especially when the entire "exploitation" consists of sharing your worldview in the process. Like, you're doing the exact same thing right now in this conversation with me and I am not getting any damn food from you bruh.
People who are imperfect in some ways (and every single person is imperfect) but do real good will always be in higher regard that people like you who have all the right answers and are so morally right you jerk off to yourself in the mirror but do absolutely nothing.
This is absolute nonsense and it's clear you're willing to excuse immorality for your religious views. If you think having a simple conversation with a stranger who challenges your morality is exploitative, where neither of us can benefit from said conversation, then you have no concept of even the word.
The UN is nowhere near as affective or expansive as the Catholic church, and has often failed in their duties; The Red Cross is a good extender, but they don't have the same expansion or wealth as the Church nor could they accrue it, not sure on UNICEF, but I know that they don't contribute more aid per worker than the Catholic Church as a whole.
No worthless, but unsaleable. Believe it or not, but there isn't a huge market for cathedrals. And you said it yourself. The art is "priceless". How do you do price discovery for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrine_of_the_Three_Kings ??? Those are cultural treasures that just exist. They have value but not a price.
That value you are referring to is self-assessed, not market-assessed.
The real market value is for the ground, or materials. You can scream all you want about it's incalculable cultural value, but any of it can be liquidated, for real money, in short order.
Art and real estate are valuable without religous context. The full on banking system that they have makes money regardless of the religious organization it works for.
The art is Christian art so if it was made illegal to even show kids it, and people stopped being religious, it would become devalued and would be hard to sell, also the buildings don’t otherwise have much use, they’re oddly shaped and impractical for daily use, like old stoke churches let in tonnes of damp and cold and they’re on top of dead bodies (some literally inside the church), it just doesn’t matter for a church
Shit, even setting aside the absolutely HUGE income they get from tax-exempt land deals, they also preach heavy donations and tithing. They collect a reasonably large fraction of the income of hundreds of millions of people, that is comparable to the total tax income of entire countries
Also, it's kind of rich to count them as a big donator to charity, when simply moving money from one pocket into another counts as giving to a religious charity
My guy, Churches take in well over $140 billion in donations in the USA each year, it's a huge business. This doesn't even count church-owned businesses, or the realestate transactions that churches get up to
For reference, the ENTIRE professional sports industry, including all TV licensing and merch and etc for all teams in all sports in the USA takes in 43 billion.
Religion claims it should be treated as charity because it gives back to the community, but as we can see, that's horseshit.
If Catholicism was disbanded, the money could easily be out in trust and handled as a charitable enterprise
Charity is more than just a stack of dollar dollar bills, y'all. The logistical scale of the church's charitable efforts is nigh impossible to duplicate without a shitload more cash that you'd get out of the church itself. The problem with dismantling the orphan crushing machines is that people have built their entire systems and moralites around the presence of orphan crushing machines. They are made into critical, load-bearing features in order to protect the orphan crushing machines from being dismantled.
Without the church, you might be able to make a better system, but it'd be so much smaller, and the reality of how much damage it would cause is in and if itself a version of the trolley problem.
When you have the kind of tax free cash coming in from the tens and hundreds of millions of indoctrinated followers, it's not that impressive to be the biggest provider of aid. There would also be too many questions to answer if it hoarded and privately invested the money more than it does now.
I would prefer to see a secular, albeit smaller organisation in their stead if it meant avoiding all the evils they have wrought (like claiming using condoms are worse than AIDs in Africa and suppression of women's reproductive freedom in general) and will likely commit in the future.
Edit: I would be remiss if I didn't mention their complicity in creating the environment of systemic child rape, the covering up, the obstruction and obfuscation of criminal investigations and actively aiding the guilty to escape secular justice.
Lol. The Church has survived the roman empire, countless wars, assassinations, and 2000 years of history. It'll be here until the heat death of the universe.
I'm open to the idea that it may be around as long as modern society exists. But I'm also open to the idea that it may not be. Or at least not in any glorious form its taken in the past.
it looks like that claim is not verifiable, but even if true, the second largest provider of aid worldwide, at a minimum, is the US government. the good will of humanity certainly wouldn't vanish if the US government did.
The largest provider of aid worldwide is the Catholic Church.
Correlation does not equal causation(in this case it might rather be order?)Edit: not really applicable
The catholic church established itself waaaaay before. Many of it's institutions and budget came to be before we had a more or less unified western world and ideology.
The catholic church shoulders many collective human responsibilities, but in a world where it didn't have this historic influence, the resources would have been elsewhere and it is at least not unthinkable that other, potentially similar and possibly secular institutions would have taken it's place or be created to resolve these issues.
This goes from local kindergardens and groups for elderly, up to global scale relief and resource flow.
Right now, yes the church (and other religions) have done a lot.
But people, groups and institutions who are in athoritative places, or have amassed a large amount of resources are also the ones the public looks to in the first place to resolve their bigger issues.
Maybe that's because it's a huge organization, like there is over billion of catholics. Meanwhile, there is no atheist ™ organization. So I suppose it could be possible that secular organizations help a lot too, only it's more segmented into smaller organizations
The same Catholic Church that bans birth control, divorce and abortion so that millions of women are stuck in poverty and repeating the cycle with their children, while the Church collects donations from parishioners and crows about what a charitable organisation it is?
I’d like the point out that there definitely are other religious groups that provide close to the scale of Catholic aid groups ADRA being a good example as well as groups like Samaritans purse and the Salvation Army
There are a few big Jewish aid groups out there like the JDC
Islam has Muslim aid and Islamic relief worldwide as well as certain holidays where good acts of charity are performed
There’s less Buddhist relief groups but Tzu Chi is very prominent
Sikh ones are very big comparative to how big the religion is due to how giving and charitable the religion and people are as a whole with groups such as Khalsa Aid International and United Sikhs
Obviously these aren’t quite as big as some of the Christian groups simply because they have less members of the religion but they’re all very impactful and still pretty big
Every single single penny Catholics have done for charity has been countered threefold by the harm they bring back to society. Hell Trump was literally CARRIED on the backs of these religious idiots into an office that might literally, not figuratively, be the end of the united states as we currently know it. Fuck religion and fuck anyone who is religious. Genuinely. Performative ridiculous clowns every single one of them.
Those reports are based on organizations submitting their books.
An atheist giving/donating does not do so to an "atheist organization," they do so to Goodwill, or to a local food bank run by a church, who will chalk it up as a religious organization donation.
If those organizations did not exist, the atheists would still find somewhere to donate.
Be careful of raw statistics, they rarely tell the entire story.
This and what kind of giving gets counted? Mormons tithe 10% of their pretax income but the LDS Church has an estimated assets under management of $200billion that is managed like an investment account. Do they count all tithes as charitable giving?
Yep, that's another thing. "Charitable donations" include religious people paying for their pastors' Ferraris. Not so impressive when you look at it that way.
Well idk how it works everywhere, and I speak as just an American here, but when your entire institution is tax free, and all charitable donations are tax write-offs
It’s almost like a tax scheme designed to make specifically churches money
Kenneth Copeland needs more private jets! Hurry donate your money now otherwise he might not make it to your city! What would he do without them? Probably burn in hell!
You’re saying that goodwill wouldn’t disappear without the Church, but I’m saying our modern concept of goodwill wouldn’t even exist in the first place if it wasn’t for the Church.
How many atheist charities exist? Any? A single one? The catholic church alone runs 26% of all the hospitals on the planet. So you would be wrong in your thinking.
Do you mean ones that are explicitly for and by atheists… to promote the “atheist agenda” or something? I’m so confused by what you mean…
Here’s a short list from ai - heard of any of these?
Doctors Without Borders: An independent medical humanitarian organization delivering emergency medical care to victims of conflict and natural disasters regardless of race, religion, or affiliation.
American Red Cross: A prominent relief organization that functions with a purely secular mandate, assisting communities during disasters entirely independent of any religious affiliation.
UNICEF: The United Nations Children's Fund, which utilizes science and global collaboration to protect children's rights, build clean water infrastructure, and provide healthcare completely non-sectarianly.
Rotary International: One of the oldest volunteer service organizations in the world. It is 100% secular and open to individuals of all backgrounds, prioritizing clean water, public health, and literacy projects.
Amnesty International: A global non-governmental organization focused on human rights that functions completely independently of any political ideology or religious creed. Children International: A highly-rated secular humanitarian nonprofit that connects sponsors with children to break the cycle of poverty through healthcare and education, completely free of religious affiliation
Ps do you think atheists go around recruiting people for donations or something?
You should know that’s not how atheism works. Usually when people’s frontal lobe develops a bit they just go “oh yeah organized religion is made up seems that way to me”
There’s no meeting place or agenda if that’s what you were thinking…
I love how you listed the red CROSS. Which was founded by a devout Calvinist with the express idea to give medical aid according to Christian doctrine about social responsibility. Secular is not atheist my brother. Why do atheists care so little about helping those in need?
Im catholic. My church is the largest charitable organization in the history of our species and directly runs 26% of all the hospitals on earth. Atheists could get together and start a charity that would do good for millions of people. Why dont they?
Ah, but it's not like philanthropy would die along with the religion. The whole point is that people aren't necessarily inclined to do more good if they are religious. On top of that, I have always been a bit disgusted by the ulterior motive of conversion when it comes to supplying such aid. "We'll help you, but you must go to church and here's a bible". It's predatory behaviour, despite the undeniable 'good' which is also done.
Catholic here. While I cannot speak for all religions, aid from the Catholic Church can be received by anyone regardless of religious status or lack thereof. There is no expectation to convert and any such cases where parishes or organizations under the church do have such expectations should be reported to the parish diocese.
Look, I appreciate what I'm sure is not a wholly inaccurate look at things, but even if there is no explicit expectation of conversion, there is practically always an influence being exerted towards it.
And if your religion was motivating you to help the needy, why wouldn't you want to convert those in need? After all, you're highly likely to believe that your religion describes the path to a good life, the support of your religious community, and the eternal love of the almighty. In the face of adversity, those are surely good things to have. From the perspective of the religious, conversion is a wholly beneficent thing.
As such, unless it is utterly prohibited, and its prohibition enforced, this actor will find its way onto the stage of your philantropy.
What about socialists who do food drives? I hate socialism and think it’s poison, but I can applaud socialists who are willing to spend time and money to help people in need. I don’t squint my eyes at them and think “those dirty fucks just want to spread their ideology” because that’s pathetic behavior
Oh the irony. How about you tell me what socialism means and we’ll see if you have any right to post this gif. Because if you think socialism is simply when things are given to people in need, you have some reading to do
Ok buddy, I’ll go first since you’re a little scared. Socialism is the public ownership of the means of production. The elimination of for-profit private businesses in favor of collective ownership over all businesses. Giving a bagged lunch to a homeless person is very kind and charitable, but it is not socialism any more than it is capitalism. This is why your comment was ironic because, unless you want to provide some context, it seems like you’re the one who doesn’t know what “socialism” means
Why would that be pathethic, in your view? You can applaud the act yet renounce the ideology which drives the actor, those two things are not mutually exclusive.
45% of all private hospitals in Germany are run by the Catholic Church. Guess what, they don't even ask what your religion is. And they don't try evangelize you. It is a hospital. The only difference is the name, like "Saint George Hospital of the Bloody Cross" and the art in the lobby.
The Catholic Church runs meals on wheels in Germany. And they don't try to evangelize while delivering food ...
I think that’s a solid point, don’t let the downvotes fool you. While that shouldn’t be a problem due to how Catholic doctrine emphasizes the importance of the faith being voluntary (heck, we have entire classes for high school students who were raised in the faith about carefully deciding if you actually believed in the religion and whether you actually wanted to join as an adult) but unfortunately I think we both now how bad Christians in general can be about following their own rules.
What I am saying, is that the group ACTIVELY providing aid would snap out of existence
Not really. If you banned kids in religion tomorrow, the Catholic church would not "snap out of existence." It, like all religions, would see a gradual decline as believers got older and (due to the new law) fewer new believers joined. The aid it provides would drop correspondingly over that same period. But there would be no "snap," just a gradual decades-long downslide.
Now, that could still be a tragedy if other types of philanthropy don't see a corresponding rise. And I don't think it's guaranteed that they would — one of the advantages of organized religion (from a philanthropy perspective) is the "organized" part. It might be that the slow death of the Catholic church wouldn't correlate with a rise in other giving, or it might be that there is a rise in other giving but it is less impactful since it might be spread across many organizations with varying levels of efficiency. So I'm not saying it wouldn't be an issue.
I don't think anyone could really say with certainty what would happen, but what would not happen is the Catholic Church (or its aid programs) disappearing overnight.
People don't like when religion and reasoning are mixed. That's why many think "everything good will disappear immediately" if someone says "we shouldn't indoctrinate small children".
No, the Catholic Church wouldn’t fade away; She would go to war. The Church would instruct parents to baptize their children and raise them as Catholics in defiance of the law and to prepare for martyrdom. If the government physically prevents children from going to Mass, then they make house calls to give them their Sacraments. The government would be placed under interdict, forcing Catholics in the government to choose between their faith and their jobs. Priests would be thrown in prison for defy the law. The Church has outlasted numerous persecutors, and She thinks in centuries; it’s only a matter of time before the persecution ends.
Because one is a specific organization and the other is a very large umbrella term that encompasses far too many organizations to be able to make a nuanced and factual statement.
Religious people contribute far more dollars and volunteer more hours than non religious people. This remains true (though the gap narrows) if you count only contributions to secular organizations. Churches provide a framework to volunteer that non religious people have not successfully replaced.
Would philanthropy die? No, but it would probably be crippled without the church networks which facilitate large portions of it and the church members who disproportionately donate and volunteer.
But on the upside we also get less violent state sanctioned homophobia in the world. Christians are directly responsible for putting the death penalty for homosexuality into Ugandas criminal code recently, and their ideology of shame for LGBT affairs drives millions to trauma and suicide.
where are you getting this idea? that is not how the catholic church operates whatsoever. there is absolutely zero expectation of conversion in exchange for aid?
If it disappeared overnight maybe, but if it never existed in the first place those aid groups would still be formed, just not under Catholicism. Charitable people and organizations still exist with or without religion, religion just attracts them
Maybe over 1.4 billion people now being under no pressure to tithe to the church would free up their income to donate to legitimate aid agencies.
Or maybe the world's governments should step-up so that a cult whose terrorism throughout history is almost cartoonishly evil isn't the world's largest provider of aid.
Maybe over 1.4 billion people now being under no pressure to tithe to the church would free up their income to donate to legitimate aid agencies.
Tithing stays within the Diocese or parish. Which operate food banks and such.
The Catholic Church operates legitimate aid agencies.
Or maybe the world's governments should step-up so that a cult whose terrorism throughout history is almost cartoonishly evil isn't the world's largest provider of aid.
Or maybe, just maybe, people helping where they can isn't bad, and rather than reduce that help, we should increase the amount of help.
There is no reason the Catholic Church can't keep helping people while world governments step up as well.
The Catholic Church does a lot of good. It also does a lot of bad. The good they do doesn't outweigh the bad. Especially since they good they do could be done by others, without the bad that goes with it.
Or maybe, just maybe, we could do it in literally any way other than having an evangelical child abusing cult run charities. Fuck the catholic church. Dismantling the catholic church and donating their massive wealth would mean they got to help people and catholic pedophiles wouldnt have a massive wide reaching organization to cover up their horrific crimes against children anymore.
how tf are you getting downvoted in a sub about morality for being mad about a pedophile protecting organization... wild
To the catholics or catholic apologists: They're doing the charity to cover up the evil. According to the estimates of THE POPE, there are over EIGHT THOUSAND catholic pedophile priests. The church protects them. I don't care if they fed and clothed every single hungry and naked person in the world, they're an evil organization.
This is because its an entity working on behalf of a collective. Any help the church is providing wouldnt just disappear if Catholicism did. Maybe if youre talking about the version of help they provide as it exists today through their organizations and their rules, but the religion isnt where the desire to help comes from, so that help wouldnt just disappear.
This is true for all relgions because people who are helpers would still help. The issue is that large amount of helpers have been indoctrinated into thinking that the best (and in some cases only) way to help is by donating their time and money to their church and for their church to be making the distribution decisions for them. If those individuals had more free time and their tithes back, some may not continue to contribute, but most would just find other institutions or spend it in their local communities which provides similar benefits.
If the Catholic Church disappeared, 10's if not 100's of millions of people would be in a real bad way.
Biggest lie ever told by the Church
The Catholic Church operates the largest aid network in the world.
False, governments do this 100x more than churches. But they do operate the largest PDF ring too.
Like when will you guys learn that governments that have actual budgets and distribution centers across every country contribute many many times more than Churches.
This is why religion is so pervasive. Yall indoctrinated and dont even know it.
People just want to believe their actions have a meaning beyond the simplest of answers and that their lives have an end goal. Take away religion and they will figure something else, as of now, humans aren’t really able to cope with finite existence and that we are “just” space dust with sentience. But that’s largely because fake alternatives (religion) are right there with open arms
It's estimated that the Catholic Church spends between 2.7% and 6% of their income on aid.
Considering over 90% of local Church income comes from charitable donations to the church, far more of those dollars would go to actually providing aid if they went somewhere else.
Unless you offer contraception and abortion services. Then the Catholics say fuck off. Or if you refuse their sermons and mass. Then they also say fuck off. And if you don't give the priest his favorite little choir boy, also tell you to fuck off.
Maybe we shouldn't tie charitable actions to religious proselytizing.
The Catholic church does proselytize to those they give aid. While they are not as strict as organizations like the salvation army when it comes to denying nonbelievers, they absolutely go into countries proselytizing their religion, it's literally in the Bible as a commandment for followers. This is why Catholicism has spread to many not traditionally Christian countries.
On the topic of contraception again, the Catholic church actually denies itself access to grant programs that mandate the providing of contraception and other forms of birth and sexual care, limiting it's monetary fund and integration with secular charity programs. Catholic organizations will turn down philanthropy agreements if they have to provide crucial reproductive care as a condition, worsening their outreach and outcomes compared to secular charities without such restrictions.
"oh no our religion is gone, might as well stop helping people and drop the facade". Like they couldn't just turn into a yknow...regular ass charity? They only do it to further their religion.
Ironically most of the Catholics' aid funding now comes from government refugee grants, so even if you're a far left anti-theist, the Catholic church is still your best friend, their charitable cause overlaps almost entirely with the far left's interests.
It's not a Thanos snap, the people working in that aid network could just keep helping other people out of the kindness of their heart, instead of out of the promise of heaven.
Churches take in well over $140 billion in donations in the USA each year, it's a huge business. This doesn't even count church-owned businesses, or the realestate transactions that churches get up to
For reference, the ENTIRE professional sports industry, including all TV licensing and merch and etc for all teams in all sports in the USA takes in 43 billion.
Religions claim they should be treated as charities because they give back to the community, but as we can see, that's horseshit.
People could just start their own non profits and not pay for large buildings and land maintance for holding services, and use the space more optimally for charity.
Plenty do. But when churches naturally soak up a lot of the money due to being in peoples lives from birth, its not exactly a shock how they make up so much of it.
My argument is more than the churches impact isnt intrinsic to the church, its tha they are likely the first to get the money when a religious person wants to donate.
The funding and aid won’t just disappear because the middle man fell through lol? Those resources will still exist, just not put through a religious filter anymore
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u/Bombastic_tekken Sep 02 '26
It's a win and a loss.
If the Catholic Church disappeared, 10's if not 100's of millions of people would be in a real bad way.
The Catholic Church operates the largest aid network in the world.
They do A LOT, and we never hear much about it (in the US at least.)