The merch opportunities are endless. This brings to mind the time when Innocent III showed Saint Francis the papal treasury and observed: Peter can no longer say silver and gold I have none.
The Saint responded: Neither can Peter any longer say, Stand and walk!
“When did the Church get into the toy business?”
When actual business was dropped.
Part of what bothers me about this development is it is clear this toy nonsense isn’t a means to an end, but it is being treated as an end in itself – gaining the world, losing the soul, and so forth.
Oh, they’ll *TELL* you that this is for a greater good, but the actions suggest otherwise. And I stand by my recent comments about the nature of those who came up with this hot garbage.
That’s one way to make up for bad real estate investments, a drop in Peter’s Pence, and fewer nuns to kick out of their lucrative manses.
Good time to remember that many of our medieval brothers and sisters made it to heaven without knowing more than the name of the Pope.
We celebrate those folks today! May those whose names are forgotten by us, in their goodness and mercy, pray for us.
What group of soccer moms came up with this?
[…] Holy Year 2025 Jubilee Mascot Fiasco:PopeWatch: When Did the Church Get Into the Toy Business? – Donald R. McClarey, J.D.The Cult of Cuteness is Revolting, Even the Catholic Church Has […]
Like most quotes recently attributed to St Francis, this one was probably never spoken by him.
In 1933, GK Chesterton’s book about St Thomas Aquinas, The Dumb Ox, attributes this story to St Dominic.
St. Dominic and his followers are little known or understood in modern England; they were involved eventually in a religious war which followed on a theological argument;
and there was something in the atmosphere of our country, during the last century or so, which made the theological argument even more incomprehensible than the religious war.
The ultimate effect is in some ways curious; because St. Dominic,
even more than St. Francis, was marked by that intellectual independence, and strict standard of virtue and veracity, which Protestant
cultures are wont to regard as specially Protestant. It was of him that the tale was told, and would certainly have been told more widely among us if it had been told of a Puritan, that the Pope pointed to his gorgeous Papal Palace and said,
“Peter can no longer say
Silver and gold have I none'"; and the Spanish friar answered, "No, and neither can he now say,Rise and walk.'”GKC, The Dumb Ox
GK Chesterton was a better thinker than a historian. I doubt if either Saint Francis or Saint Dominic would have been so blunt with a pope, and few popes would have been so tactless as to show friars pledged to poverty the Papal treasury. These are the types of tales in circulation to make a point, aided in this by having a great name attached to the story. Any historical foundation is lost in the mists of eight centuries.
I could be wrong on this but doesn’t that name Luce in Latin have a deeper meaning? Light bringer – Luce -ifer? Given the path that we seem to be on has me wondering if the name an oversight or a tell?