Saying, “I’m no fan of bishops who bling for bling’s sake,” Patheos blogger JoAnne McPortland is urging CNN readers to take the American Bishops Lavish Living expose in context. Bishops are really CEO’s of multimillion dollar corporations, McPortland explains. Their dioceses are different, their residences are different, the populations are different, and the bishops are different from Pope Francis too. He is extroverted. Some of them may be introverted, some belong to orders, etc. The circumstances vary in every degree. After exploring them all, McPortland says:
Jesus told the rich young man that he must give up all that he had to serve God authentically. The rich man went away sad, because he was much attached to his possessions. But Jesus had very different answers for the wealthy followers whose generosity supplied his own ministry and gave him the forum to preach and heal. He had a very different answer for Judas, who chided the woman of Bethany for wasting precious ointment on Jesus’ comfort. In each circumstance, Jesus judges the heart and the intention of the individual, not the exterior circumstances.
So does Pope Francis. And so, my friends, should we.
The question is… if the government supports the Church with our taxes, and we have to take Central America into our towns and parishes, if New York and Boston are selling off our priceless Catholic patrimony and houses of God in order to invest in government projects and pay off abuse settlements, and the Pope orders priests to drive old cars; why is the Miami Archbishop living on key Biscayne, far from any office, in what appears to be a ten million dollar spread with a yacht?