"It sits at the top of former All Black Salesi Tu'ipulotu 'Charles' Piutau's book collection in his Belfast apartment, next to 'An Intensive Course in Tongan' and a collection of other books linked to the church."

He says '$EED or GR€€D?' teaches you not to let money and greed overtake who you are.

Piutau was born in New Zealand after his parents migrated from Tonga. "They left their friends and family in Tonga to give us a chance to chase our dream," he said.

He has been playing for the Irish club Ulster, but he is on the move to Bristol on a two-year deal. He will be paid $1.8 million per season. That will make him the most highly paid player in world rugby.

"Religious books are my go-to," Puitau says. "'$EED or GR€€D' is written by the same guy who wrote 'From the Pit to the Palace' which is about Joseph being sold into slavery by his brothers."

At 25, he has given up trying to restart his career as an All Black in order to help feed his family.

Piutau said it was easy for him to put his family ahead of chasing further All Black honours.

"Every Pacific Island kid is on (sic) the same boat," he says. "Some would rather stay back, play X number of Tests and become a great All Black. For me, I came to the conclusion that wasn't me."

"My family is going to be with me forever, and they're the people closest to me. Rugby's not forever, and I want to be able to look after my parents."

Source

• New Zealand Herald
• Stuff
• Image: Coventry Telegraph

Most people are understandably surprised to learn that some of the important intellectual developments that first enabled finance to become an engine of growth were made by men who had, for the most part, freely taken vows of poverty.

Almost a century before Bernardine, another Franciscan, Peter Olivi (1248-1298), had written the following in his De contractibus usurariis:

"For since money or property which is directly managed by its owner is put to work for a certain probable gain, it not only has the simple quality of money or goods, but, even beyond that, a certain seminal quality of generating profit, which we commonly call capital … and therefore not only does the simple value of the object have to be returned, but also an added value."

Like all medieval clergy, Olivi and Bernardine fiercely opposed usury. "Usury," Bernardine wrote, "concentrates the money of the community in the hands of a few, just as if all the blood in a man's body ran to his heart and left his other organs depleted."

Yet the same Bernardine also invested time in explaining why it was legitimate for creditors to charge interest on loans to compensate themselves for relinquishing the opportunity to invest their money elsewhere. In such circumstances, the lender had a right to be compensated for what amounted to foregone profits.

"What," Bernardine maintained, "in the firm purpose of its owner is ordained to some probable profit has not only the character of mere money or a mere thing, but also beyond this, a certain seminal character of something profitable, which we commonly call capital." Continue reading

Sources

• Dr. Samuel Gregg, director of research at the Acton Institute, writing in Patheos.
• Image: Ceasefire

On March 23, Bishop Tamaki put out the following tweet.

"Jesus spoke to a tree/fish/wind/water [a]nd other things ... i spoke to a $100 bill early in my life [a]nd said 'you [a]nd all your whanau come to me'."

Twitter users expressed their outrage at this, describing Bishop Tamaki as "greedy".

This isn't the first time Bishop Tamaki has tweeted about money, the New Zealand Herald reported.

Last May, Destiny Church circulated images of wads of cash and the Twitter hashtag "#iwannagive" to followers before its annual conference.

In the same month, Bishop Tamaki again tweeted along with a photograph of $100 bills saying, "The Bible speaks of a Blessing (includes $$$ too) that 'Overtakes You'... time for you to be overtaken!!"

In 2014, the church received widespread criticism after Bishop Tamaki asked followers to "shower the stage" in money during a Sunday morning service.

Thousands of $100 and $50 bills were strewn across the Destiny Church in Auckland.

The scene was photographed and posted on Twitter by Bishop Tamaki.

He captioned it: "A Sweet-Smelling Fragrance that is Acceptable to God (Phil 4:15-19). My God shall Supply all your need".

This also drew widespread criticism on social media.

According to ex-congregation members, families were pressured to give "love offerings" and other cash donations above the expected amount.

Sources

• New Zealand Herald
• Image: Group Sects

Archbishop Pedro Barreto Jimeno of Huancayo said the encyclical, to be released on June 18, will have many critics.

This is because "because they want to continue setting rules of the game in which money takes first place".

"We have to be prepared for those kinds of attacks."

The archbishop said that there would controversy once people had read the Pope's new encyclical because resisting the "throwaway culture" by being satisfied with less means "putting money at the service of people, instead of people serving money".

Archbishop Barreto worked closely with then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio in 2007 on a document by the Latin American bishops' council that included an unprecedented section on the environment.

The archbishop was not involved with the drafting of the new encyclical.

Continue reading

For centuries, that rash act has loomed as an object lesson in total commitment.

This week Pope Francis scuttled some ships of his own, on two fronts which have been sources of scandal and heartache for the Catholic Church: sex and money.

On Monday, Francis held his first meeting with victims of clerical sexual abuse.

Two days later, the Vatican announced a sweeping financial overhaul, including new leadership and a sharply limited role for the troubled Vatican bank.

There's such hunger in the world to believe Francis is the real deal that it's tempting to confuse announcing a plan for reform with actually implementing it.

To be clear, what happened this week was not reform itself — it was more like a prelude to action, an attempt to create the conditions for something good to happen.

In both cases, the key effect was to commit Pope Francis definitively to a particular course of action.

On the abuse front, the fact that Francis met with victims was no novelty, as Benedict XVI held such encounters six times.

Likewise there was no breakthrough in his plea for forgiveness, since such apologies date all the way back to 1993 when John Paul II voiced sorrow for the sins of "some ministers of the altar."

They became sharper under Benedict XVI, who first used the magic words "I'm sorry" in Australia in 2008.

Nor was Francis' pledge of zero tolerance a novelty.

The classic papal statement comes from an April 2002 speech by John Paul II to American cardinals: "There is no place in the priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young." Continue reading

Source

• John L. Allen Jr. in The Boston Globe
• Image: wn.com

John L. Allen Jr. is associate editor at the Globe, specialising in coverage of the Vatican and the Catholic Church.

Quite simply, the list measures, as Forbes shamelessly puts it, "money and fame".

Calculating the in-crowd includes looking at earnings over the past year, as well as "media and social networking power".

One gets the sense that we are encouraged to idolize these people.

Wealth and fame are incredibly seductive, and have become the holy grail in our modern religion of self-worship.

Beyonce, JayZ, Dr. Dre, Ellen DeGeneres, Rhianna, Katy Perry, Miley Cyrus, Justin Beiber, Lady Gaga, etc. are among our new saints - even though many of them are anything but.

The longer I am a parent, the less I understand our fascination with celebrities.

Being a parent, I think, opens your eyes to what is really important in life - things like unconditional love, selflessness and stability.

Yet, the celebrity culture seems to turn everything on its head: what is essential for a happy life is not valued, while the less important things - such as wealth, fame and beauty - are touted as the only way to happiness.

Recently, the philosopher Alain de Botton wrote in The Guardian that we need celebrities because we have a natural tendency to admire people who seem glamorous and successful.

We should ‘anoint' good celebrities, he argued, so that we can channel our admiration appropriately.

I disagree. In fact, I think it's a dangerous idea, because celebrity culture is based upon myths about what it means to live a meaningful human life.

For instance, celebrities are portrayed as skinny - but with big breasts - unbelievably beautiful or handsome, wealthy and famous.

The message we get is that, because of these things, they are therefore of more value than us.

And they have more fun, better sex, and more meaningful relationships.

Indeed, the wisdom from celebrity land is that wealth, fame and beauty are the things that give anyone value, and they must be pursued above everything else. Continue reading

Sources

• Mercatornet
• Image: Philosophy for Parents

Monsignor Nunzio Scarano was arrested on a charge of attempting to smuggle €20 million ($NZ33.5 million) into Italy illegally. He was already being investigated on suspicion of money-laundering.

Scarano, a senior accountant aged 61, was arrested along with an Italian secret service agent and a financial broker.

A Reuters correspondent said a magistrate's report on the plot read like a spy novel — involving a private plane that was to collect the cash in Switzerland, burned cell phones, a shady financier and the allegedly corrupt secret service agent who promised to slip the money past customs.

The magistrate said Scarano felt he could act with impunity because he had connections with the Vatican Bank — an agency he saw as "the only safe and rapid instrument for financial and banking operations that could evade — if not outright violate — laws against money laundering and tax evasion".

Court documents said there was no indication so far that the bank was directly involved in Scarano's attempt to smuggle the money into Italy on behalf of the wealthy d'Amico shipowning family in southern Italy.

But Italian newspapers speculated that Scarano may have been planning to use the bank to launder at least some of the Swiss money for his friends later.

The €20 million belonged to the d'Amicos and was presumably being held in Switzerland to avoid paying Italian taxes. Scarano apparently undertook to smuggle the money back to Italy.

"As far as I know, Father Nunzio was only trying to help some friends and then entered a mechanism that later revealed to be dangerous for him too," Scarno's lawyer said. "I believe he did it with naivety".

Sources:

Reuters

Associated Press

National Catholic Reporter

Image: Catholic Herald

According to General Secretary, Reverend Dr Iutisone Salevao, the proposed bank will be funded from the church's To'omaga Fund, a fund which already exists to provide financial assistance to parishes.

"The fund is close to ten million tala at the moment and we are looking to allocate anywhere between two and five million tala to the proposed venture.

"The loans firm and the bank would be to help church members."

Savelvao says the church doesn't plan to extend these services to the general public.

The church's decision enter the finance sector follows the opening of its TV Station.

Source

• Savali
• Talanei
• Samoa Observer
• Image:Savali

Where do the churches get the money from in a struggling developing country?

A recent survey found 97% of all households reported giving church donations, taking 17.1% of household income, but some families report giving as much as 50 per cent of their incomes to their church.

It's all part of the customary giving in Samoa know as faalavelave... but are some Samoan churches abusing the tradition?

Last week the Congregational Christian Church of Samoa Annual Conference resisted calls for a ban on gift giving saying it would accept money as long as families were not put under pressure by the donation. Continue reading

Introducing a new approach to archdiocesan fundraising, he said some of the strategies that worked well in the past no longer work as well as they did.

"Therefore, we need to think laterally and come up with fresh approaches."

Continue reading

"Money has to serve, not to rule," he told a group of diplomats.

He called for ethical financial reform that would "benefit everyone" and for the world of finance and economics to make people a priority and take into account the importance of ethics and solidarity.

Highlighting the root causes of today's economic and social troubles, the Pope pointed to policies and actions that stem from a "gravely deficient human perspective, which reduces man to one of his needs alone, namely, consumption".

In this "culture of disposal", he said, "human beings themselves are nowadays considered as consumer goods which can be used and thrown away".

The Pope criticised economic inequality caused by "ideologies which uphold the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation, and thus deny the right of control to states, which are themselves charged with providing for the common good".

In the absence of adequate economic regulation or oversight, "a new, invisible and at times virtual, tyranny is established, one which unilaterally and irremediably imposes its own laws and rules".

Ethics, like solidarity, is seen as "a nuisance" and rejected, he added. Ethical principles and policies of solidarity are "often considered counterproductive, opposed to the logic of finance and economy".

Pope Francis said a major reason behind the increase in social and economic woes worldwide "is in our relationship with money and our acceptance of its power over ourselves and our society".

"The worship of the golden calf of old has found a new and heartless image in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly human goal," he said.

Pope Francis called on the world's political and financial leaders to consider the words of St John Chrysostom: "Not to share one's goods with the poor is to rob them and to deprive them of life. It is not our goods that we possess, but theirs."

Sources:

Catholic News Service

Vatican Information Service

Image: Vatican News

Church Resources and Vodafone recently built on their existing relationship and concluded negotiations that continue to offer free calls amongst all Church Resources members, but also adds the choice of a range of different mobile call plan options.

"In tough economic times Vodafone is playing our tune", said Church Resources General Manger, Fr John Murphy.

"Every dollar saved is a dollar church groups don't have to earn."

Murphy said the existing plans brought cost efficiencies when talking among ourselves, but he thinks these new plans will save even more money and make church workers more efficient in their ministry.

"These plans enable us to not only talk free to other members of our ministry team, but beyond. They're the Vatican II of church talk, we can now talk to others."

Murphy expects a little bit of a settling in time. "We've already had one user who initially went for the cheapest option, then saw the potential and asked to be upgraded."

Nigel Pounds, Vodafone Wellington Area Sales Manager, is very pleased the Church Resources account stayed with Vodafone.

"We are absolutely over the moon, to be able to continue providing Telecommunication services to Church Resources."

"Our goal is to ensure that we are offering great value and great service to Church Resources as well as continuing to deliver innovation that helps Church Resources do its thing better".

Pound's optimism seems 'on the mark' as initial feedback from the service is all positive.

"What I like is I can talk and not worry about it", said Brother Matt Morris.

Morris who is Head of Science and Manager of the First XV at St Patrick's College Wellington, sees immediate advantage in the new choice of plans.

"Free calls to landlines, and 500 free mobile minutes a month is a big help in a busy school."

Fr Pete Roe, a consultant with the Emergency Services in Wellington says a fixed amount for calls and a generous data allowance will make managing his costs that much easier.

Challenge 2000 leader Bridget Roche is very excited about the changes and is also moving their landlines and broadband to Vodafone.

"We struggle to get funding for our infrastructural telecommunications costs and yet they are so important for the effectiveness, safety and quality of our work. The $8,000 pa we'll save is 'really big' money to us".

It's early days, but Roche is already visualising which front line children and youth programmes will benefit because of these savings.

"We've been planning some exciting youth development programmes to run over summer, but not sure how we might fund them so this is wonderful news".

"There is a God", she said.

Church Resources General Manger John Murphy says the range of plans we now offer, on top of the free Talkzone, means this is the best value mobile proposition in the Church at the moment.

"No longer does one size fit all, Church Resources has a plan to suit all church workers' needs," he said.

The Church Resources mobile, landline, and broadband packages are available through Church Resources and available to all Church organisations throughout New Zealand.

"Money is still something that we don't touch. And yet, as I talk in churches so many people are so behind the eight ball on their retirement, on their homes," she told me. "In churches people are just barely holding on financially—we've got to find a way to speak to this in a direct, biblically-based, powerful way."

As a Senior Fellow at American Progress, a theology professor at Chicago Theological Seminary and its former president, Thistlethwaite has seen, firsthand, how money and power have not only influenced the political and financial system, but how it has affected those at the bottom of the economic scale. Her forthcoming book is: #Occupy the Bible: What Jesus Really Said (and Did) about Money and Power.

"Statistics show that 50% of Americans own 1% of the wealth of the country. That's a shift on the one percent, but that's the one percent that has nothing. We can't let this happen under the radar anymore, so I developed a thesis that Occupy is a sign from God that we have to take this seriously. I hope this book will get progressives to start talking about money in the way we've just begun to talk about human sexuality in justice-making ways. We're not there yet on money," she said.

We talked more about these topics, including a look back at her most recent book—on tech, sin, and the myth of Eden—during a recent conversation. Read more

Sources

• Religion Dispatches
• Image: Patheos