@Xanne I believe they exist on donations, and they are exempt from taxes.
There are many rich priests, rolling around in luxury cars
Solzhenitsyn wrote that it were the religious people who really went through the Soviet concentration camp system "with flying colors", so to speak. Religion gave them strength and there were less turncoats among them, at least that's what he thought.
@CowperKettle It's one form of that rather common argument about the religion that it's for the poor saps who need institutionalized hope, and likewise an important reason rich countries are becoming secular is people are no longer starving or killing each other because of what some general said.
I dunno how much meat there is to it. I mean, it 'feels' like it would be right, but human societies are pretty complicated things and there are lots of things about them that ended up counterintuitively disproven
I mean, you could also make the intuitive counterargument that poor people would feel neglected by God and rich people would be grateful
@MattE.Эллен: So we're watching another Brit series, this one set in Belfast, and there's a character named Niamh. The other characters variously pronounce it "Neev*, Neef, Naif, and a few other ways. What's up with that? Does the alphabet mean nothing in Northern Ireland?
BTW, the cat on the right, the Count, is actually pretty smart. He tries to open doors by scratching at the knob, and he knows the word "snack" ... "Do you want a snack?" I ask, and he goes "ack ... ack," which is as close as he can get to that word.
Which is much different from his other vocalizations.