In the famous novel Atlas Shrugged, the capitalists, maligned and put upon by the overreaching hand of government, all suddenly disappear so that the world would discover how much they really needed the capitalists. They called it “Going Galt” after the man named John Galt who initially vanished.
Today, few groups are more maligned and put upon than Catholics both here in America and around the world. We’ve all heard it suggested that the world would be better off without the Catholic Church.
So this is my response. Not that it could ever happen but what if the Catholic Church went “Galt.” What would happen to the world if the Catholic Church just stopped. Everything. Leaving aside all spiritual aspects, here’s a few things which would occur immediately.
Almost 7,000 schools would close in the United States alone. Already under-performing public schools suffering from overcrowding would likely collapse under the weight of about 2.6 million children showing up at the door expecting a free education. You think test scores are low now? Wait until 2.6 million more kids show up.
Over 200 Catholic colleges and universities with over 600,000 students would suddenly be without a school, leaving supply diminished and demand unchanged thus skyrocketing the already exorbitant cost of college.
The over 200 Catholic residential homes for children, or orphanages, which serve 50,000 children in a given year would be gone. The children would be shuttled into already crammed government programs or lost completely.
The over 84 million people who receive care at any of about 600 Catholic hospitals every year would be forced to seek help elsewhere, clogging up hospitals. The more than 15 million emergency room visits per year to Catholic hospitals would be headed to other hospitals already suffering from financial losses of emergency rooms. Emergency vehicles would also have increased travel times, driving up fatality rates.
The Catholic health care network, which also includes over 400 health care centers and over 1,500 specialized homes, would shut down. Many assisted living facilities, adult day care and senior housing would be gone.
Many crisis pregnancy centers would vanish, leaving women without options or help when they need it most.
Many homes for pregnant women or abused women would disappear, forcing women to the streets or a return to a perhaps abusive relationship from which they sought escape.
Nearly 70% of U.S. dioceses sponsor housing or housing-related services. That would stop, and homeless numbers would rise.
Over 135 national and hundreds more local Catholic lay organizations that serve the Church and provide services in communities throughout the United States like the Knights of Columbus and the Society of St. Vincent de Paul would disappear. To get an idea, in a given year, the K of C donated $139,711,619 to charity and volunteered 64,039,706 hours. All of that would be gone. The Society of St. Vincent de Paul has about 120,000 members serving 15 million people per year, which include 646,820 home visits, 360,596 hospital visits, 361,420 aged daycare visits, 159,257 prison visits, and $392 million in total expenditures and volunteer services. All gone.
The Catholic Church and organizations supported by the Catholic Church are the largest care providers of HIV and AIDS in the world. All of that would be gone.
The Catholic Campaign for Human Development, which has granted hundreds of millions to thousands of community-based, self-help projects initiated and led by people living in poverty, would cease all grants, leading to the destruction of programs aimed to help the poor.
Catholic Relief Services spends millions to help provide clean water, improve agriculture, and educate the young in countries with little access to any of it. But that too would all be gone along with programs that deliver mosquito nets to prevent malaria in Africa, without which thousands more would likely die needlessly of malaria.
Catholic Charities—which alone is the fourth largest charity in the United States, above the Red Cross and the Salvation Army, and consists of 1,400 agencies that run soup kitchens, temporary shelters, child care, and refugee resettlement all around the country and provides help for 6.5 million people, regardless of religious, social, or economic backgrounds—would be gone.
This isn’t even close to a complete list of the charitable endeavors of the Catholic Church. There’s so much more. So, do you still think the world would be a better place without the Catholic Church?
Next time someone asks you to imagine a world without the Catholic Church just say you have. And it’s scary.
HT USCCB which detailed many of the statistics in this piece.
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Thanks for this piece, it really makes a strong statement of how influential the Catholic structure is within the world.
Wait there is still actually Catholic Colleges out there?
Good piece and I wish more people knew this information. It seems that all you ever hear is how bad the Catholic Church is bad and how it harbor’s pedofile priests. You would think that we are the most evil people out there.
Thanks for the information.
Excellent article. My only issue is the premise. Why use a horrible book penned by an insane atheist to make this point? Other than that, great job.
You would think that with such a contribution the States/Europe/Australia would have been converted already. The sad truth is that so many “Catholic” organizations deny Christ’s centrality to their work, and as a consequence - society can’t recognize what Church offers over state.
Good article, Mr. Archbold.
Not to start on Atlas Shrugged, but you can read the book from a Catholic Perspective and see where Rand got things right and where she got things very wrong. I’ve even noticed some of the things she got wrong are not completely wrong if looked at from the Catholic perspective. I think it was an appropriate book to mention with the premise of the article, especially with the movie just out.
If the Church went galt then its not a Church worth having?
Actually, in 1962, the Bishop of Golbourn, Australia, did something a little bit like “going Galt.” The full story can be found here:
http://www.abc.net.au/time/episodes/ep7.htm
Thank you, Matthew, for this most informative Post especially the statistics you have enumerated. Now I am waiting with abated breath to hear the response from those who have labelled the Catholic Church “Public Enemy No.1” and have even vehemently demanded that the Vatican be burned down. Common decency and sincerity on their part, demand they tell us exactly how they intend to take over and efficiently run all these Institutions when Christ’s Church is wiped out of the Map of Planet Earth
Thanks for this collection of stats - I’ve often wondered about these numbers myself when blogges, celebs and others plan our demise and elimination. Could we stretch it to say that any organization or institution with Catholic roots or start ‘go Galt’ as well? That would mean every hospital and every orphanage would need to shut its doors as both got their beginnings with Catholics who took Christ’s call to feed the poor and clothe the naked to heart.
I think about this all the time when the Church gets criticized. And this is just the tip of the physical iceberg. The spiritual is beyond measuring, especailly the Eucharist lifting souls out of the muck through the ages. “If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you.” (John 15:20) And so we soldier on.
“My only issue is the premise. Why use a horrible book penned by an insane atheist to make this point?”
Ouch. And yet: good question. For a more enjoyable critique of Rand—and to save you the trouble of having to read Atlas Shrugged—I suggest you go here:
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/54707
Ugh! Why would you praise the work of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, which has funded so many pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, pro-birth control, Marxist organizations throughout its 40 year history?
......yep…...thanks to God this has already been taken care of ....“I will build MY CHURCH, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it !!! ”
Michael S.
Matthew – Question: if there are so many Catholic schools, colleges, hospitals, charities, social service institutions, around—why are we not more Catholic? Regards…..Egbert F Bhatty
After the Nun was excommunicated in Phoenix, I found this
“Yet no money flows from the Catholic Church to any Catholic Hospitals. The only “benefit” Catholic titled hospitals receive from the Catholic Church is privileges to have the “body and blood of Jesus” on site at a chapel. In return, the Catholic Church is able to impose it’s doctrinal beliefs on the staff and protocol of the hospital.”
I wonder how much education gets directly from the church.
Yes but what would happen if the Catholic Church suddenly ended, but all Catholic institutions, rather than disappearing, simply became another religion.
For example, if all the Catholic schools became public schools, the existing schools would not necessarily have millions of new students. In fact, the only things that would change would be practitionary, psychological, and spiritual in nature.
Your article certainly puts numbers to the Church, but I think the size is incidental. What really matters is the power of the Church over political figures, educators, and day-to-day decisions and behaviors, even on a subconscious level.
The single thing the Catholic Church claims over every single other religion, government, and entity, is Truth. Anything that goes against the Church lacks Truth is some area or another.
If the Church were to suddenly cease to exist, the loss of the only entity that upholds ethics and morality with Truth would pose more serious and long-lasting effects than hordes of children without schools, the loss of money, etc.
But I realize your point, as you were simply bringing to light the accidental scale of the Catholic Church. Thank you for this.
” I AM with you even until the end of time” So, going “Galt” would be the people. I ran from the church in tears. My brother’s murderer was in the first pew. I stopped at the door and thought: “Wait a minute, this is my Jesus,if he does not like it, he can leave” and with great resolve I took back my church. It is past time every serious person took back the church as Tim suggests. TRUTH is WHO the church gives us.
Great list of the corporal works of mercy the Church makes a reality in our American society. But I also agree with Christine that these works though many are only the tip of the iceberg of all the benefits the Church offers to humanity through the various and numerous spiritual works of mercy. I think that in spite of the Church’s failings, the Church humanizes societies. The contrary is also true: a lack of Church dehumanizes. Just think of the totalitarian atheistic regimes of the last century, like what communism produced in Russia and Spain in the 30s, or what Nazism produced in Germany… and what Mansonry produced in Mexico in the 20s (the Cristero Revolution). I wish these ideological atheist had gone “Galt”! I wonder if and how that English atheist intellectual (Hitchens?) would ever if ever justify these dehumanizing contributions of atheism on human societies!
Good article. I have worked in health and human services on a secular level for 40 years, and there is a lot of good that is done there as well. In fairness, it should be noted that most of the funding for Catholic Healthcare comes from Medicaid and Medicare. Many of the Catholic group homes for developmentally disabled are funded by Medicaid. And Catholic Charities gets a lot of its money from state and federal human services grants. This is a practical necessity in the modern world, but it may also be the reason for the secularization of many of these Catholic services. Maybe if the world financial crisis gets too severe, that will end, and the church will rise again to fill the void with true charity in truth, rather than the sometimes soulless social programs the government now provides.
@Mike. If the government respected its people, if the government acknowledged that taxes belong to the taxpayer even while being adnministered by the administration, Catholic taxes would be used for Catholic Charities, hospitals and schools. But instead, the government subverts ownership and imposes atheism under the guise of freedom of religion, the Supreme Court called it a “penumbra”,to advance its own agenda against the will of the people.
Understanding and getting past the differences between the Catholic Church and the various Protestant Denominations - when an author undertakes a study like this, it’s helpful to expand the vision to include those other church groups as well.
When faced with the struggle for souls against the secular humanist and Islamic mindsets, we must remember that - as churches of Christ, regardless of our differences, we are on the same side.
That said, the collapse in social structure noted above would be even more drastic if all Christ-centered churches and organizations likewise “went Galt.” The effect on the world at large would be drastic and devastating.
The response to someone who says you don’t do enough should never be “Yes, but look what happens if I do nothing” Especially a Religion.
Thanks for that. Great info I had never consider before. I am starting to like the Catholic Church more and more as I free myself from excessive right-wing thinking that can become propagandist and more open-minded, especially reading Anglican theologian N.T. Wright.
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