Credit for Good (?) Behavior

This next subject I pick up with great hesitation. I know it's going to ruffle some feathers, but here we go anyway.

Poverty in this country is overwhelming. On top of that, nature sometimes dumps on the poor country as well. In this case, there's a drought going on in the northern part of the country with the result that people are literally starving. Somehow, the newspapers found out that domestic consumption of food items has decreased 50% (!) from last year in that part of the country. The government is so corrupt and so inefficient, that they haven't done anything to help. To my knowledge, the Catholic Church hasn't done anything either. The government could make appeals to wealthy countries like the US and Europe to help, but the President of this country is Daniel Ortega, a Sandinista throwback to the 1970's. He might make an appeal to Hugo Chavez, but not to the US or Europe.

Ortega is regrettably very uneducated and makes up for it by being very dumb. This doesn't have to be fatal if he's got good people around him. He doesn't. What he has succeeded in doing is forming a business (ALBA) which imports petroleum from Hugo Chavez' Venezuela at cut rate prices and then sells it at retail prices to the Nicaraguans. The result is that Ortega has become, allegedly, one of the richest men in Nicaragua. A good number of old-time Sandinistas are sufficiently dissatisfied with him that they call themselves Sandinistas, as opposed to the Sandinistas who are Ortega followers, who call themselves Ortegistas. (Have I confused you yet?).
If this isn't bad enough, I read an interesting article in last Sunday's paper. The Catholic Church wants to spend 13.5 million dollars (!) to upgrade the sanctuary of a church in Managua, the capital city. To do this, they are offering donors who make sufficient donations a "plenary indulgence." To those that have forgotten their religious history: for a Catholic, there is heaven and hell, as well as a third place called Purgatory. If you've not sinned, you go to heaven; if you've committed mortal sins, you go to hell. If you've only committed not-so-serious sins, you go to purgatory. During the Dark Ages, in order to raise money, the Church would hand out indulgences of 5, 10, or more years, depending on the size of donation received. These indulgences represented the amount of time that would be knocked off your sentence to Purgatory. The problem with a number of years, is that one never knew how many years' indulgence would be enough. To solve this marketing problem, the Church started handing out "plenary" or full indulgences; that is, to heck with the number of years, you get all your time knocked off. Some critics labeled this "selling" indulgences; among them, Martin Luther who nailed his complaint on a church door; and thus started the Protestant Reformation, etc.

In the states, it's my belief that indulgences have been out of vogue for decades. Of course, I may be completely wrong on this. But one would think that the church would have learned something from the huge break among the faithful that occurred in the 15th century.

What bothers me more is that, instead of trying to use donations to feed hungry people, the church here is more concerned about the opulence of a church interior. Maybe hungry people pray better than full ones? Maybe people pray better in opulent churches than in poor ones?

Bottom line: Poor Nicaragua is not getting helped by the two richest institutions in the country: the government of Daniel Ortega or the Catholic Church. Other countries that might help are Chavez' Venezuela, China, or the U.S. The advantage the first two have is that they haven't waged war on Nicaragua recently.