St. Nicholas and Using Money in a Catholic Way

First,  a most happy and blessed feast of St. Nicholas to you, dear reader!

I was thinking early this morning as I set up our St. Nicholas display that he really gave us a good example of investing money.  If you are unfamiliar with the story, he secretly gave a bag of gold from his inheritance as dowry for each of three poor maiden sisters so that they could marry well.

I use the term investing rather than giving because if you think about it, there is nothing more important to a healthy civilization than establishing good Catholic communities.  And that begins with Catholic families.  Helping these girls marry was a wonderful way of investing that paid interest by furthering Christ's kingdom, which as a bishop he understood perfectly.

Notice he didn't toss them gold so that they could buy a house of their own or go to college or travel the world.  He gave it expressly for marriage.

He imagined the kind of world in which he wanted to live, one where Christ is King, and he put his money where it would work toward that vision.  And though this example involved charity, I want to engage in the same kind of thought process for all our family's monetary transactions.

However, going from the thought process to the reality is where it becomes exceedingly difficult, dare I say impossible?  As you have probably discovered, there is this whole corrupt underworld operating out of sight that does not care about you, your children, or your grandchildren and actually hates Jesus Christ.  It just wants your money.  It doesn't care whether your neighborhood is safe or whether you have access to food that is not poison.   It's like we live in a giant charade.  I truly feel like I go out into the world with sword drawn just to go to the grocery store and the drug store.  I mean, they look like nice places, but they both really, really want to give me a flu shot!  At least that is what I infer from all the signs they post, trying to entice me to get one.

For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and power, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places.

Clearly, Prince of Lies, Inc., is the real owner of many profitable companies.

So it is difficult, but it really does matter where you bank and what companies you support by buying their products.  We can't give up.  

I have subscribed to two different investment advice/education sites over the years, hoping to find help in this matter, but in both cases I unsubscribed after determining their advice didn't fit my vision.  In fact, it clashed with it.  I don't want to invest in the military-industrial complex even if it is the best return on my money.  It's evil.

Recently I subscribed to another site after watching several video interviews with its author, Catherine Austin Fitts.  Here's one of the first one I watched:



Her site, Solari.com, is such a wealth of helpful information that I am still mining its rich archive two months later.  I subscribed on the monthly plan to see whether I would like it.  It's $30 a month.  I will most likely buy an annual membership in January.  No, I don't get any money from mentioning the site, no benefits of any kind.

I am particularly excited about her posts on "Reviving a Local Economy".  I think it would be a fantastic tool for young Catholic families to use to start creating the kind of place they want to live and raise families.  She gives advice on how to extricate yourself from the corruption as much as possible and how to start investment groups to help one another succeed.  Of course, it is not perfect. It is just the most helpful site I have found so far.  It's so helpful that I could keep writing about it for a long time, but alas, the day wanes, and soon St. Nicholas Day will be over.

So that's all for now.