Religion and Gambling

People used to go nuts and start lining up whenever the lottery hit 100 million. I remember collecting a few hundred dollars and sending a bus boy up to Connecticut to buy tickets. There was an hour wait in the town right across the border, but driving another 15 minutes, the line was only a couple of minutes.

Pope Leo may have written on these subjects before; I'm just not aware of them.
He is an Augustinian priest, and Saint Augustine wrote that the Devil invented gambling.
Some would say that money is a gift from God and is intended to be used for the good of your family and your community, not squandered on games of chance. I think St. Augustine would agree with them.

Quote: billryan

Quote: odiousgambit

are we going to see the end of Bingo at Catholic churches?
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Catholics have a strange relationship with bingo. It's viewed as both a social activity and a fundraising one. A sad fact is that bingo often outdraws mass in some parishes, and is sometimes the only contact the parish has with its parishioners....
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Hey... why not do both? A Bingo Mass!

There are a lot of options during the Mass as far as which prayers and responsorials he uses, which hymns, which Bible readings and so forth. How about- every time an option is possible, he draws a ball, and there's a rule set that determines how he proceeds based on what he draws. By the end it will be both a perfectly valid Mass that will be a little different every time, and a perfectly valid bingo drawing. No need for a collection, they get the revenue right from the bingo cards.

All the bingo players going to church! All the churchgoers going to bingo! It's win-win!

Many, many years ago, I was on the Youth Advisory Council for my local parish. One of our concerns was the tremendous dropoff in mass attendance as kids progressed into early adulthood. One suggestion was a special rock mass for parishioners between 15 and 23, and we'd give away things like fast-food gift certificates and coupons from local merchants.
Everything was approved except the giveaways. We were told, in no uncertain terms, that incentives to attend Mass were off the table.
I think a 50-50 raffle at every mass would boost participation.

Quote: billryan

Pope Leo may have written on these subjects before; I'm just not aware of them.
He is an Augustinian priest, and Saint Augustine wrote that the Devil invented gambling.
Some would say that money is a gift from God and is intended to be used for the good of your family and your community, not squandered on games of chance. I think St. Augustine would agree with them.
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Most of my family have been educated by either the Dominicans or the Jesuits, so I guess our opinion on the matter are different. Of course, part of that education is to learn that most if not all bets favor the house, so we generally avoid, except to have fun.

The local Catholic church used to hold a summer carnival fundraiser. They went all out with rides, food, carnival games and a casino tent. You could try your luck at bingo, dice, and blackjack. One of the rules for blackjack was that the church takes all ties. It was for a good cause.

While all religions have some different values (such as views on marriage/divorce, dietary restrictions, gender roles) - all religions also have some universal values (murder is bad, lust is bad, lying is bad, greed is bad, gambling is at least slightly bad, and helping others is good).

However at the same time, while religions condemn these things, it's recognized that they are also necessary in certain cases.

In my religion, Judaism, we are all born with the inclination to do "evil" which is called Yetzer Hara. Yetzer hara. However, this inclination can be put to good work - without greed we would not build businesses, without lust we would not have families, without violence to defend ourselves we would not have a homeland.

In a way, it could be said that Abraham took a very big gamble when he bound Isaac for sacrifice. Making sacrifices for the sake of earning divinely-ordained fortune is the essence of gambling.

Edit: Abraham made the sacrifice not Jacob, idk why I wrote that xd

Quote: Kilroy

The local Catholic church used to hold a summer carnival fundraiser. They went all out with rides, food, carnival games and a casino tent. You could try your luck at bingo, dice, and blackjack. One of the rules for blackjack was that the church takes all ties. It was for a good cause.
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My Knights of Columbus dealt a double deck down to the last card, but the house won all ties and the max bet was $15. They had a side bet that paid 8-1 for a tie, but the bet was $5, and if you didn't bet it the first hand of the shoe, you couldn't bet it later. It was played at a glacial pace

Quote: harris

While all religions have some different values (such as views on marriage/divorce, dietary restrictions, gender roles) - all religions also have some universal values (murder is bad, lust is bad, lying is bad, greed is bad, gambling is at least slightly bad, and helping others is good).

However at the same time, while religions condemn these things, it's recognized that they are also necessary in certain cases.

In my religion, Judaism, we are all born with the inclination to do "evil" which is called Yetzer Hara. Yetzer hara. However, this inclination can be put to good work - without greed we would not build businesses, without lust we would not have families, without violence to defend ourselves we would not have a homeland.

In a way, it could be said that Jacob took a very big gamble when he bound Isaac for sacrifice. Making sacrifices for the sake of earning divinely-ordained fortune is the essence of gambling.
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The one thing that is forbidden in every religion I'm familiar with is stealing. Even the one that commands you to kill the infidels (which I won't name!) doesn't allow you to rob them and keep the money.

Wasn't that Abraham who bound Isaac? That was an interesting story that illuminates the history of Judaism. What would you do if someone told you "I'm God, and I want you to kill and sacrifice a kid?" Any normal person would say "Go screw, you're crazy. And you can't be God because God forbids murder and human sacrifice." But they didn't know that yet, because that was before the Law of Moses and the practices of pre-juridical Judaism might not have been that different than those of the Baal worship of Egypt and all their neighbors. As enlightened as Abraham was, he still didn't know what he was doing was bad because no one ever told him it was. That to me is the big mystery of the Old Testament- all these times people were walking around talking to God, how did they know it really was? And was it really, every time?

So if you want to call what he did gambling, it was a stupid gamble that required an intervention to stop it. At least we can say that in retrospect, armed with the modern moral knowledge provided by the great religions, we know to avoid such bets. So just as our religious education allows us to recognize and avoid cults, false prophets, and antisocial variants of our creed, gambling education should allow us to recognize and avoid bad and harmful betting.

Quote: AutomaticMonkey

Quote: harris

While all religions have some different values (such as views on marriage/divorce, dietary restrictions, gender roles) - all religions also have some universal values (murder is bad, lust is bad, lying is bad, greed is bad, gambling is at least slightly bad, and helping others is good).

However at the same time, while religions condemn these things, it's recognized that they are also necessary in certain cases.

In my religion, Judaism, we are all born with the inclination to do "evil" which is called Yetzer Hara. Yetzer hara. However, this inclination can be put to good work - without greed we would not build businesses, without lust we would not have families, without violence to defend ourselves we would not have a homeland.

In a way, it could be said that Jacob took a very big gamble when he bound Isaac for sacrifice. Making sacrifices for the sake of earning divinely-ordained fortune is the essence of gambling.
link to original post

The one thing that is forbidden in every religion I'm familiar with is stealing. Even the one that commands you to kill the infidels (which I won't name!) doesn't allow you to rob them and keep the money.

Wasn't that Abraham who bound Isaac? That was an interesting story that illuminates the history of Judaism. What would you do if someone told you "I'm God, and I want you to kill and sacrifice a kid?" Any normal person would say "Go screw, you're crazy. And you can't be God because God forbids murder and human sacrifice." But they didn't know that yet, because that was before the Law of Moses and the practices of pre-juridical Judaism might not have been that different than those of the Baal worship of Egypt and all their neighbors. As enlightened as Abraham was, he still didn't know what he was doing was bad because no one ever told him it was. That to me is the big mystery of the Old Testament- all these times people were walking around talking to God, how did they know it really was? And was it really, every time?

So if you want to call what he did gambling, it was a stupid gamble that required an intervention to stop it. At least we can say that in retrospect, armed with the modern moral knowledge provided by the great religions, we know to avoid such bets. So just as our religious education allows us to recognize and avoid cults, false prophets, and antisocial variants of our creed, gambling education should allow us to recognize and avoid bad and harmful betting.
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Maybe he called God's bluff?