Annoying Donations

The pope is in Australia to attend the Catholic 'woodstock'. My friend was in Melbourne as part of the celebrations and it was nice catching up with her.

She recounted the atmosphere at the Telstra Stadium during the commissioning mass where people were excitedly waving their national flags to entice their countrymen to come together. She also mentioned the protestors trying their best to 'annoy' the pilgrims in attendance.

Yes. Protests. At a catholic 'festival'. Firstly, you would think that there's not much to protest about. From my little exposure to catholicism, it's pretty laid back. There's little in the way of rock and roll, no faith healers who scream in your face until your cancer or eczema goes away (speaking of which, have you watched Benny Hinn? Last I heard he was asking for donations for his Gulfstream jet. Is it me or does the idea of buying a private jet using donations from a little old lady on welfare just wrong?).

So anyway, back to these protests. One of them was done by a group giving out free condoms to people attending the event.

It's not really a sin to take a condom is it ? To use it to its full extent might not be allowed within Catholic circles but surely the act of giving them out is ok? The ones who take them, with the intention of using them - shouldn't those be the pilgrims who have issues ?

I suppose its a similar argument with "guns don't kill people, people kill people".

So eventually, the laws against annoying pilgrims were shot down. Apparently it's a constitutional right to be annoying :)

Coming back to the point about donations, or at least large bequests of money. I was reading a debate about Leona Helmsley's gift of $12m to her dogs being reduced to $2m by a judge.

Bizarre as it seems, it's interesting how the court suddenly has a say in how the money is directed after she's passed away. Doesn't this sort of negate the whole idea of a will ? Granted that some of the terms of the rest of the money she left behind ($5-8bn for the welfare of dogs) was a bit vague, but if she were still alive, and managed to distribute all that money before she died, would the court have been able to take action ?

No punchline today. Just funny observations.

P.S. I do recognise that the becker-posner debate is more about whether the bequest should be tax-free (seeing as "dogs" aren't necessarily a charity), but I'm more inclined to the "itsyourmoneyyoucandowhatyouwantwithit" school of thought.