Why is this in the anonymous section?  This isn’t that sensitive of a subject.

I don’t know anyone who has won a lottery. That being said, I’ve come to the conclusion that the lottery is a scam. Winners don’t really win anything, instead their “winnings” are funneled back to the cabal running said lottery. Look into how many have “won” a lottery twice. Those odds are simply insurmountable.

I won $240 on a scratch off when I was in my late teens or early twenties. Bought my cigarettes for two weeks. 

Winning the lottery will not solve your problems. It will probably create a lot more.

There was a case in Australia where a family won millions of dollars in the lottery and they got on the news. About a week later someone kidnapped their children for ransom, knowing they had a lot of money to pay. The police got involved and everything went south; I forget the details. I think the police surveilled the dead drop and probably got made, because nobody showed up, and the kidnappers never contacted the family again and were never caught. The children were never seen again, probably murdered. After this the Australian government passed a law prohibiting the media from publishing the names of lottery winners.

By the way, freedom of the press is just about the most horrible thing anyone has ever come up with. It must be from the devil himself. And not just because of what I mention here.

That being said, there are studies that show that winning the lottery doesn't make people happier. In the best case scenario, they quickly become used to being rich and having a higher quality of life, so their baseline of happiness just gets raised and they feel normal again fairly quickly. That's the best case scenario. But in a worse case scenario they're worse off because they are stressed out about how to manage their money and people come out of the woodwork trying to scam them. Worse than that, all their family and friends start asking them for money, and if they say no, their family and friends basically alienate them and they become a pariah. To put it bluntly, almost everyone they know begins to envy them for their good fortune and ends up hating them.

There's no easy way around the difficulties of life. The lottery sure isn't it.

A question worth pondering, though I agree that this topic doesn’t belong in the anonymous section.
 
On one hand we, I believe, should focus on doing good and using the resources that God has blessed us with, however modest, to live a virtuous life detached from the world.  We should also be freely using our resources, however modest, to support the Church and Her works.
 
On the other hand, I am unaware that the Church has prohibited participating in a game of chance for the sport of it, provided that doing so doesn’t distract one from their obligations or become an occasion of sin.
 
Many of the great pre VII Catholic edifices (churches, schools, shrines, hospitals) were paid for by bingo, raffle tickets, “dime-a-dip dinners”, and such … a matter of historical fact.  A few years ago, there was a thread here about someone having donated a Mercedes-Benz to the SSPX and they were raffling it off to support the Virginia seminary building fund.  There was some considerable negative reaction on this forum about that, but I couldn’t help thinking (at soon to be age 72) that this is how the Church has always helped fund these projects.
 
I only purchase Washington State lottery tickets, none of the national ones, and can verify that the proceeds go towards public services (I personally enjoy good roads, parks, libraries, etc.).
 
I only purchase a lottery ticket if the pot is bigger (it starts at $1 M, I only buy if its $3 M or larger), I never spend more than $1.00, it’s only when I happen to be in a shop anyways, I never make a special trip.  I once won $1,000 so over the past 20 years or so I’m probable even.
 
 

Our local SSPX chaple ran a raffle this month for the St Patrick's day celebrations.  They do it every year and sometimes at Christmas.

This is probably in the anonymous section incase someone here actually won big and didn't want to be identified.  Maybe.

My grandmother used to buy one lottery ticket on Saturday.  She’d win maybe $25-$75 every now and then.  She also seemed to win things like 50-50 raffles and door prizes at Chinese auctions or community board meetings.  I think she probably broke even.  I still have and use the set of Ginsu knives she won as the door prize at her Ladies Bowling League Christmas party! 

I've had some relatives like that - they'd win small amounts here & there.  And one relative won $100,000 decades ago.

I don’t buy lottery tickets myself.  It’s something that’s not really on my radar.  Are Catholics allowed to buy them?  I’d say yes, so long as by doing so you aren’t depriving your family or God of His due, and don’t trust in winning more than in God to provide.  (You’d have to be kind of stupid to think you’ll win the top prize given the odds!)  If you have a gambling addiction, then you mustn’t buy them ever.  Better to put the money in the collection at Mass or give it your priest or as alms to a needy person. 

It's not on my radar either, although I have splurged on a single ticket a few times when the pot got really big & it made the news enough that even I heard about it.  And then only if I happened to be in a store where it was convenient to buy one.  The way I always looked at it, all you need to do is buy 1 ticket.  Either God wants me to win (& He only needs me to buy 1 ticket to win), or He doesn't, thus giving me a 50/50 chance of winning!       

Quote from: Yeti 3/26/2023, 3:27:54 PM
This is pretty bizarre. Why would someone object to this? Everyone wins here -- the person who donated the Mercedes gets merit for giving to the Church, the people buying the tickets are getting merit for the same reason, the seminary gets built, and the winner gets a new Mercedes! (Not as good as supernatural merit, but I doubt they complained either ) What possible objection could anyone have to this?

Let's just say the seminarians should have been more aloof with regards to this particular luxury vehicle.

https://www.cathinfo.com/sspx-resistance-news/mercedes-benz-giveaway-c300-was-bought-by-fr-le-roux-for-40k/