My friend Louise, who writes a newspaper column and covers local and neighborhood news on her popular Brooklyn website, taps me, now and then, to serve as her go-to person for background on Catholic matters. She and I were talking not long ago about a Roman Catholic pastor who had been transferred to another parish. Louise made a face.
"Oh, no!" I exclaimed. "He didn't do anything wrong! The diocese moves them after about a dozen years." She wanted to know how it worked -- who decides (the bishop of the diocese) and why? I explained the part I knew, and ventured a few theories. Economics, I suggested, sometimes plays a role.
"Sometimes the boss moves a 'big earner' to a parish where tithing is low --"
She interrupted, laughing. "I notice you do that a lot."
"Do what?"
"Use 'mobspeak' when you talk about the Church. Terms like 'big earner.'"
It makes sense. When I think about my Church, lately, I can't help but think about "spinach,"
"scratch," "scarole" ...
Why? Because people whose opinions on Catholic things I most value have exhorted me to stop putting money in the basket at mass, and I am starting to think they're right.
But I'm torn. I'm just not sure.
I love my parish, our parishioners, our liturgies, our church building. My pastor is a Prince -- and not the Machiavelli kind, either. Were it possible to tithe to the parish alone, I'd tithe double! I know my offertory gift supports the overburdened rectory staff, several social justice programs and the upkeep of the architectural masterpiece my church is, a landmark building many non-Catholics enjoy. I know a small core of middle-class parishioners and many poor and elderly people generously stretch to contribute what they can in order to keep my diverse, active parish afloat, and I want to help.
But I'm torn. For I know that the capo di tutti capi skims his take off the top first.
I receive a lot of Roman Catholic "shakedown" mail. Most of these solicitations wind up shredded or deleted. Last week, however, I responded to one by giving a contribution to SOA Watch, a 20-year-old organization that peacefully advocates against torture in Latin America. SOA (School of the Americas), which currently goes by the name of WHINSEC (Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperations), is located at Fort Benning in Georgia and is funded by U.S. tax dollars. The school is an academy for torture. In the latter half of the 20th Century, roughly 60,000 Latin American military personnel and law enforcement trained at SOA have employed their expertise in torture and mass-murder for the purpose of keeping dictators in power and rendering humanitarian workers, teachers, clergy, journalists, intellectuals, activists and "insurgents," neutralized or dead. More than a few hundred civilians have been murdered in the last three decades by School of the Americas-trained personnel.
Graduates of SOA include Manuel Noriega; many of Augusto Pinochet's generals; and Roberto d'Aubuisson, the commander of El Salvador's notorious death squads, who executed tens of thousands of Salvadoran civilians, including El Salvador's Archbishop Oscar Romero, three nuns and a church worker (whom they raped before murdering) in 1980. Moved by the extrajudicial killings of seven Jesuit priests (in 1989) and the deaths of the aforementioned martyred women (two of whom were his friends) Roman Catholic priest Father Roy Bourgeois and other activists working in Latin America to challenge U.S. policy there co-founded SOA Watch in 1990.
Roy Bourgeois was born and educated in Louisiana, served four years the Navy, spent a year in Viet Nam, was awarded a Purple Heart, and was ordained into one of the Maryknoll orders in 1972. He has spent more than four years in U.S. federal prison for non-violent protest, and was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. Each year in November, SOA Watch stages a vigil outside of Fort Benning to honor the lives of the men, women and children who were butchered by SOA graduates and to protest the existence of the "School for Assassins." Since 1990 SOA Watch has led a campaign to shut WHINSEC down.
Up until recently the Maryknolls supported this work with an annual grant of $17,000.00, but on July 22, U.S. Catholic reported that the Maryknoll order had withdrawn this $17,000 grant -- without issuing an explanation. Perhaps there is one.
Why did SOA Watch lose this $17,000 grant?
The Maryknolls aren't saying ("Code of Omerta?") many feel (word on the street) is that the boss has a beef and is sending Bourgeois a message. Father Bourgeois, who has long been a fervent and outspoken advocate for women's ordination, was publically excommunicated in 2008 for taking part in a the Roman Catholic ordination of a woman. Perhaps this order does not come from the top, but public excommunication does, and if the order did come from the big boss, the it is likely the Maryknolls might be loath to sing like a canary.
Bourgeois is now currently trying to raise $17,000 to cover the amount the Maryknolls' grant used to provide in support of SOA Watch.
So I think I'll tithe to Bourgeois and SOA Watch this Sunday, resting assured that the Holy (God)father won't get a piece of that action.
I won't have to worry this week that he'll use my dough to bankroll consiglieri who get bosses off the hook when they're charged with pimping out children, or nabbed on tax code and RICO violation counts; nor fear my contributions will be used to fund cheese-eaters on Apostolic Inquisition teams (technically Apostolic Visitation teams), Vatican snitches who spy on women in convents.
This week leg-breakers who muscle impoverished women in developing nations, warning them that contraception leads to eternal damnation, won't do so on my nickel. I won't have to fret this week over my complicity in subsidizing hatchet-men who preach that it pleases God when women give birth to more children than they can feed, or over underwriting enforcers who exhort Catholics in AIDS-ravaged regions not to use condoms in order to preserve their lives. I can take a break this week from worrying that my "tributes" make me an accessory to spreading AIDS in nations like Kenya, Tanzania, and Nigeria where both Catholicism and transmission of HIV are on the rise.
I'll tithe to SOA Watch this week.
It's hard not to notice the ironies at hand: On one hand, we have a priest who is actually consecrating his life -- his flesh, blood and soul -- to living Christ's example.
And and on the other hand, we have the thuggish dictator, the capo di tutti, getting in his way. We have Joey Rats, the Holy (God)father who extends his ringed hand to kiss, not in peace, but in princely petulance, as he sacrifices the lives of all who might be spared the torments of SOA-trained butchers, for the greater good of upholding the foolish doctrine of his misogynistic Magisterium on the matter of women's ordination.
It's tricky, the question of parish giving. If people of conscience stop giving to parishes run by men of conscience, parishes with conscience won't survive. Therein lies the rub. That's what the head of the Syndicate wants. The capo di tutti capi wants parishes like mine to fold.
Joey Rats wants to ice feminists, dissenters, and homosexuals. He wants to put two in the back of the head of Social Justice do-gooders and progressives. And he wants "the faithful" to pay for these hits.
My hope is that pastors will work with parishioners to seek a workaround for supporting parishes, but at least for the present time, I plan to use my Catholic donation dollars to support women priests' congregations, ministries that serve the poor, LBGT Catholic ministry, SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests), The Catholic Worker, Pax Christi, and SOA Watch.
I'll be at mass this Sunday, and I admit that as I contemplate my plan to liberate myself from the papal vigorish, I'll twitch. I'll anguish a little as the offertory basket on a stick passes, but I believe right now that it would be a sin for me to give even one thin dime to Joey Rats and his bagmen.
I'm torn, and still not sure.
But there's one thing I am sure of, however: if Father Bourgeois were a bishop, say, instead of a "stand-up guy" -- if he were a bishop, say, whose only sin was covering up the serial rapes of a few 10-year-old children, and not taking part in a woman's ordination -- Father Roy Bourgeois might still have that "17."
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Focusing on the good stuff gives you a very distorted image.
You can. Write a cheque to the church with a letter instructing how the money is to be used (i.e. to support the rectory). By law, charitable organizations, including churches, are restricted in using donations in the manner directed by the donor. As someone who has worked for non-profits for almost a decade now, this is a situation I have encountered numerous times. Someone donated a flatscreen tv for a raffle, we ended up not holding a raffle, and our board president wanted to use the tv to help deliver services to the agencies families - I had to inform her that we couldn't just do that, that we had to get the permission of the donor to redirect the purpose of the donation first. It is the same way with monetary donations. This is why charitable association prefer undirected donations that they can spend in any way they want.
That said, you should find a non-religious charity that needs you support, and spread your charitable giving around. Especially if you are starting to feel uncomfortable about where your money is going and how it is being spent.
Thanks!
Michele
Yes, you're right; I know where the door is. I use it a few times each week, and see no reason to stop attending my wonderful Roman Catholic Church.
"Holy Everything" is an interesting, though; it strikes me as being somewhat synonymous with "holy creation" and reminds me a bit of the larger definition of the word "catholic" ... something to think about! Thanks. And thanks for commenting.
First, your attempt to justify your stinginess to your parish is a fraud. Maryknoll has explicitly said that no one outside Maryknoll had anything to do with the decision, and Maryknoll certainly has enough projects of its own on which to spend its limited funds; to think that Roy's pet project has an automatic entitlement to funding from the order is arrogant nonsense.
Next, the Vatican does not "skim" anything from any parish. Almost all money collected stays in the parish, with a small amount (typically about 9%) going to support the programs of the local diocese as a whole. By refusing to put money in the basket, you are not teaching the pope a lesson; you are instead making sure that the roof of your parish leaks, and that the school in the poor parish two neighborhoods over has to close. But won't you feel better for having made your point, right? (not to mention the extra money you will have in your wallet to spend on Sunday brunch for yourself...)
Thank you for reading my essay and for commenting. Having been a generous and steadfast supporter of my parish (via donations of time, talent and money) for a long time, I do not worry that my a (brief, I hope) moratorium on giving makes me solely responsible for leaks in my church roof-- especially since I have shifted my giving to a program my parish operates, a program for feeding the poor-- Many people feel that feeding the hungry is, like protecting the innocent from torture, "God's work."
Yes, I do feel better for making my point.
I hope that more information about the Maryknoll's reasoning will emerge so that the appearance that Fr. Bourgeoisis being punished for ordaining women will be disproved.
I appreciate your information where the money goes. As I repeatedly say in my opinion piece, I am posing the questions, not answering them. I am actively engaged in trying to parse the mystery of where parish donations go. Should I discover that none of my money goes to corrupt bishops or the pope, I will be delighted, and will respond by increasing my financial donations to my parish.
I obviously employ figurative language in this opinion piece in which "skim" is intended to convey both literal and figurative meaning. Whether the Vatican gets parishioners' dollar bills each month (I think it does.) is not the point; the point is that, as we all know, the Vatican always gets "a piece of the action."
And when I refer to the "skim" I include agents of the Vatican, many of whom, I believe, cannot be trusted to withhold from the Vatican. These are the same bishops who looked away while their priests were raping children. Given the secrecy that attends the collaboration between bishops and the pope, there is no way to know for sure where our money goes. The soundness of all charitable giving is predicated on the degree to which the person giving trusts the head of the operation.
The challenge for Catholics like me is to discover whether it is possible to be sure that my diocese in is not giving to the pope. I think the Vatican probably does get a percentage of parish money whether under the table or over, but I do not know for sure. In any case, the Vatican always enjoys a "a piece of the action", and I can't, in good conscience, offer the pope any form of support beyond prayer.
By the way, I sent my parish money to Father Bourgeois two weeks ago, and to Haiti, last week, not exactly the charitable equivalent of brunch -- but that's fine; I don't like I don't like anyway.
Thank you, once more, for writing.
Michele
Thanks for donating to SOAWatch and for the tips in giving. I've already been earmarking my contributions in the ways you suggest, but I think it's important to get the word out on ways to support parishes without feeding the beast.
Michele
The organization is complacent and has been wounded...Financially they are being hit here in the USA and in in Europe as well... It is time for them to embrace diversity and to to rise and praise the lord for all his good works... They need to rid themselves of the shame and embrace the few dynamic individuals and leaders who have welcomed changes and build with love and diversity.