Funding the Bishops’ causes

I got a letter this week, from our Bishop, Kevin Farrell.  Personally signed by an auto-pen and everything.  The letter was requesting that my family and I make our annual donation to the Bishop’s annual appeal.

I’m afraid I’m going to have to decline, for several reasons.  I am very concerned about the manner in which money is spent for Catholic charities at the diocesan, state, and national level.  The main source of this concern is, of course, CCHD.  Issues of life and death are incredibly important to my family.  We go far out of our way to try to insure, to the fullest extent possible, that none of our money will go to sources that may have agendas not in communion with Catholic moral teaching.   The numerous recent scandals at CCHD have led me to believe that CCHD is a broken organization, ill-begotten and committed by its very nature to efforts that are at cross purposes with Catholic belief.  Money is fungible, and even if I don’t support CCHD directly, increasing donations to one Diocesan or national conference charity frees up money to fund CCHD. 

Secondly, I disagree with the agendas of many of the Diocesan aid agencies themselves.  I think many are wonderful, but, again, we have the issue of the fungibility of money, and there are some aid agencies at the Diocesan level that are very involved in political lobbying.  You see, many of these aid organizations have become strongly wedded to the belief that more funding is always better, regardless of the source.  And what is best is stable, dependable funding, which allows them to plan out their programs with ease.  The people are too inconsistent – sometimes they give, sometimes they don’t.   Or not enough, anyway.  But the government………..the government, state or federal, is great.  The money is always there, within a few percentage points, and it comes right on time.  So, these aid organizations have sought, and received, a huge amount of local, state, and federal money – YOUR money.  And, they are always engaged in lobbying to insure they receive at least as much, if not more money, next year.  

Unfortunately, I find this problematic, because the government never gives anything for free.  The government lays on rules and regulations, policies that have to be upheld.  And some of those policies, especially recently, are increasingly antithetical to Church doctrine.  We see this in the ‘health care’ debate, where the Bishop’s conference has confused motives, at best.  On the one hand, they emotionally like the idea of ‘health care for all,’ even if it isn’t, and have enormous financial incentives to support a massively increased federal involvement in the health care field.  But, there are many politicians that would tie that financial windfall for Catholic hospitals to a requirement to perform abortions and terminate ‘unproductive lives’.  Even if the current legislation does not fund abortion, eventually a Congress and President will insure that it does.   And so, we see the on-again, off again approach the USCCB has taken to the pending health care legislation, while they know that federal funding for abortion under any public payer scheme is virtually guaranteed in the foreseeable future.  Because of these issues of advocacy and the tendency for government funding to cause numerous moral dilemnas, I’m hesitant to support some Catholic aid organizations.  In addition, I find the frequent championing of government social programs by the Catholic hierarchy in this country to be misguided, at best.  All government monies are taken with the implied threat of force – either you pay your taxes, or you go to jail.  I think the Bishops and their staff would receive a far better result encouraging the faithful to be more generous, rather than encouraging them to vote for certain politicians or parties that the hierarchy feels will provide that steady opiate drip of government money. 

And finally, I can’t support the annual appeal because I like to have a more direct control over where my money goes and how it is spent.  My wife and I support many charities directly, some of which are Catholic, some of which are not.  We spend time researching the charity before giving to it, to insure that its practices are acceptable to us, and, what’s more, that the charity has a very low ratio of overhead expenses.  Organizations like Food for the Poor have very low administrative costs – almost 98% of money given to them benefits the poor.   Catholic Charities USA does a pretty good job, but has a much higher ratio of administrative costs.   Alot of those administrative costs go to pay for activities like lobbying the government for more funding, and also to report back to the government, down to the last cent, how an organization has spent that public money.  I just don’t feel that such efforts are appropriate, or even beneficial, as I recently related to the Texas Catholic Conference, an organization whose main purpose is to lobby the state government for more funding.  There are just too many strings attached to government funding.

So, sorry, Bishop Farrell.  I’d very much like to support your efforts, but for the reasons I give above I just can’t.  I pray that the leadership of our Church will prayerfully consider whether being so dependent on government funding for their charitable programs, and always lobbying for more, is really the best way to provide aid to those in need.  There are many organizations that are not so dependent on government funding, and have more control over how they spend their money.   I pray that all Catholics will more generously support the charities of their choice.  But, in the end, I pray most that the Church will divorce itself from government aid programs, and rely on the more messy, but vastly more virtuous, alms of the faithful.