OK, a bit of irony here – I am stealing the title of this column from a chapter in the book, Rebuilt: The Story of a Catholic Parish by Fr. Michael White and Tom Corcoran (chapter 10). It is appropriate because much of what I am going to say in this column, I am getting from that chapter.

Last weekend we heard from St. Luke’s Gospel, “No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon” (Luke 16:13). Most people would be surprised just how often the Bible, and especially Jesus, talked about money. Jesus understood how money and possessions dominate our thoughts, holds our hearts, and stands as a huge obstacle in our relationship with God.

Avarice or greed is the unhealthy love of money. It is when we forget that all that we have really belongs to God, and He has just entrusted us with what we have so that we can use it to build up the Kingdom of God. For the Christian, money and possessions should be a means to an end. The dominant current culture says that money and possessions is the ends, the more you have the better. We are not just swimming in a sea of materialism, we are drowning in it. 

It is important for us to have a proper, mature understanding of the Church’s teaching on giving. As I mentioned in my homily last weekend, surveys indicate that Catholics give less than 1% of their income to charity. Yet giving is vitally important if we are going to be a healthy parish. We need to pay our bills and we need to pay our staff. One of the other aspects of the shortage of priests is that we need to have more lay people to do the things priests used to do, and those lay people need to be paid a just wage.

The Council of Trent taught, “The payment of tithes is due to God and those who refuse to pay, usurp the property of another. Those who withhold them or hinder their payment shall be excommunicated, nor be absolved of this crime until after full restitution is made.” WOW! They were really serious about giving to the Church back then. Don’t worry, we are not going to excommunicate anyone for not paying their tithe, but I am going to propose that everyone take a serious, prayerful, and honest look at their charitable giving.

A tithe is 10% of the first fruits of our income; that is off the top before taxes. Standard expectation is that 5% would be given to the local parish, and 5% to your favorite charities to help the poor (to make it simple, you could give it to the St. Vincent de Paul Conference here in the parish, and they will use it to help the poor in our area). However, most people still have an “8^th Grade Faith” attitude towards giving; they picked a fixed amount years ago, and they are still giving that fixed amount today.

A more mature approach to Christian giving involves the “4-Ps”. First, we should be “Planned Givers.” This means instead of just throwing in your pocket change when the collection basket is passed, you designate money in your budget to give. Next, we should be “Priority Givers.” This can be hard, but it means giving to God FIRST, before our other expenses. We have a temptation to give to God from what we have leftover, but we need to give to Him first, and trust that He will provide all that we need. Third, we should be “Percentage Givers.” That means instead of just picking a dollar amount, we give a percentage of our income. So if we make $1000/week, and we want to give 5% we give $50/week to church; if we get a raise to $1200/week, we give $60/week. Finally, we should be “Progressive Givers.” This means increasing the percentage we give regularly. As I mentioned, based on surveys, Catholics tend to give less than 1% of their income to charity, so start by looking at how much you are giving to the Church and other charities. Divide that amount by your income to figure out how much you are giving. If you are giving 1%, then try to increase it to 1.5% or 2%. The following year, bump it up another 0.5% to 1%. It becomes easier as we learn to trust God’s providence for us, and we see how He is acting in our lives.

“Then Jacob said, ‘If God will be with me and will watch over me, then the Lord will be my God and this stone that I have set up as a pillar will be God’s house, and of all that you give me I will give you a tenth” (Genesis 28:20-22).