Church Development looks at a third round of expert opinions as to why Catholic giving is lower than that of Protestants.
I’ve now shared two groups of expert views on the reasons behind lower Catholic giving (see here and here), but we’re not done yet:
Catholic freelance author Jim Castelli had six reasons, coming up shy of the 19 reasons I mentioned from Fr. Thomas Sweester last time. Like Sweester, he had views in common with the rest, including not informing the laity in how funds are spent and the little or poor training priests receive in the area of finances. Castelli also noted the decline of community and the confusion over the Church’s purpose in the modern-day world.
Msgr. Timothy Collins put it solely and bluntly in one area: that the problem is not lack of funds, but church mismanagement.
The U.S. Catholic Conference worked on a letter for five years titled, “Stewardship: A Disciple’s Response.” What did they come up with? Well, they didn’t really come up with any reasons, as they instead wrote about the importance of stewardship. While some praised them for not adding to the mountain of criticism—after all, I am three blogs deep on this issue and barely scratching the surface—others criticized them for not turning their theological beliefs into an action plan.
I’ll close the opinions here for now, but I’ll include a final thought next time.
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Source: Charles Zech’s Why Catholics Don’t Give… And What Can Be Done About It
Denis Greene is the Founder and President of Church Development. He is the author of The Stewardship System, Stewardship-Based Capital Campaigns, and How To Ask For Donations as well as numerous articles on stewardship. Denis has helped over 200 churches across the USA raise more than $200,000,000.
A complete list of Church Development’s services (including capital campaign management and consultation, feasibility studies, and year-round stewardship ministry programming) is available here.