WHY CATHOLICS DON’T GIVE… And What Can Be Done About It

by Charles E. Zech

OSV, 2006

186 pages, $19.95

To order:

(800) 348-2440

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A religious sister once said something that struck me as strange: “There is no mission without margin.” By this she meant that the good works of the Church must find financial support.

Nuns and priests must eat, teachers must be paid, missionaries must have shelter and maybe even a jeep to reach remote areas. The sister’s attitude seemed a little too materially determined for my liking — I wondered what St. Francis Xavier would have said to her — but I think of her words every time I hear about a Catholic parish or school closing.

It was with similar ambivalent feelings about Church finances that I picked up Charles E. Zech’s Why Catholics Don’t Give. An updated version of a book by the same name published in 2000, it’s an analysis of data taken from sociological surveys indicating that Catholics in America are notably cheap: We give far less of our incomes to the Church than members of every other major religious group give to theirs.

Whether measured in terms of giving per member, giving per household or giving as a percentage of annual income, Catholics consistently land near the bottom of the list. For example, while Catholics contribute 1.1% of their annual income to their parishes, Episcopalians give 1.8%, Presbyterians 2.8% and Mormons a whopping 7.4%. (Meanwhile, for many evangelical Protestants, tithing — giving the first 10% of their paycheck to their local church, regardless of life circumstances — is standard.)

My first reaction to the data was, “Why compare us to people who have different motives for giving? The question should be whether Catholics give enough to support the mission of their Church.”

Zech answers this question somewhat, estimating that the Church would have nearly $2 billion more if Catholics gave just 2.2% of their income, the average rate. “Parishes and parish schools have been closed because of financial pressures,” he points out. “Maintenance on buildings has been deferred … The Church faces huge, unfunded retirement costs for its priests and religious.”

Why is Catholic giving so low? Zech says surveys discount the easy answers that Catholics earn less than Protestants (this used to be the case, but no longer), or that Catholics have larger families, or even that they use up most of their disposable income sending their kids to Catholic schools. Parents who pay school tuition also tend to give more money to the weekly parish collection, he claims.

Zech offers a range of plausible explanations, from the fact that Catholics think the Church is rich to the fact that the average Sunday Massgoer in a large parish of 4,000 persons does not feel connected to the goals or finances of the parish. When a pastor clearly explains the needs of the parish, Zech states, parishioners usually respond with enough to meet the goal.

This book contains statistics, charts and bar graphs galore, so if you fear frightening flashbacks to Statistics 101, you may want to skip to Chapter 8, “Seven Things the Catholic Church Can Do to Increase Contributions.” There, Zech strongly recommends that pastors build a “stewardship” parish stressing community, a range of activities, lay involvement in finances and fiscal transparency.

In short, Zech says, make the people in the pews feel involved and needed and they will open their wallets. Encouraging Gospel giving, he concludes, may even lead to better Gospel living.

Stephen Vincent writes from

Wallingford, Connecticut.