Let’s Talk About Money

Hopefully, this will be my last word on the scandals that erupted in the Catholic Church in 2018-2019. People frequently ask me what we, the laity, can do about it. I always tell them the same thing. The laity have no ecclesiastical power over the hierarchy. So there really isn’t much we can do at all. There are only two things at our disposal. We have just one spiritual power, and that’s prayer. Then we have just one worldly power, and that’s money. So the only two things the laity can do is pray and give. That means there are only two things the laity can do to fight corruption, scandal and crisis in the Church. We can pray that God corrects it, and we can strategically redirect our giving so that we’re not inadvertently supporting it. That’s about it. There’s nothing left for us to do.

If you’re still blindly giving money to corrupt bishops then let’s face it. You’re part of the problem. You’re blindly supporting sexual abuse, cover up, homosexual sin, heresy, slush funds for lavish lifestyles and sometimes outright fraud. You’re part of the problem because you’re not being discriminate about where you give. You might as well be sending your donations to a mob boss. These are desperate times, and desperate times don’t call for desperate measures. They call for strategic measures. That means we have to be smart. We have to seriously start thinking about where we send our donations, and be very critical about who uses them.

Let’s talk about money, shall we? When the McCarrick scandal broke in the summer of 2018, and we learned of the sweeping corruption throughout the entire US episcopate (and the world), coupled with the possibility of a federal RICO investigation into the US Catholic Church, we were all very understandably angry. I was furious. I, like many, had thought the worst of this was more than a decade behind us. Little did I know, like many of us, that we had been fooled. We were duped by our own Church leadership, and the man responsible for writing the Church norms for combating sexual abuse in the United States was none other than Cardinal Theodore McCarrick — Mr. “King of the Pederasts” himself!

At the time I was pretty angry, and rightfully so. I blogged about it, and I took some heat for writing the things I did. At first, local clergy wanted nothing to do with me. I became the proverbial hot potato that nobody wanted to touch. Within six months, however, following the Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò revelations that Rome (even Pope Francis) knew everything about McCarrick, and covered it up, I was totally vindicated. Even a blind man can see that now. Pope Francis reinstated McCarrick from silent exile (after being told he was a pederast and raging homosexual predator who corrupted young priests and seminarians), placing him in charge of the Vatican-China deal that sold out Chinese Catholics and is now facilitating their wholesale persecution by the Chi-Com government. Yes, I’ve been 100% vindicated in my anger against the hierarchy of the US Catholic Church and Rome, and so have all of you. We are right. We’ve been right all along. It’s our leadership in the Catholic Church who have been wrong all this time, and the only way many of them can show true contrition would be to resign from their posts en mass, and spend the rest of their lives sequestered in monasteries doing penance for their wicked ways. Sadly, many of them won’t do that. So the best we can hope for is that they’ll soon be arrested and placed behind bars, where they can spend their rest of their lives in prison doing hard time for their corruption. Many of us are praying for that, shocking as it may seem. I could go through a list of names here. I’ve got about a dozen of them in mind, but I won’t for fear of leaving someone important out.

That being said, I don’t regret anything I wrote back in 2018, as it was all vindicated, except for just one thing. I wrote something a little too broad, and a little too rash. It was written in righteous anger, so I don’t apologize for the emotion at all. I did, however, apologize for the lack of thinking, the lack of clarity, and not following things through to their logical and natural conclusion. That was my only mistake. I said that we should stop giving all money to all bishops entirely. I advised people to give to their parishes, if their parishes weren’t corrupt or heretical, but I said give nothing to any bishop. That was a mistake, and I apologized for that, because I was wrong. I was, at the time, foolishly advocating a policy of punishing the innocent with the guilty, and that is never the right thing to do under any circumstances. Not only did I apologize for that, but I went back and retracted all blog entries (and social media comments) to that effect.

What I should have said then, is what I’ve been saying ever since, which is that we should strategically redirect our giving away from corrupt bishops and toward faithful ones. Once again, I am saying the same thing now. Don’t give a dime to the USCCB, or the CCHD, or to Peter’s Pence. Don’t give a dime to any bishop fingered in sexual-abuse cover-up, and don’t give a dime to parishes appearing to promote sexual immorality or heresy of any kind. Instead, redirect your giving toward the few good bishops and parishes where there is no reasonable evidence of covering up sexual abuse, heresy or corruption.

Many Catholics are doing just that, and they’ve been doing it for over a year now. Yet, there has been an unintended consequence to the faithful refusing to give to the Vatican, the bishops conferences, and corrupt bishops in particular. As the money dries up from good Catholic sources, corrupt bishops are now turning to secular sources for revenue, and this in turn makes them beholden to secular agendas. I cannot tell you how I know this. I can only say information has come to me from reliable sources, and I can tell you the practice is now widespread, going all the way up to the Vatican. This is a problem, because as episcopal institutions, including the Vatican, become more beholden to secular agendas, the more corrupt they will become and the less they will be interested in the needs of the Faithful.

Sadly, there isn’t much we can do about that. In a way, it’s a form of judgement God is leveling upon the episcopate. It’s like the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart from the Exodus narrative of the Bible. God is allowing this to happen, so he can lock corrupt clergy into the judgement that will soon be coming their way. When bishops live by secular agendas, they shall die by secular agendas. There’s nothing we can do to help them now.

Still, however, there are good bishops, and the good should never be punished with the bad. Justice demands this. So, as I said before, we should strategically redirect our donations toward good episcopal jurisdictions, and various other sources. Canon Law requires that (in some way) we support the material needs of the Church, but it doesn’t specifically tell us how. That means if you live in one diocese, it’s perfectly okay to send your donations to another diocese or jurisdiction. Yes, you really can do this, and I know many people who are doing it. For example, I know some Catholics in the Archdiocese of New York who don’t donate anything to the Archdiocese, simply because they cannot abide by the outrageous legal antics of the reigning Cardinal Archbishop there. They’ve moved their money out of the archdiocese. They give to other jurisdictions, fraternities and institutes. I know some Catholics who do the same in the Archdiocese of Chicago. Oh they give, generously, but not to their local Cardinal Archbishop, or to any of his parishes. Rather, they give outside of their Archdiocese. I know some Catholics who do the same in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, and the Diocese of San Diego. Yes, it’s really happening, just among people I personally know, but I imagine it’s happening on a much wider scale too. Hopefully it will continue, and increase.

There are more than a few dioceses and bishops worthy of our donations, but I’m not going to make an extensive list here. I’ll leave it to you to research dioceses in your state or region. The process is simple enough. Just find out if there are any serious allegations of sexual-abuse cover-up by the local bishop. If there are, don’t give any money to him. If there are not, do a little more research. Is the local bishop orthodox? Does he support traditional liturgy in his diocese? Is he a good moral example? Is he producing vocations in his diocese? If the answers are “yes” to all of these questions, then I would say that bishop might be one worthy of financial support, even if he’s not your bishop. People have asked me for suggestions, and off hand, I can think of three really good bishops just here in the State of Missouri. However, because this is an international blog, I’m only going to personally recommend the really big jurisdictions I am personally familiar with, as possible suggestions for your consideration. Instead of giving to a corrupt (arch)bishop in your area, consider one of the following as a legitimate alternative…

• The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter (English Patrimony)
• The Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (Latin Patrimony)
• The Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest (Latin Patrimony)

We also have to consider the general direction of both the Vatican and the hierarchy. The Pachamama idolatry in the Vatican gardens is one example of how the Pope and hierarchy are moving away from serving the Faithful, and toward serving worldly agendas. We are seeing more of this “earth goddess” making its way into children’s books and cartoons. It’s part of the whole Climate Change doomsday cult of the Globalist Left (#ClimateCult). Pope Francis himself is fully on board with this new apocalyptic religion, moonlighting as a spokesman for man-made climate-change, while at the same time blessing Pachamama idols and apologizing to Pagans if they’re offended by the faithful Catholic rejection of their false gods. We have seen video not only of Pagans (and what appeared to be a Franciscan friar) worshipping the Pachamama in the Vatican gardens, but new video has since emerged of bishops and cardinals pledging their hearts to Mother Earth (Pachamama) as recently as December of this year. This should be disturbing to any Catholic, and once again, we should take this into consideration of where we send our donations.

Then of course there is the homosexualist heresy that’s been permeating just about every diocese in the Western world. This heresy asserts that homosexual relations are perfectly acceptable to God, and the bimillennial teaching of the Church against homosexual activity is in error. We should not direct our donations in any way toward any priest, parish, bishop or diocese that has connection to this heresy.

Finally, we need to consider attempts to change the nature of holy orders. Some in the Church want to abolish the celibacy mandate, while others want to ordain women to the diaconate and priesthood. We need to understand that these two things (married priests and female ordination) are not equivalent. The first is permissible under Catholic religion, the second is not. Priests can be married. They are already married in the Eastern rites, as well as in the Ordinariates of English Patrimony. Most of these are traditional and orthodox men, who are good examples of what a Catholic family man should look like. It’s perfectly permissible to send our donations to parishes and jurisdictions where priests are married. However, this does not hold true for attempts to extend ordination to women. This is unacceptable and inconsistent with Catholic teaching on many levels. Therefore, all donations should probably be withheld from any parish or dioceses where it appears that women are being groomed for ordination. If you see this happening in your parish or diocese, stop your donations and strategically move them somewhere else.

My intention is to end my running commentary on Church corruption here. In 2020, I hope to refocus my blogging on more apologetic work and evangelistic outreach to Protestants. However, I think the last year and a half of blogging against the corruption in the Church hierarchy was necessary. One cannot be an effective apologist if one doesn’t address the most glaring inconsistencies in the Church today. I think I’ve done that. I hope it’s been helpful. If it has been, please share this post with others. Email and social network links are provided below.