A few years ago, my boyfriend and I went to the Christmas bazaar at our local Catholic parish. We admired the sugar cookies and crocheted ornaments but didn’t feel compelled to buy them. As we turned to leave, I noticed the raffle table. Feeling guilty that we hadn’t patronized the bazaar, I said to my boyfriend, “Let’s buy a ticket to show our support.” My boyfriend raised an eyebrow and asked, “What are we supporting?” I looked at the smiling women at the raffle table and almost said we’re supporting them. Then I stopped myself. Would our money really support these women?
When you think about giving to your parish, you may focus on the good things your donations support, like keeping the lights on, paying the bookkeeper, running the soup pantry, or decorating the altar with lilies. Like me, you may even think about making the women at the raffle table happy. Parish contributions make sense as an investment in your own community: You support your church, which in turn supports you.
But these local contributions are often administered by men. Women may serve on the parish finance council, but the council exists to advise the pastor—a male. What other organization, no matter how noble, would we support if it prohibited women executives?
When Catholics become politicized about church reform, justice issues like women’s ordination and LGBTQ inclusion become focal points. We’re left with complex, often painful choices about our religious practice. Reevaluating our relationship to our Catholic identity affects everything: our relationships, politics, communities, and our finances.
If you believe the patriarchal Catholic Church is an oppressive institution, should you put money in your church’s collection basket? I say no. My reason is simple: An all-male hierarchy controls every penny. We can’t just blame bishops for this; bishops have no power without the laity and our money—and our financial contributions manifest our values. If our values don’t align with the institutional church, we should use our money to support other Catholic projects.
Church law itself does not demand that Catholics donate to their parish or to any agency of the patriarchal Catholic Church. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that Catholics are required to “provide for the material needs of the church.” And if the church is the people of God, this obligation transcends the parish collection basket.
Let’s also consider the diocesan and national levels. While it’s tempting to distinguish between supporting your local church and supporting the diocese or the Vatican, this is an artificial distinction. Parishes are units of dioceses. Canon Law regulates a tax called a “parish assessment,” which parishes must pay to support diocesan programs and operations.
Sometimes a special collection supports a specific appeal from a diocesan or bishops’ conference program. These collections largely fund charitable programs, which may seem worthy of our support. Unsurprisingly, though, church-sponsored social services uphold the hierarchy’s teachings on gender and sexuality. As just one example, after facing legal challenges over its refusal to place children with same-sex couples, Catholic Charities has shuttered several adoption and foster-care services.
Even the most innovative parish-supported programs are hamstrung by patriarchal control. One beneficiary of an annual, nationwide special collection is the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), the anti-poverty program of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). A bit like the secular United Way, the CCHD collects funds and distributes them through grants to organizations across the country. Notably, the CCHD does not restrict funding to Catholic organizations. Most grantees do radical work for racial and economic justice, addressing the root causes of oppression rather than providing social services. But the CCHD has a record of withdrawing funds if a grantee “commits offenses against Catholic moral or social teaching” as defined by the Catechism and the USCCB.
The CCHD does not fund organizations that acknowledge even passing support for same-sex marriage, and it outlines its efforts to ensure compliance in a document titled “Upholding/Safeguarding Catholic Values.” To be sure, this is in part to protect the CCHD from vocal factions in the church that accuse it of funding anti-Catholic, politically progressive groups. While the CCHD may not satisfy those factions—some of which criticize its very premise, arguing that the bishops should only fund social services, not political work—the CCHD has cut off support from groups that violate its political perspective. For instance, in 2013 it withdrew funding from eight Illinois immigrant rights groups that signed an endorsement for a gay marriage bill in the state legislature.
Ultimately, offertory collections support the ministries of the Catholic Church. Many of those charitable ministries provide substantial support to people in poverty and crisis. But they do so in ways that discriminate against women and LGBTQ people, who are among those most systematically oppressed.
At the same time, offertory collections fund male-led church administration and operations, perpetuating gender-based injustice in the church. The all-male hierarchy depends on the labor of laypeople—educators, bookkeepers, musicians, secretaries, program directors, and more—who earn their salaries from a parish or diocese. While we may wish to support church workers, however, our donations also support unjust labor practices that harm these employees. Catholic workplaces are infamously exempt from antidiscrimination laws. In 2023, for instance, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Catholic school that fired an unmarried art teacher who became pregnant.
Facing such limitations, some Catholics have created organizations that reflect their own Catholic values. Mary’s Pence, for example, was founded in 1987 by Catholic women who struggled to receive diocesan funding for their ministries. They formed Mary’s Pence to fund women-led organizations working for social change. While Mary’s Pence roots itself in Catholic social teaching, it is a woman-led and LGBTQ-affirming group that operates independently of the institutional church.
The name “Mary’s Pence” is a play on “Peter’s Pence,” the pope’s annual collection for the poor. “Peter’s Pence” may support the poor, but it belongs to Peter. The pope and the all-male church hierarchy get the final say about its use. “Mary’s Pence” is right on the money (so to speak).
On the flip side, Catholics who think the hierarchy should take a more hardline stance on gender and sexuality are already directing millions to Catholic nonprofits that are not directly controlled by the institutional church, like EWTN, Lifesite, and CatholicVote. Across the political spectrum, Catholics do not limit their charitable contributions to bishop-led Catholic institutions. Some of these Catholics argue for withholding money from parishes they consider too liberal.
We need to ask ourselves: What are we supporting? Our financial choices reflect our values. If we give money to parishes with discriminatory structures and practices, we fund their discrimination. We also give up an opportunity to create and support better Catholic organizations, like Mary’s Pence, Catholic Worker houses, and church reform groups. If we don’t give money to Catholic communities that are building a more just, inclusive church, such groups will never sprout or grow.
Catholics should be serious about giving our money away in accordance with our values. By doing so, we can prayerfully and intentionally contribute to justice in our world and our church.
Image: Unsplash/Leiada Krozjhen
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