Why are most Catholics so bad at almsgiving?

Mar 27, 2024

By Kevin Clarke
“You can’t take it with you,” I think St Francis once said. Okay, what he actually (maybe) said was: “Remember, when you leave this earth, you can take with you nothing that you have received, only what you have given: a full heart, enriched by honest service, love, sacrifice and courage.”

Franciscan purists will point out that this quotation is only dubiously attributed to St Francis (like the pithier and better known: “Preach the Gospel at all times. Use words if necessary”). But doubtful attribution and all, it remains a pretty wonderful sentiment.

Here’s a quotation from a church source I’m more sure of: “Giving alms to the poor is one of the chief witnesses to fraternal charity: it is also a work of justice pleasing to God.” You can find that in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, No 2462.

Pope Francis is a big believer in the importance and power of almsgiving, this “work of justice pleasing to God.” While so many of us find ways to rationalise passing by a person in need without even a nod of recognition, Pope Francis implored in his message for Lent in 2018 that Christians not pass by even one beggar on the street: “We [should] see such requests as coming from God Himself.”

“Almsgiving,” Pope Francis said, “sets us free from greed and helps us to regard our neighbour as a brother or sister.
“What I possess is never mine alone. How I would like almsgiving to become a genuine style of life for each of us! How I would like us, as Christians, to follow the example of the Apostles and see in the sharing of our possessions a tangible witness of the communion that is ours in the Church!”

And the Pope has elevated the role of the papal almoner to new significance, making Konrad Krajewski a cardinal in 2018 and celebrating Cardinal Krajewski’s innovative approach to almsgiving in Rome. (Among other initiatives, the cardinal opened a drop-in centre at St Peter’s where unhoused people in Rome can shower and find medical care.) Pope Francis has dispatched Cardinal Krajewski to the world’s most troubled places to assist people marginalised by poverty, war and migration.

All of this is just to say almsgiving is important, one of the three posts holding up our three-legged spiritual Lenten table, alongside the practices of prayer and fasting. So why are Catholics so terrible at it?

To be fair, it’s not so much that we’re bad at almsgiving. Catholics are just pretty bad at giving in all forms. According to a 2017 Giving USA study, Jewish households give the most, averaging $2,526 (RM10,619) annually, compared to $1,749 (RM8,232.54) for Protestants and $1,178 (RM5,544.85) for Muslims. Catholics ended up last with $1,142 (RM5,375.40), according to this survey.

And Catholics long ago gave up on tithing, that is, giving 10 per cent of our income (pre-tax?) to the Church. “The other faiths that I’m familiar with in the charitable space tithe completely differently,” said Anthony Sciacca, the chief development officer for Catholic Charities USA. “Many have formulas or percentages that are pretty firm expectations.”
In terms of charitable giving, Christians in general are willing to part with about 2.5 per cent of their income — lower than the 3.3 per cent shared during the Great Depression. And it is perhaps not a shock to learn that households earning the least are regularly contributing comparatively more — giving out of their need, not their abundance — reaching double-digits in percentages of annual income while givers at the top earning ranks often contribute less than two per cent, even as their overall donations are larger.

Giving may connect us to what we can do for the rest of our world out of the great abundance many of us are experiencing, and almsgiving does that too, but it also encourages us to think about what giving may do for us, a means of liberating ourselves from the yoke of wealth accumulation, building that spiritual indifference to the material that can free us from a couple of those seven deadly sins — avarice and envy — perhaps limiting our vulnerability to a few other deadlies that are fomented by hoarding and stinginess.

Christians should learn that they need “inner liberation” to overcome the “temptations of Satan,” Pope John Paul II said, reflecting on almsgiving in 1992.

“We need to overcome selfishness,” he said, “the anxious seeking after material goods, thirst for power and the illusion of immediate success if we want to master ourselves and reach full freedom of the spirit.” Almsgiving is a concrete way, he said, to demonstrate the Church’s preference for the poor and its call for an equal distribution of goods.

Catholic Relief Services (CRS) is “pretty lucky,” said Beth Martin, “that we have incredibly generous donors who give robustly around Christmas and year - round. That’s our biggest season, but actually, the season of Lent is our second largest time frame for receiving donations.” Lenten giving in the first quarter of the year “really helps provide much needed support to enable our work year - round in the more than 100 countries that we serve every year.”

According to Beth, the global relief and development agency’s director of formation and mobilisation, CRS’s annual Lenten Rice Bowl collection consciously taps into Lenten spirituality, connecting its three pillars of prayer, fasting and almsgiving “with Jesus’ call to serve our neighbours in need,” she said.

“We know that Lent is a time when Catholics look to reconnect with their faith through prayer and fasting, and the almsgiving component is a way for us to connect and share with others.

Do CRS donors during Lent appreciate almsgiving differently than other kinds of charitable giving? Beth said that through the Rice Bowl, CRS does attempt to prod its young givers to learn about the people and communities their alms are intended to serve, to make connections among the things they are giving up briefly during Lent with the global system of farming and food production that brings a piece of the global abundance into their homes.

“I think the Lenten season invites us to really reflect on: What does it mean for us to be Catholic? How do we live as Catholics in the world?” Beth said. “And when we connect that Lenten spirituality — connect our prayers, connect our fasting — with a way to answer Jesus’ call to serve our neighbour, to feed the hungry, that really is a powerful way for us to put our faith into action and be able to live out our faith in a more in-depth and concrete way.” --America