Will U.S. Catholics keep giving?

Disillusioned
Fallout from abuse cases already has disillusioned many Catholics. In some dioceses, parishioners learned that church leaders had responded to complaints of abuse against priests by transferring those priests to another parish, without proper monitoring or any warning to the parishioners.

In some instances, the church's attempts to settle the complaints added to parishioners' ire. Boston Cardinal Bernard Law, for example, initially hinted that the diocese didn't have enough property that could be sold to pay for a settlement, and threatened to take the diocese into bankruptcy.

But Law was embarrassed by a Boston Herald examination of property records that showed the church owned properties assessed at $160 million that were not being used for church purposes. He eventually was forced from his post, and the diocese sold the cardinal's residence to help fund a settlement.

But the bad feelings remain.

"People are troubled with the level of transparency in the church. They're looking for more openness," said Francis Butler, president of Foundations and Donors Interested in Catholic Activities (FADICA), an organization of lay Catholic charities. "Some dioceses and parishes are responding, but some are not."

Vatican could feel the impact
If U.S. parishioners show their displeasure with the church hierarchy at the collection plate, the Vatican will soon feel the impact.

American Catholics donated some $20 million per annum in recent years to the Vatican's general revenues, FADICA president Butler said. And they added $20 million more to Peter's Pence, the pope's traditional fund for his charities, which had worldwide donations of $55.8 million in 2003. When Vatican finances veered sharply into the red in the 1980s, church officials turned to Peter's Pence to cover the shortfall.

The Vatican is already in the red, though how serious the financial difficulties are remains unclear.

Last year, for example, the Holy See reported a deficit of $11.8 million for 2003, the last year for which information was available, with income of $250.2 million and expenditures of $262 million. The Vatican city-state, which has a separate budget, ran a 2003 deficit of $10.8 million on revenues of approximately $200 million.

Closing that deficit won't be easy.

"The biggest problem facing the Catholic Church is its inability to raise money," said accountant Harris. He notes that American Catholics on average give only 1.4 percent of their household income to the church, much lower than the U.S. Protestant average of 3.5 percent.

"This is going to require that Catholics around the world become more generous," said FADICA's Butler. "But in this climate, given what we're seeing in the dioceses, I don't know if that is possible."

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