Homily
for October 19, 2008
Liturgical Year A- Cycle II
29th Sunday in Ordinary Time
By Fr. John Carney Topic:
Tithing
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Gospel Mt 22:15-21 The Pharisees went
off and plotted how they might entrap Jesus in speech. They sent
their disciples to him, with the Herodians, saying, "Teacher, we know
that you are a truthful man and that you teach the way of God in
accordance with the truth. And you are not concerned with anyone's
opinion, for you do not regard a person's status. Tell us, then, what
is your opinion: Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or
not?" Knowing their malice, Jesus said, "Why are you testing me,
you hypocrites? Show me the coin that pays the census tax."
Then they handed him the Roman coin. He said to them, "Whose
image is this and whose inscription?" They replied, "Caesar's."
At that he said to them, "Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar
and to God what belongs to God."
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It is interesting. This year is an “A” liturgical year, so we focus on
the Gospel of Matthew. The year is coming to an end and advent begins
on the 30th of November. Next year is a “B” year and we will use
primarily the Gospel from Mark. In the last several weeks, we have
heard a series of parables in which Jesus is attacking the Pharisees.
Several weeks ago, there was the parable of the vineyard owner that
sent his servants to collect the tithe. The servants were mistreated
and some were killed. Finally, the vineyard owner sent his son and they
killed his son as well. Of course, he destroyed them. He destroyed even
his vineyard. Jesus was talking about the Pharisees. He was “in their
face” with that parable.
Then there was the parable of the disobedient son and the obedient son.
The son who said he’d do it and he didn’t and the son who said he
wouldn’t and he did. Again, the Pharisees knew that they were that
disobedient son and, of course, they would be shut out from heaven.
Last week we had the allegory of the king who gave the wedding banquet
for his son and those “chosen people” did not come. Indeed, they even
killed his messengers, the prophets. He destroyed that city. He sent
his army to destroy them. Again, he was talking to the Pharisees.
Now, the Pharisees are trying to take the offensive. They’re trying to
get him. Interestingly, if you noticed, they have even allied
themselves with the Herodians. The Pharisees and the Herodians didn’t
like each other.. They were on opposite sides. The Pharisees, of
course, were very Orthodox Jews. They dotted every “i” and crossed
every “t”. They not only followed the Ten Commandments but they helped
develop 630 other commandments to surround the commandments so that you
couldn’t even get close to breaking one of them. Conversely, the
Herodians were Herod’s lackeys.
Herod, of course, the Jewish King of Galilee was the Romans’ lackey.
Together the Pharisees and Herodians conspired against Jesus because
they wanted to trap him. First they “kissed up” to him. They said, “You
always speak the truth.” That’s the hypocrisy. They’re trying to take
him apart and yet they’re “kissing up” to him. Jesus calls them what
they are. Therefore, they ask this question where they know they “got
him”. They said, “Is it lawful to pay taxes or not to Caesar, the poll
tax or census tax?” If he says, “Yes, it’s lawful”, he’ll betray his
Jewish roots. The Jews hated to use the coinage of Rome. They didn’t
like the image of Caesar. Conversely, if he said “No, it’s not legal to
pay the tax” the Herodians would have been angry with him and he would
have been accused of sedition. They “got him”.
He said, “Give me a coin. Whose image is that? Then repay to Caesar
what belongs to Caesar and repay to God what belongs to God.” He was
some lawyer that Jesus. I wonder if his mother was there. She would be
in the background going, “That’s my boy. What a boy.” Jesus did not
only give the Pharisees and the Herodians a brilliant retort, he also
gave us a Gospel teaching, indeed a Commandment.
Two weeks from now on November 9th is Stewardship Sunday but because of
this Gospel, I’m going to talk about stewardship today, your favorite
subject. I know I must be a littler crazy to talk about stewardship
today because I’m aware of what’s happened in the market the last two
weeks. I’ll be honest with you, I’m suffering with you. In the last
several weeks I’ve lost a third of my retirement savings but I’m not
worried about it. I actually think it will come back and also, have you
ever seen a priest that was hungry? I haven’t. So it’s okay. I’m not
real happy but it’s okay. I know many of you are in that same boat. In
spite of that, we have to support the Lord in his work, in good times
and bad, in sickness and in health. Let me talk about stewardship.
I have to confess; as I begin this, I have failed you in this regard. I
have failed to challenge the people and myself on being good stewards.
The topic I generally don’t like to talk about. I have had a conversion
so buckle your seat belts.
Jesus tells us to repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. In other
words, pay our taxes and we should. A Christian is to be a loyal
citizen of the nation in which he or she resides, an honest citizen.
Indeed we get a lot for our taxes. I know you won’t hear that on
television but it’s true that our communication network in our land,
much of it is run by government; our police, our firefighters, our
soldiers, so much of what we call home is protected by those in service
to our country that need to be justly compensated. By the way, if we
don’t pay to Caesar what belongs to him, he’ll let us know. If you’ve
ever been late on your taxes, they slap on those twenty percent
penalties quicker than you can blink and they’ll throw you in jail if
you don’t pay your taxes. We need to be active in our government. We
vote. We’re attentive to our government. We participate, etcetera.
“Repay to God what belongs to God.” So the question is, “What belongs
to God?” We’ve always said in stewardship, a portion of our time, our
treasure and our talent belongs to God. For the first time I’ve really
noticed this familiar saying that Jesus gives us today. We used to say,
“Render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar.” This is a better translation
from the Greek, it says, “Repay God what belongs to God.” When you pay
your mortgage, you’re not giving a gift to the bank, are you? You’re
repaying a debt that you owe. The rationale behind this is
traditionally in Judeo-Christian teaching. It is that 10% of what I
have, 10% of what you have, 10% of what you have isn’t yours, it’s
God’s and He’s entrusted that to you to give it where it’s needed.
God’s got going a very efficient system here. That 10% is not yours,
it’s not mine. It is entrusted to us to be given to support the work of
the Gospel and to help those who are needy.
Time and talent. Putting those together are soccer coaches, hospital
volunteers, and people active in our community and in civic
organizations that give of their time and their talents and that is
part of the Gospel mandate. We also do that in the church setting. We
have over 50 ministries at IHM with over 600 people involved as
volunteers in our parish, over 600.
Stewardship involves treasure. It says in the book of Leviticus, “A
tenth of all your produce belongs to the Lord. It is sacred to Him.” In
Deuteronomy, “Each of you shall tithe so that you may learn to place
God first in your life. I’ve heard this more than once and you’ve heard
it too probably that IHM is a very wealthy parish so I’ll give to other
organizations that are more needy. It is true that Los Alamos is a very
wealthy county. By some measures, we are the wealthiest county in the
United States. The per capita income is about $100,000. Now if you’re
saying, “I don’t make $100,000.” well neither do I but it averages out
to be $100,000. We also have the largest savings rate of any county in
the United States. You know why? Because there’s no where to spend any
money. We may have money but there’s no where to spend it. The county
is wealthy but the parish isn’t. I hope that last month you had a
chance to look at our financial statement. We’re okay. We have no debt.
Our bills are paid but I want to give you some facts to help you make
your decision regarding supporting your parish.
First of all, unlike Europe, in the United States the church goes from
the bottom up, from the parish up to Rome. Many of you are familiar
with Europe. Some were born in Europe and many European nations, when
people pay their taxes, there’s a block to check for their religion and
then the state, their government distributes money to the churches.
About 15 years ago, I was talking to a priest, Father Georges Noya from
the French speaking area of Switzerland. In our conversation, we were
talking about compensation, priests’ compensation. I said, “George how
much do you make?” He said, “About $85,000 a year.” That was 15 years
ago. Where he was from; every parish had a school and the pastor was
the principal of the school. I wished I could speak French. Also, the
parish received the check; same in Spain. I was in Barcelona several
years ago and the school had like 1000 kids and they all wore uniforms
and they had wonderful facilities. I was watching the children eat and
the dining hall was great. I said, “How can you afford this?” He said,
“Well, the government, it pays.”
That’s not how it works here. It goes from us to them. Twelve and
one-half percent of the income of this parish, we pay to the diocese.
We are assessed 12.5%. 2.5% goes to priests’ retirement and priests are
permitted to retire at age 70. They get about $1800 a month in
retirement pay, plus social security. The other 10% supports the
diocese and the worldwide church. Father Joshua is the rector of the
seminary in Zimbabwe. Do you know who pays the bills for that seminary?
We do. We pay Rome and Rome in turn supports all of the poor countries
and all of their missionary efforts and all of their seminary efforts.
As a matter of fact, every annual quarter, Father Joshua has to go to
Harare, the capital, to the Papal Nuncio and he gets an envelope with
money. The banking system is broke so they have to use the Italian way
of doing business, an envelope with money in it. We support that
effort.
Now here are some other facts: We have 1200 registered families here at
IHM. It is not huge but that is in the top third by size of the
parishes in the archdiocese of 92 parishes. Now based on our per capita
income, the families of this parish give 1% of their income to the
parish. That’s pretty typical nationwide. Catholics give about 1%.
Mormons give 10%. Now other churches give 3 or 4%. Traditionally we’re
the lowest. I know we’re not selfish. I know Catholics are very
generous but that is a statistic that hasn’t changed much in the last
20 or thirty years. 10% of the families of this parish give 66% of the
total income. Those are the tithers. Those are the families that have
made the commitment to tithe. 4% of our income, we don’t know who gives
it. It’s in cash, anonymous cash. Some people I am sure are very
generous and put cash in. 38% of our registered families, there’s no
record of any giving at all. Another fact that’s very important, I
think, typically in any area of our country, if there’s like 1000
families that are Catholic in a parish area, half of them will be
registered and then half of those who are registered will go to church.
So about 25% of Catholics attend mass every Sunday. Now we’re not happy
with that but that’s a lot better than Europe but it’s really very sad.
Based on that reality then our parish, those 600 families probably give
about 2% of their per capita income to the church. We are more generous
than the norm or the standard. By the way, it’s very important that I
say this: No person or family is ever denied any aspect of this
churches services because they’re not contributing to the upkeep of the
parish. We’ll anoint you at 3:00AM if that’s what’s required regardless
of whether or not we’ve ever known you before. Indeed, I look at the
25% of those who do support the parish and we’re blessed to be able to
help those who don’t. I don’t even consider it any kind of a problem.
We don’t give services based on tithing.
Now, the parish has a lot of expenses. About half of our total income
goes to payroll. We have 14 full-time employees and I don’t have the
data because it’s not available but I would bet you that IHM has the
best salary schedule of any parish in the diocese. Having said that,
the question is, “Do we pay our employees fairly and justly?” In my
opinion, absolutely not. To work for the church is sacrificial always
and that really is a problem, I think. The church, the bishops, the
leaders, we the church always talk about justice but if you want
economic justice, don’t work for the church. The reason is, we don’t
have the budget and the reason we don’t have the budget is people don’t
perceive a need or whatever. We could do better. We also pay health
insurance and a retirement program, etcetera. We educate over 400
children in the faith, children and young adults in our religious
education. We have over 50 ministries and programs. The plant
maintenance of this campus and of White Rock is very expensive. I don’t
know if you agree with me but I’m so proud of how this parish looks. We
have the most beautiful church I have ever seen. Isn’t it gorgeous?
Thank you. We have utilities, supplies, insurance. We pay $30,000 per
year in insurance which is very inexpensive for the insurance we have.
Plus, we donate tens of thousands of dollars each year for the
poor in other parishes. We do help support one of the pueblo parishes
locally. We have money in the bank, about a quarter million dollars,
and again, we have no debt. We do have a lot of expenses that we have
deferred because we don’t have the cash to pay for them. We need a 2.5
inch overlay in our parking lots. They’re getting old but that would
cost $400,000. We need to renovate offices in the DRE, the religious
education building and improve audio-visual about $35,000. This ceiling
is now 40 years old. I know for those of you who built this church, you
did a great job. It’s a great church but it’s 40 years old now. It
doesn’t look it but it is and that ceiling is not insulated and it’s
got some problems that aren’t going to get better. A new ceiling or to
repair the ceiling would be over $150,000. This lighting system which
is pretty new is terrible. It’s incredibly expensive and inefficient. A
new lighting system would be $50,000. The youth would like to buy a
used bus and that would be $45,000. We need lighting on this side of
the building for $25,000. That organ’s worn out, that’s $75,000. Plus
we need three new additional staff members.
In any case, one comment, this is a very unique parish. We have the
potential of doing things very few parishes do. We have the potential
of providing a lot of vocations to the church. We have two men in
seminary and I’m proud of that and I know you are. We have several
other men and women out on mission. I would like to compete with the
Mormons. I’d like to have hundreds of missionaries which we could do.
We could have a program where after college many of our college kids
could give a year of service. I know many of them would but of course
that all needs to be funded and that’s where the tithing comes in.
We also are very blessed here with a high level of education, we are
not better than anyone is, but we can use these gifts that we have in
abundance, to help others. We could adopt other parishes that are in
need. I would love to do that. I think you would as well. We don’t have
an endowment here, we should have an endowment. Since I’ve been here,
we have received a total of $8000 in people’s wills and we can do
better than that.
Having said all that and I know this is painful but it has to happen
and having said all that, stewardship is not about the parish needs at
all. Stewardship is about your need and my need to be generous stewards
of God’s gifts. That’s what it’s all about. You have to trust your
parish to be a good steward of your treasure and I promise you, we’ll
do our best to do that. We have a wonderful finance council; every
expenditure is scrutinized and we have a very well formed and executed
budget. If you’d like more information, please ask us, we’ll get you
whatever you’d like to know.
It’s really about you and me. I tithe. I haven’t always tithed but
since I have, I have been blessed immensely. One lady said to me, “You
know Father, I haven’t always tithed but since I tithe, I feel so good
because I can spend that other 90% and I am.” Don’t leave it to the
kids. They’ll fight. Give it to us. It’s a decision all of us have to
make. It’s a very private thing, your money. No one’s pressured; no
one’s denied anything but it’s a decision. I think I’m speaking for
those other 200 families who also tithe to IHM.
Let me conclude with some scripture. Briefly, Paul wrote this to
Timothy. He intended Timothy to preach this to his people. He said,
“Tell them to do good; to be rich in good works; to be generous; ready
to share thus accumulating as treasure a good foundation for the future
so as to win the life that is true life.” To the Corinthians Paul said,
“Each person must give what he has decided in his heart to give without
sadness or compulsion for God loves a cheerful giver.”