As for my original question; from experience I’ve not seen poor Catholics - such as the Filipinos - really receive any kind of substantial aid or support from the Church. Every time I go to Church with my wife’s family in the Philippines, the RCC’s are always asking for donations, even from the very poor, yet I’m not seeing any kind of help being given to their communities. surely the very wealthy western Catholics could spare some aid to their Catholic brethren in the Philippines and other 3rd world countries? I know from experience, even a few hundred dollars can feed people there for many months, yet it really pains me to see so many devout Catholics in that country just largely forgotten about.
What are the likely reasons for this?
I think I know where the disconnect is:
Look up organizations like Cross Catholic International, Catholic Relief Services, Franciscan Missionaries, Missionaries of Charity, Maryknoll, etc. etc. etc, and you can see how Catholics in Western countries get money to our brothers and sisters in impoverished areas. Pretty much every Catholic I know gives money to such organizations. Our pastors, when addressing tithing, tell us only part of our tithing is for the parish - the rest is for charities of our choosing.
In the summer, missionaries from around the world come and preach at our parishes, share their work, and we give them money to take back to their people. At one parish I worked at, it was the Daughters of Mary and Joseph: the Irish nun who worked at our parish hosted two of her sisters from Uganda (survivors of horrors, these beautiful women) and the parish would raise funds for their work back home. At another parish, largely Philippino, it was a nun from an order that worked with sex workers in the Phlippines, giving them job training, counseling, healing, shelter, etc to get out of that life (can’t remember the name of the order, Mary of the Immaculate Heart or something along that line).
The Catholic Church doesn’t just consist of parishes, but hospitals, universities, religious orders, charitable organizations, etc. Parish to parish donations do happen (here in CA, there are a lot of San Diego parishes with sister parishes in Mexico or near the border). But the staff at parishes are focused on spiritual needs, while charitable arms of the Church are focused on material. Even here in the states, like at the parish I used to work at: you’d go to Mass and put your kids in religious ed classes and go for spiritual counseling at the parish. If you needed material help, we could give you some bags of food from our food pantry, but you’d be better off going to Catholic Charities or Father Joe’s Villages because our parishioners give money to those places to organize, through their trained staff: material help, job training, education, housing, legal aid, medical care, etc. There’s overlap of course (chaplains at Fr. Joe’s, food pantries at parishes), but overall, it’s sort of division of labor.
Furthermore, our charitable organizations are not just for Catholics, but anyone needing help. Since we want to help everyone, it makes sense for such programs to exist separately from parishes, since generally only Catholics will come to parishes. It’s okay for parishes to do whatever charitable work they want of course.
Furthermore, we tend not to reinvent the wheel when we find organizations on the ground already doing great work. It’s more effective to put our donations to use through those organizations (which are vetted). Look up Cross Catholic International Outreach online and you’ll see how it works: you pick which projects, through various organizations already on the ground, you want Cross to send your donation.
Maybe we don’t get credit (as your posts would indicate). Getting credit is not our goal - helping people is. It doesn’t have to be made known to the people getting the new water filtration system in Bolivia that the money came from Such and Such Church in CA, with people from the Church making a “mission trip” of it. This is sort of embarrassing for the recipients, plus the money to send people down there could’ve been given for the work instead. We just give the money we raise to the organizations already doing the work. What’s that about not letting your right hand know that your left is giving money away?
There’s also Peter’s Pence: the Pope’s annual collection for charitable causes around the world. This might be part of the money we “have” that causes people to think the Church (and the pope) are rolling in it. But it’s not being kept - it’s being distributed.
On the topic of our big, beautiful churches and works of art - how many wealthy people do you know who let anyone in the world just walk through their homes gawking and behaving as not-always-sympathetic tourists, often complaining about their wealth as they take pics to post on Facebook to show they visited? Well, the Church does: our churches, even our jewels like the Sistine Chapel, are open to the public, apparently to enter and criticize as they please. Why? Because the Church is universal, not private.
Hope this makes some sense. Good questions. I recommend
www.catholicscomehome.org for your research as well.
May the Father bless you, Jesus walk beside you, and the Holy Spirit fill you.
