A Pithy Parable

Once upon a time, a congregation of like minded folks joined together to form a Church, dedicated to advancing the common good of its members. As a condition of membership, it insisted that its congregants provide a certain percentage of their income to fund its charitable works. That money, the elders promised, would sustain the poorer members of the church, provide housing, education, and medical care for the young, the old, the lame, the halt, and the blind. This share of your income – deducted before you attend to any of your own family’s needs – is considerable, but you consider it worthy cause. Most of that money goes to the national church; some stays in your local parish. We’ll deal only with the local parish now: St. Brendan’s.

For years, it works out acceptably, if not without problems. Initially, the folks employed in the church's programs regarded them as sacred missions – assisting the young, the old, or the poor – and were willing to sacrifice for them, taking modest salaries. For them, service was its own reward. Just as you put the needs of the less fortunate members of the parish ahead of your own with your donations, so that people who provided that actual service sacrificed to minister to those in need.

Years pass, and you come to discover, though, that these folks now draw substantial salaries, twice as much as the community average, or more; sometimes a quarter million per year. They receive magnificent health benefits, sometimes for life. They can retire ten years or so before anyone else in the congregation; unlike most of the congregants, who have savings plans and must be frugal, the charity workers retire on guaranteed pensions which rise with inflation – and then some. They get paid for sick days when they’re lucky enough not to get sick. In some cases, they work only 185 days a year. When they need a building constructed for one of their projects, they hire the highest-priced workers they can find.

Then, a string of Pastors – Fr. Jim, Fr. Dick, and Fr. Jon – tells you that you’re not paying enough. As a condition of remaining in the local church, they demand that you fork over ever larger percentages of your income. If you dare question them, they accuse you of being hostile to the poor, or anti-children. All they ask, they contend, is that your do your "fair share". And, they ask, if we don’t attend to the needs of the sick, the poor, the young, and the old, who will?

You begin to notice that you can’t afford to give your kids the kind of things you’d like to. Interestingly, though, many of the people working in these charitable programs seem to be able to afford things you can’t. While you’re scrimping and saving, they -- and the people they serve -- demand more and more every year. You're told that your desire to put your own kids first is selfish, mean-spirited, and probably racist.

But you notice that the church down the block doesn’t seem to have this problem. It gets by on half of what your church demands from you. And you wonder: it’s all very well and good to want to educate the young, provide succor to the sick, clothe the naked, and house the homeless, but just how much sacrifice do they expect? Then, you hear Deacon Shure tell you that the problem lies in the fact that they let you keep too much of your own money in the first place, and that’s the last straw.

Fed up, you reluctantly join the neighboring church, St. Buck’s. You discover that, unlike your old church, all the buildings are well-maintained, the parking lot paved. You find the parish school running quite nicely on half the per student cost of your former church, with massive parental involvement. You see no one starving in the pews, no one being denied health care. Indeed, in this parish, if someone needs help, the congregation, instead of hiring someone to do it, gets volunteers to do it. They expect, as a condition of your membership, that you’ll give of your time and expertise rather than your money. Your kids get the things they deserve and you help, like you should, when you’re asked and when you can. The people who receive the charity don’t take it as an entitlement; they’re happy to receive it and they only ask when absolutely necessary. They NEVER demand. And there is no cadre of folks purporting to serve those beneficiaries, who seem to be doing exceptionally well while doing good.

You sit one afternoon and contemplate the different churches. Not that some folks in your present parish don’t need more help than they get, but your present church understands that the appropriate measure of your contributions is not what other folks need, but what you think you can afford. Somehow, without the ever increasing exactions your of your previous parish, the less fortunate members of your present parish seem to be getting along fine. And your parish’s membership is growing; many of your neighbors have joined you there.

You look back wistfully on St. Brendan’s and notice that it’s membership continues to decline while it’s financial demands on its members continues to soar. You notice that only very rich folks – who deeply believe in the Church’s mission and can afford its demands – very poor folks (curiously, an ever increasing number of these), and the church’s employees remain. In fact, you observe that many of this last group actually join your church; the don’t mind reaping the benefits of working for St. Brendan’s, but they prefer the modest requests for funds at St. Buck’s. Indeed, many of them send their kids to your parish school, believing it better than the school at St. Brendan’s.

And you take away this lesson: the extent of human need is boundless and cannot be met through forced exactions. The community is best served when people help when they can and to the extent they can afford, in such way as they see fit. Your Pastor might cajole, persuade, even shame you into doing more, but when he refrains from demanding, the entire community seems to prosper. Attempts to compel people to put the needs of others before the needs of their own family are not only fundamentally unfair, they’re doomed to fail, as they destroy the community they purport to serve.