More laypeople need to be vocal about this, because it's definitely not welcome news coming from priests these days. https://twitter.com/ScottAlexandr/status/1258934260406386688

People will say that Catholics don't give because they don't trust the Church to use their money. Sexual abuse settlements have justly rattled the idea that this money goes directly to the mission of the Church.

That's definitely a factor. Maybe the biggest one. But I have a hunch that people weren't giving much more on average before the big scandals. The number of givers has dropped, but the average amount, I expect, is the same.

The deeper and more historically entrenched problem is that Catholics don't understand how macro Church finances work. Somehow it's never been explained effectively.

There's this idea that all the funds are held in some enormous common pot. Like your offertory money goes into the Vatican Bank or something.

The reality is much more granular and hierarchical. Your parish survives off of its offertory. A certain amount is levied to keep the diocesan offices afloat. A lot of it goes to diocesan schools, whether you have one of your own or not.

The Vatican has absolutely nothing to do with the finances of your parish. A single collection every year, Peter's Pence, is taken up to be sent to support the charities of the Holy See.

People often look at the Vatican's finances and think that it will tell them something about the financial state of the worldwide Church. It doesn't. The Vatican City is a sovereign country that basically makes money off of operating a museum.

(That's just one of the reasons why the old chestnut of a suggestion that they sell the Sistine Chapel and pay for... your parish church's HVAC? is so stupid.)

Catholics don't like to talk about money for some reason. I'm not sure why because I don't think it's a post-scandal mindset. Someone needs to investigate this.

By the way, I guess it goes without saying that all the observations above concerning the financial structure of things applies to the US, and not to countries like Germany, which have a church tax.

A closing observation and something very telling, to my mind: the most generous and consistent donors to the parish, I've found, are those who are also the most involved with volunteering their time and skills on a regular basis.

Which is to say: if people actually knew what their parish did outside of Sunday Mass and were personally invested in it, they would almost certainly give more.