REGINA: How did your thinking change?
STEVE: The first time my thoughts changed in regard to our contributions happened years ago when our bishop started a direct diocesan appeal to fund diocese programs. All parishioners were told they had to contribute to this appeal in order to meet our parish’s obligation. If they did not, then parish funds would have to fill the gap.
REGINA: Whoa!
STEVE: That came as a bit of a surprise to me. After I digested it and became accustomed to the idea (and complied), our contributing more or less went back to normal for our parish.
REGINA: How would you describe your giving over the years?
STEVE: Over the years my wife and I have responded charitably to many major parish funding initiatives in addition to filling the role of a leader for fund raising for a new parish. We actually increased our contributions significantly about ten years ago. As we get older our interest in learning more about the faith increased and our contributions followed along.
REGINA: After the 2002 sex abuse scandals, did you change your contributions?
STEVE: No. We were told (and we wanted) to believe that it was a very small number of priests nationally. Very few incidents seemed to be happening around us.
REGINA: Yep. Sex abuse doesn’t play well with the laity, especially the wealthy laity.
STEVE: As a result, we went along with our normal giving habits and even gave occasional larger contributions.
REGINA: Business as usual.
STEVE: I can remember watching the movie ‘Spotlight’ and reflecting back to 2002 when the scandal broke. Being in the Midwest it seemed like the Boston problem was isolated, exposed and dealt with even though the victims are still suffering today.
REGINA: Probably lots of people thought the same thing.
STEVE: Over the years I would run into former Catholics who left the Church because of the scandal.
REGINA | 24