How money corrupts the Catholic church
by Michael Sean Winters | Sep. 6, 2016
"In the same way, anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple."
These were the closing words of our Gospel reading on Sunday, from the Gospel of Luke, 14:33. It is strange to me that some of our fundamentalist friends neglect to cite this passage when they are raising money. And those Catholics who argue against even the possibility of any alteration in the church's discipline regarding communion for the divorced and remarried because of the Lord's "clear words" on the subject, do they, too, cite these "clear words" and forgo raising any funds at their church or Catholic ministry? Of course not.
Yet, these words, which may have been hortatory in the original and are certainly understood to be so now, do point to the corrupting power of money. Like power or fame or other things that glimmer in the mind's eye as desirable, the desire to acquire money can corrupt even those who approach their fundraising with the best of intentions.
There is always an "ick" factor about fundraising, or should be, which is one reason Hillary Clinton's ties to the Clinton Foundation raises eyebrows: The foreign donors had sufficient stature to request and receive a meeting with the secretary of state, but the fact that they gave a bucket load of cash suggests they might be seeking favored treatment. Similarly, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump campaigned against the special interest money funding their opponents, although they misstated the problem. The problem is not that Clinton or Jeb Bush would change a public position in exchange for a donation. The problem is that the ability to raise money gives special interest groups power in Washington, power that prevents common ground on their issue, and a distorted sense of the importance of a given issue. So far from greasing the skids, the real problem with special interest money is that those who espouse the opposite position form equally well-funded special interest groups, and the result is gridlock.
https://www.ncronline.org/blogs/distinctly-catholic/how-money-corrupts-catholic-church