Almsgiving is one of the oldest spiritual practices enjoined by all of the world’s religions, and most especially in penitential seasons. It is a spiritual discipline because it is almost always difficult to part with one’s own goods-whether coins or food, whether from surplus or from substance. Once upon a time, the outstretched hand of the widow or orphan, the begging bowl of a wandering monk, the man beaten and left for dead by the side of the road made the need dramatically apparent. But today, at least in many parts of the developed world, if the need does not present itself so immediately, it is announced in an excess of begging letters crammed indifferently into our mailboxes. Does this make our almsgiving more or less difficult, more or less examined than when we occasionally encounter the outstretched hand on city streets?
People think very differently about how and to whom to make charitable contributions. Indeed, just thinking about giving away our goods sometimes seems a harder penitential practice than actually doing it. We asked our four respondents to reflect on these issues: How do you decide to whom (or what) you should give? Do you have criteria? Or not? How do you sort through many obviously worthy causes? How do some come to seem more compelling to you than others?

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Rembert G. Weakland

After becoming a bishop, I was astonished by the number of begging letters I began to receive. The Official Catholic Directory, called the "Kenedy Directory," must serve as a ready list for every charitable organization in the world. Clearly many groups take the Directory and write to every bishop in the country. Because of the frequent wrong addresses or the wrong name of the current bishop, I soon began a game of trying to guess the date of the Directory being used. (I often wondered how many old Directories were sold in India!) Early on I realized that one of my predecessors, Cardinal Albert Meyer (1903-65) must have contributed to many causes, since many requests came addressed to him. None ever came to his predecessor, Archbishop Moses Elias Kiley (1876-1953). The name may have scared them away.

I am sure that future bishops will not have to worry about many coming to Rembert Weakland. Long ago I decided that most of my charitable contributions would be given to individual people and not to institutions. Why? Probably it was a gut decision and not a brain one. Perhaps I share some of that lack of trust in institutions that the younger generation exhibits. I do not mind giving to institutions if I have had direct contact with them and their work. Anonymous requests, as good as they are packaged, do not move me.

In giving to people directly, however, I know that often I am taken in. I listen to every hard-luck story as if it were the first time I ever heard it. When I was newly ordained and sent to Juilliard in New York to study, I spent the first summer at Saint Philip Neri Parish on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. One Sunday afternoon when I was on duty, an elderly, very disheveled, gentleman rang the doorbell. He wanted to speak to the young Benedictine, as he had some problems with Abbot Cuthbert Butler’s book, Benedictine Monasticism. I waxed eloquent in responding to every query. In the end he asked for two dollars and fifty cents to get a bite to eat. After giving him the money, I probed more deeply. He confessed that he had gone to the public library, taken out the first book under "Benedictine Order," read a few pages, and rang the doorbell. The grapevine had the word out, he explained, that a new young Benedictine monk was stationed at Saint Philip’s. People like that really work for a living and deserve a handout.

More often, however, I have been taken-in in more serious ways, but by now I am used to being conned and accept that it is inevitable in all charitable giving. If only a portion given is helpful, that is enough.

Finally, I am a softy for musical causes. Oh well, we all have our weaknesses.

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Lynn C. Isbell

My parents brought me up to understand that charitable giving was an obligation of Christians. They acted accordingly, and, as they were wealthy, the results were obvious in our community. Living in Utah, where the majority belonged to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, I learned the word "tithe," very early. My parents assured me that Catholics also practiced this type of almsgiving, and for those blessed with money, 10 percent was hardly enough. Inspired by this, I several times cast into the collection the silver dollar I found in my Christmas stocking-trying not to think of the fabulous yoyo (with three rhinestones) that cost only sixty cents. The choices were so simple.

A more recent part of my life has informed my current thinking. For many years, I tried to keep solvent an advocacy organization for mentally handicapped people. I sank to the depths once by employing a "boiler-room" operation in which solicitors interrupted people’s dinners to sell them tickets to events they would surely not want to attend. My boiler-room agency was one of the best; half of the funds went to the charity, an astronomical percentage. I was ashamed of myself, but since we were on the point of bankruptcy, and, since I thought the organization essential, I shuddered and signed the contract. During this phase of my life I also learned how wonderful it is to receive a check for fifty dollars or, once, even a hundred dollars in response to a request for ten. All of this resulted in my first law of giving: Favor the charities that are small and struggling because they need help more. There is a corollary: Favor the charity where you contribute your time and energy. You have the best chance of assuring that your contribution will reach the intended recipients. Knowing what I know about telephone solicitations and how large a percentage usually goes for overhead, I almost never respond to them-though, in recognition of my shady past, I try to be polite

I favor local efforts to serve the poor; the soup kitchen where I’ve worked takes precedence over the soup kitchen in another town. I avoid large national and international charities. Their executive directors seem grossly overpaid and their overhead huge. One of these received an irate letter from me about its practice of sending an envelope with a stamp on it by return mail whenever they acknowledged a previous donation. If they can waste thirty-three cents, they don’t need me. I apply the same premise to charities that send out glossy appeals, videotapes, coffee mugs, and other "gifts."

Lifelong lover of the arts though I am, I reserve the bulk of my alms for the poor. "Supporting the ballet" is not one of the works of mercy. I live in a city where people are eager for the social prominence that comes with supporting the arts, so my contributions go to less fashionable causes. But, since art is a genuine need for all of us, I do make an effort to help arts organizations until they get greedy (as they so often do) and come back for more. Then I revise.

I also set money aside especially for organizations that mainly irritate politicians into doing right by the poor; because they "lobby" for change they don’t qualify for tax-deductible donations. The politicians themselves? Never.

When I do throw appeals into the trash, I always hope I’m being fair and that not everybody is throwing away the same appeals. And I never feel as if there is enough money, enough time, or enough energy to go around.

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John Lynch

In Commonweal in the fall of 1952, I published a short wartime remembrance, "A Town along the Way," about my days as a soldier in Italy in 1944, below Rome and northward. The town was Fondi, where in the thirteenth century Thomas Aquinas had lived and taught and where, turning off the ancient Via Appia into the Aurunci Mountains on a late May afternoon, I for the first time came under German fire.

After the article appeared, I received touching letters from readers, among them two with hundred-dollar checks made out to me, asking that the donations go to Italian relief. One specified that the money be sent directly to Fondi. I had no contacts there; then I remembered Catholic Relief Services. I called from Detroit and reached Eileen Egan (she was a companion of Dorothy Day’s and has written of Mother Teresa), who promised that, once the checks were signed over and received, the money would be on its way. Indeed, one gift was channeled through to the hospital in Fondi.

Fifty-plus years after Fondi, care in its literature estimates that ten dollars "can help thirty-five hungry and malnourished children per day around the world." Food for the Poor states that a like amount "will buy fifty pounds of beans and rice, providing a meal of complete protein for 1,200 children" in Latin America, and twenty-five dollars (about the price of a box of Godiva chocolates) "will buy enough food to keep a poor family of six alive for nearly a year." Oxfam America assures us that twenty-five dollars "will provide two dairy cows for a farmer in rural India" and fifty dollars "will enable a Cambodian village to erect a small irrigation dam to improve rice production." Oxfam also notes, without emphasis, that "today, 35,000 children will die as a result of hunger and malnutrition."

How does one balance death by starvation against the need for a cow, an irrigation dam, the battle to defeat aids in Angola? Here at home, how to reconcile a cot in a winter shelter, education for Native Americans, saving a Michigan woodland, printing a prolife brochure, pumping up a university endowment, a possible cure for cancer?

In South Dakota, how did the Lakota Sioux get my name? In South Africa, the Catholic bishop? For that matter, the bishop of Anchorage? Franciscan Missions, Salesian Missions, Oblate Missions, Medical Mission Sisters, Sisters of Saint Joseph, Dominican Sisters of Caldwell? In a solicitation from the Salvation Army, quoting from Forbes, we learn that more than 600,000 charitable organizations in the United States (religious, medical, educational, social-minded, cultural, environmental, "other") took in $120 billion last year. The figures confound me.

The Cardinal’s Appeal, Fireman’s Fund, Witness for Peace, Massachusetts Citizens for Life, Massachusetts Audubon, unicef, care, d.a.r.e., madd, smoc, smarc, npr/wgbh, Boston Rescue League, Boston Symphony, Bread for the World, Project Bread, Operation Hunger, Toys for Tots, Knights of Columbus, Genesis Fund, Lions, Rotary, Arthritis Foundation, Multiple Sclerosis, Veterans Outreach, Paralyzed Veterans, Christian Appalachian Project, Red Cross, Easter Seals, Cancer Society, Heart Association, American Friends Service Committee, Friends of NCR, Sons of Mary, Maryknoll, Advocates, Samaritans, March of Dimes, Wilderness Society, Nature Conservancy, Big Brother-Big Sister, Pine Street Inn, Rosie’s Place, Association for Retarded Citizens, Save the Children, Catholic Charities, Catholic Worker, Catholic Relief Services, Special Olympics, Children’s Hospital, Jimmy Fund, Detroit Catholic Central, Nativity Prep, Notre Dame, Propagation of the Faith. My "in" basket overflows. Too often my "out" basket slips into quiescence. I procrastinate. Under the onslaught my charity becomes sporadic and sometimes nonexistent for months.

Over time I drift from scrupulosity to sensitivity to apathy. I hear in my brain: "Charity begins at home." I hear in my gut: "Charity begins where it is needed most."

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Judith Johnson O’Brien

I would like to boast that I have charitable giving down to a rational process. Let’s see! First, I take seriously each request. (I confess that glossy, expensive, and frequent solicitations are offputting and usually quickly end in the wastebasket.) Next I ask myself a list of questions about the request: Is it (1) an immediate need, a crisis (flood relief, a local family’s loss); (2) an ongoing commitment (hospital, volunteer fire department, home health service, food shelf, parish, diocese); (3) an organization that enriches the mind and soul (the Catholic Worker, area museums, and the Vermont Symphony); (4) a cause that advances values I hold ( Women’s Ordination Conference, American Friends Service Committee, particular religious congregations, colleges, and universities)? An overriding question may be: Will my gift make a difference?

I’m not finished. The next step in my rational-giving process is to identify my personal connection (which often tips the scale in favor of one good cause rather than another). For example, to be faithful to family and neighbors, to remember a special group of people to whom I feel indebted, and those activities in which I volunteer my time and talents. I admit that the motives of self-applause and advancement do dwell in the back of my mind at times and must gently be dealt with. The final piece of my discernment process centers on prioritizing: What is most important from a long list?

Does all of this take a lot of time? I suppose so, but as the years progress I’m "easing" into it, "letting go." What I finally do is rational only on the surface. The process is held together by something very different. The work I make for myself each time a request crosses my desk becomes more and more a "holy discipline" and less and less a question of all those sensible considerations. Dorothy Day was chided by friends when she would give money to any beggar she chanced to meet on the street. Just not rational; the beggar will probably waste the few pennies on drink or drugs. Dorothy countered that one needs to be gracious to what the moment offers-and God’s presence is everywhere, wherever. The holy in my discipline is God’s constant presence in the one who asks. Giving is finally within grace. Thus whenever I open a solicitation letter from our community action group or Commonweal, I trust that the person of God and his love are wonderfully present. "Awesome," as the young people would say.