Should we make more money?

Published in the Umatuna, the newspaper for the Archdiocese of Agana, Guam, August 28, 2011.


Some months ago I found myself in a conversation with the author of a new book about Natural Family Planning. I had written to thank him for writing the book. He replied and inquired about my family. I advised that my wife and I were blessed to have eleven children and shared a bit about the joys and challenges of a large family.

I was a bit amused at his next email in which he asked what I did for a living. I knew why he was asking. Today, most couples preset their family size to what they believe they can afford so its natural to think that larger families means a larger income.

He also shared that though he had just written a book about being open to life, he was struggling with doing what he had just written about. Like many Catholics, he had reached the maximum number of children he thought his paycheck could bear and had employed NFP to put off having more kids.

As most Catholics know, Church teaching allows recourse to periodic abstinence for the spacing or even suspension of child bearing for serious reasons. “Serious reasons” is the key to the morality of the method and financial considerations can be among those reasons.

My friend had arrived at what he believed to be his economic threshold with two children, but then, so had I. The difference was that with child number three I shifted career gears in order to provide for a family size that was in excess of my original plan - though my reason for the shift was not to afford more children, but to afford the children I already had with nice stuff: house, car, education, vacations, ballet lessons, comfort, gadgets, etc.

In hindsight, it seems to have been a “divine trick”. While I might have pursued a larger income for material reasons, a larger income made me less concerned about the prospects of a larger family, and a larger family we soon had. And while challenges remain, the bottom line was the more control we had over our income, the less concerned we were about another child.

In answer to my friend’s question, I replied that though I had begun my work life as a teacher, my growing family forced me to increase my income and I had moved to a career in sales. He commended my wife and me for our openness to life, shared that sales wasn’t for him, wished me the best, and I no longer heard from him.

I wanted to tell him that sales wasn’t for me either and that if I had my druthers I’d be conducting choral ensembles and not business presentations, but children had trumped my druthers.

Out of this little episode a question formed: If one is limiting the size of one’s family because of money, and one has the ability to make more money, does one then have the responsibility to make more money? After all, as Catholics we stood before God on our wedding day and promised to “accept children willingly and lovingly” from God.

This is a tough one. A desire for more money is often associated with greed and materialism. Yet lack of money is probably the main reason couples do not accept more children “willingly and lovingly” as they promised they would. What to do?

There are the obvious limitations such as illness and physical or mental incapacity. But beyond these, the question remains: Is it moral for Catholics to suspend the fount of life because of self-imposed fiscal limits? Is it moral to eschew a career change that could support a larger family simply because one finds the work uncomfortable?

I don’t have the answers, and in hindsight, I’m glad eleven children slipped into our lives before I even had the questions. Well, off to work.

The other side: A response to "Are there any wealthy people in heaven?

First published in the Umatuna, the newspaper for the Archdiocese of Agana, Guam, 12/18/99.

Judging by the response, my column last week, "Are There Any Wealthy People In Heaven?" seems to have caused a bit of distress or at least discomfort amongst some readers. During the week I also had a chance to address Fr. Dan Mulhauser’s morality class at UOG on the same topic and was told later by a student that it was good to hear "the other side". 

I found the words "the other side" both amusing and a true summation of my point in the original article: that the creation of wealth is somehow considered to be un-Catholic or even un-Christian. I believe the anxiety with my position lies in the definition of the word "wealth", which for many of us, is defined by the media, where examples of the misuse of wealth sell, and stories where the responsible use of wealth make no news.

But at further issue is that "wealth" is really a relative word. We may think that the man with the house on the hill and a yacht down at the marina is wealthy and hold him in contempt, labeling him with the dreaded "M" word (materialistic). But what of the poor family that lives on the side of the railroad tracks in Manila? Are we with our flush toilets and refrigerators not wealthy in their eyes? Are we not "materialistic" in comparison? So materialism is relative too, and is usually defined where our paycheck ends.

What’s really amusing to me is that so many of these heart-rending discussions over the world’s poor and the evils of materialism take place in multi-million dollar university buildings where the air-conditioning bill for the duration of one class alone could feed that hungry family on the side of those railroad tracks for half a year. 

For the sake of discussion, let me propose a definition of wealth, or at least the generation of revenue, as a by-product of having performed some service that others find worth trading their dollars for, be it mowing a neighbor’s lawn or the creation of a computer program. That, in essence, is the definition of capitalism as employed in the free-market economy upon which our country was built. 

I believe that many of us Catholics run into trouble trying to rationalize the real world of bills and financial responsibilities with what we are taught in parishes and universities because the people we learn from do not live in this free-market economy. Priests don’t get fired, and university professors have to mess up pretty bad before they are asked to leave. And their pay is not directly contingent on the quality and quantity of production (at least not on the day to day basis) as is ours in the private sector.

I am no economist and I propose no grand solution, but I do believe that there is much in the Gospels that points to the responsible generation and management of wealth, particularly the story of the talents (Lk.19:11-27) Meanwhile, I recommend that we who so easily demand that the "haves" give more to the "have-nots", become "haves" ourselves, so that we ourselves can give to the "have-nots". 

But I would urge Catholics to go beyond even this. For I believe that the truly charitable thing to do is not only to give monetary assistance to the truly helpless, which is definitely our Gospel responsibility, but to give an example to the many who would pick themselves up if only they knew that they could.

And why not be a financially prosperous and responsible Catholic? It would cut down on the fundraisers.

Tim Rohr

December 18, 1999

Are there any wealthy people in heaven?

First published in the Umatuna, the newspaper for the Archdiocese of Agana, Guam, 12/11/99.

I have just begun reading a book entitled God Wants You To Be Rich by the economist Paul Zane Pilzer. Just the fact that I’m reading it brings a smile to my face and a bit of a laugh at myself. Just a few years ago in my “Birkenstock days”, I was extolling the virtues of wearing thrift-store clothing and joining in the wealth-bashing that was common in my circle of pseudo-poor intelligensia. (What was really stupid is that though we all wore sandals as a way of  identifying with the poor, they were Birkenstock sandals, and as you may know, you can buy 3 pairs of shoes for the price of a pair of Birkenstocks.)

But such is the age of infinite intelligence, that period of time that starts somewhere in high school and usually (hopefully) ends after our 2nd or 3rd child. Nothing like having children and raising a family to get you thinking differently about a lot of things, most of all about money. 

But money is one of those subjects, like sex and parenting, that we don’t get much help on.  We’re supposed to figure it out on our own and we graduate from high school knowing more about dissecting frogs and solving trigonomic equations than we do about balancing our checkbooks. And while it may be true that  “money can’t buy love”, it’s usually not an argument over the location of a frog’s left ventricle that begins to unravel a marriage. 

Given the ever increasing financial stresses and strains of our modern predicament and the consequent scars left on marital and family relations due to quarrels induced by fiscal stress, our Church could do much for the betterment of marital and family life by the preaching and teaching of a proper Catholic perspective on the creation and management of wealth.

However, more often than not, we are treated from the Sunday pulpit with a regular fare of  something that amounts to “blessed are the poor in pocket”, followed by the inevitable passing of the basket. (And then we wonder why people only put in 1’s and 5’s.) I personally  have yet to hear any sort of teaching from teacher or preacher on the parish level that expounds on the financial in a positive vein. The business man or wealthy person is usually the bad guy in the story and more often than not is turned away at St. Peter’s gate. But who does the pastor go to when the parish needs a new roof?

I say on the parish level because I have heard and read some great things concerning the proper function of business, the free market, and profits taught and published by Catholic teachers. Our very own Pope is one of them. His encyclical, “Centesimus Annus” makes a case for the free market system tempered by strong moral and ethical principles and extols the roll of business in promoting a free society. (He lived most of his life in a society that wasn’t free.)

Another excellent teacher on the subject is Fr. Robert Sirico who’s Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty is dedicated to the education of the clergy on the role of the free market in promoting a free society characterized by individual liberty and sustained by religious principles. You can access some very enlightening information at the Institute’s web site at www.acton.org.

But meanwhile, let’s stop pretending that creating wealth isn’t important. It is. It’s what we use to fulfill our biblical responsibilities to “provide and protect”. It’s what we use to build our churches, schools, libraries, convents, monasteries, and hospitals. It even buys the very bread and wine that becomes the Body and Blood of Jesus at Mass. It’s what we use to advance the Kingdom as He commanded. We need money and we need more of it. But the key word here is “use”. Financial wealth is a tool and, like all things material, was given to us by God to be used for the greater glory of God...”ad majoriam gloriam”. 

So let’s hear about the rich man who did go to heaven. I’m sure there are many.

Tim Rohr

December 11, 1999