“YOU cannot serve both God and money,” admonishes the Bible. But the church has always tried. In the Middle Ages monasteries were what would now be termed social enterprises. They would produce bread, books or other goods. A Franciscan monk is credited with codifying double-entry book-keeping.
These days the Catholic church and related institutions control many billions of dollars. Some is invested to earn income; some is given away for good works. The two activities have been seen as separate. But, in the pontificate of Pope Francis, that divide is blurring. “Impact” investing—intended to make money and do good at the same time—is growing in importance. It is also creating some controversy.
In 2014 the pope, speaking to a conference in the Vatican on impact investing, called on Christians to rediscover “this precious and primordial unity between profit and solidarity”. His church has responded. Some Catholic institutions with assets to invest—including the Jesuits, the Franciscan Sisters of Mary and Ascension Investment Management—have earmarked a part of their investments for impact funds.
Meanwhile, new Catholic impact funds have been formed, such as ones under the Oblate International Pastoral Investment Trust, which is entrusted with the financial resources of more than 200 Catholic organisations from over 50 countries. Others have joined co-operative efforts to align their investment strategies. The Catholic Impact Investing Collaborative, for example, groups 30 American Catholic institutions, with $50bn in assets under management (of which a small fraction is devoted to impact investing). To encourage public involvement, new “retail” impact funds have been set up, allowing donors to buy a share for a small outlay—say $30.
For now, the Catholic capital dedicated to impact investments totals around only $1bn. Yet such are the church’s assets that it has the potential to transform the size of the impact-investment market. It might also, however, transform the church’s financing model: from a “sequential” one, where the church first acquires wealth and then gives it away; to a “parallel” one.
Quoting Impactαlpha, without hyperlink from an article entitled More Catholic capital flows toward impact investing dated March 27, 2017, "Pope Francis may be only the world’s third-greatest leader (behind Theo Epstein and Jack Ma, according to Fortune), but his 2014 endorsement of impact investing was still a big deal." [2] The article continued to report as follows, quoted in part without hyperlink [3]:
Last year, the Vatican doubled down at a second conference to explore how the church and faith-based institutions can “harness the power of impact capital to attain and sustain their social mission.
Ascension Investment Management, which manages $29 billion on behalf of Ascension Health and other Catholic institutions, is beginning to heed the call. The investment manager is managing a multi-million dollar impact investment strategy, following an earlier $50 million mandate. One investment: an East African pharmacy chain to provide affordable, non-counterfeit drugs to low-income customers.
“Helping the poor is in the DNA of these institutions, so why not do it through investments?” David Erickson, CIO of Ascension told ImpactAlpha.
This blogger could not agree more; yet, he remains conflicted because while it is good to provide affordable medications to those with low income, as in the East African pharmacy chain in the example above, endeavors employing strategies such as multi-million or multi-billion dollar impact investment ought to be within the purview of charitable organizations, whether or not Catholic, whether or not religious, but not of the Catholic Church. The sole purpose of the Catholic Church is, in this blogger's mind, for the salvation of souls, the invisible but eternal part of existence. When the Blessed Virgin Mary prays for sinners, this blogger doubts that She cares about impact investment strategies.
Notwithstanding the possible lack of attention paid by the Blessed Virgin Mary to impact investing, there seems to be a good likelihood that the strategy would be successful, at least in the short-run.
Success in one area of investing can sometimes lead to success in others, and as more and greater subsequent successes follow, wealth increases along with the risk of corruption, leading nearly invariably to decadent lifestyles, ostensibly and secretly. One does not have to look far for real-life examples than to the Vatican in these respects.
Thus, even while those whose lives are improved by such successes, they will not help those who are lacking spiritually, regardless of which side they are on, the side benefiting from such investments (legitimately and illegitimately) or the side profiting from them (legitimately and illegitimately).
As the amount of impact investment increases from one billion dollars (perhaps no other publication besides The Economist, maybe a few others too, would have the boldness to include the word "only" in this sentence: "For now, the Catholic capital dedicated to impact investments totals around only $1bn" [emphasis added] [4] without seemingly any reservation), so will the Catholic Church and its related institutions likely continue acquire wealth, and give it away simultaneously, but it would not be a zero-sum "financing model [that impact investing has transformed] from a [previously] 'sequential' one, where the church first acquires wealth and then gives it away; to a 'parallel' one," [4] but rather it would be a "sanitized profit-accumulation" model for the Church, which when crassly put is the equivalent of a "laundered money-making" model--narrowly defined here as secular profit "laundered" or "sanitized" by an attached charitable religious purpose. These invented terms seem harsh, but how harsh can they be when they are being used to describe a money-making philanthropic tactic employed by a group of multi-billion dollar tax-exempt religious organizations?
One could suppose that wealth and profitable philanthropy would ensure that the Catholic Church would be an on-going religious entity even as it loses its way toward Christ. The Church that Christ had in mind was never about money, whether it was a coin belonging to Caesar or billions and trillions of them in various forms that are under the combined control of the world's central banks as a whole.
The Economist began the article cited quoting the Bible that man cannot serve both God and money, but it is money that has no real value that people around the world have put their collective faith in rather than in God Who has all different kinds of riches in dimensions that are beyond the confines of human imagination and experience.
If anyone is keeping score, Satan has gathered more people with faith in the currencies of the world than Christ has people with faith in God and in the Church He has established. Based on this assertion, the Vatican has failed and does not deserve to operate under the guise of Christ's original Church built on Christ's teachings, sufferings, crucifixion and resurrection. It should therefore reorganize and incorporate itself on the one hand as a for-profit entity (to be run by a chief executive officer rather than by a pope) that also serves its philanthropic ambitions amounting to a tiny fraction of its total "catholic" (with a small "c") wealth and on the other, reestablish a Catholic Church that is poor without any accumulation of wealth, without a pope and without hypocrisy, that is under the custody of true disciples of Christ who by their purity, their faith in and love for God are able to transubstantiate bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ and share with those who believe.
With a popeless Catholic Church, Satan will in time lose, and many who have been under its temptations of earthly riches and lost in them will be inspired by the zeal of a growing international contingent of Christ's new disciples and realize that absolute void underlies wealth but that true richness is hidden in the lack if it, and that by learning the ways taught and practiced by Christ's modern-day fishers of man who are on the path to Heaven can one be always fulfilled.
The sooner this happens, the sooner the power of Satan will diminish and the sooner this world will heal.
(This is only a dream.)
[1] https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21726719-some-worry-it-might-sully-its-charitable-aims-catholic-church-becomes-impact
[2] http://impactalpha.com/more-catholic-capital-flows-toward-impact-investing/
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
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