The Best Charity

There are many opinions and web sites designed to tell you what is the best charity to give your hard-earned money to. These designated web sites use personal feedback and calculations to determine which charities are legitimate, and which charities have the lowest operating expenses, sending more of your dollar to those in need and not those employed behind a desk.

Our mailboxes are flooded everyday with donation requests. Some of these mailings are very worthwhile causes; some are not. Some relieve suffering; some advance political ideologies.

If someone asked me what is, in my opinion, the best charity to give my hard-earned money to, I would not need a moment to think of my answer. It is an organization that usually does not have sophisticated fundraising vehicles behind it and the patrons that would freely give to it probably never consider initiating a check its way.

It is your local seminary. It is absolutely the best charity to support for the following reason:

Most of the best charities work towards cures for dreaded diseases. These are very worthwhile causes if their research is in line with the teaching of the Magisterium. But there is a more permanent view that can be considered when donating.

Former, Pennsylvania Governor Robert Casey Sr., my favorite all-time Democratic, when pressed about his overwhelming commitment to the pro-life cause as a foremost issue would rebut with all the sincerity and diplomacy of a great statesman, “What good is a tax credit to a child who never had the chance to be born?”

Casey’s statement laser-beamed the issue and provided overriding logic. It stopped all the debate cold.

In the spirit of this great Governor’s statement, I ask, “What good is a cure for a horrible disease that will add 20 years to a person’s life if that person is damned for eternity?” Great priest save eternal souls, and there are not enough great priests to meet the demand of this task in the darkness of today’s culture.

The devil once yelled at parish priest St. Jean Vianney over one-hundred years ago, “You robbed me of 80,000 souls!” How many of those 80, 000 souls TODAY would trade the cure Vianney gave their immortal soul for an equivalent temporal cure of their illness one-hundred years ago?

Please write checks to your local seminary. Even small checks when you can. Think of it as financially supporting eternity.