Catholic churchgoers in the USA can now make a crypto donation towards their church’s efforts. But where does the Vatican stand on cryptos?
While most religions are thousands of years old and full of outdated nonsense, an Archdiocese (area that the archbishop is responsible for) has shown it is going for modernity when it comes to donations. It has embraced a new asset class by partnering up with Engiven, a crypto donation platform.
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. will use funds raised to grow their ministries and increase their digital stewardship initiatives.
Catholic Crypto
Catholics across the world don’t have uniform views on the moral standpoint of using cryptocurrencies. Other religions, like Islam, have sanctioned the use of some crypto offerings like Islamic coin.
According to the National Catholic Register, the Vatican hasn’t made any comment on the use of crypto. “No sort of official moral assessment or guidance has been issued by any curial office.”
Some commentators say that early investors in cryptos have become ridiculously wealthy. And they did this without working for it. “Billionaires will exchange their artificial, value-inflated currency in exchange for real lands, goods and infrastructure in a poverty-ridden country.” And this, they say, is unjust.
Other Catholics think cryptocurrencies can actually solve a lot of problems for the poor. In Thank God for Bitcoin, author J.M. Bush, says the US’s fiat system “can effectively introduce new currency into the system at its own discretion, manipulating the value of currency and potentially distorting the relationship between the work people have done and the wealth they actually have. As several critics have pointed out, this kind of inflationary monetary policy has the greatest negative impact upon the lower classes, who tend to have more of their wealth tied up in cash, as opposed to more stable assets like land and capital.”
The author first bought bitcoin in 2017. He says crypto “took monetary governance out of the hands of the privileged few, establishing an unchangeable system that bound all participants to play by its rules and adapt to it, rather than bending it to their own will.”
Vatican’s Art and NFTs
All the while, the Vatican isn’t a stranger to all things Web3. In fact, the Vatican’s art will soon sit inside the Metaverse as an NFT gallery. VR company Sensorium is building the metaverse with Humanity2-0.org. It will have art works by Van Gogh, Michelangelo, Picasso, Gauguin, and Raphael, among others.
Catholic Donations in Crypto to Go Ahead
Joseph Gillmer is the Executive Director of Development in the Archdiocese of Washington. “The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. seeks to leverage technology to engage parishioners in new and exciting ways, making it easier for the faithful to fulfill the mission of the Church to spread the light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the world. Engiven is helping us to fulfill the mission of the Church by providing an advanced, yet easy to use, cryptocurrency donation platform with the flexibility for the faithful to support more than 300 parishes, schools, and ministries in the greater Washington, D.C. region.”
On the platform, the Church offers a buffet of things that the faithful can donate to – a “menu of ministries.” Included are initiatives like the Community Food Security Program.
James Lawrence is Engiven’s CEO. “The Engiven platform was designed to enable enterprise-wide crypto-giving solutions for this exact type of implementation…”
Engiven say their technologies “equip ministries and nonprofit organizations to securely accept and liquidate cryptocurrency donations while eliminating the complexity and risk associated with cryptocurrency transactions.”
So where exactly does the Vatican stand on cryptos? Nowhere, yet.
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