Cajetan, some 500 years ago, forced the question that still plagues those who are uncomfortable with the institutionalization of the Christian (or any) religion–the degree to which a church is concerned with its budget, it fails to commit itself to continuously redistributing resources to the poor and the outcast.

To anachronistically import current business terminology to Cajetan’s time, this saint celebrated today believed strongly that churches should as a matter of course be constantly running “in the red”–money that comes in should go directly out–to help ensure that the poor and sick receive the necessaries and the care that they require. Cajetan, in fact, argued against any budgeted line items for the upkeep of buildings or the salaries of clerics! Rather, Cajetan would instead choose to rely upon community persons whose own calling was to voluntarily keep buildings operating and to feed and house those engaged in ministry.

In short, Cajetan believed that the Church should daily stake its entire present and future existence on faith in the vitality of its outreach, and not on being stewards of an institution. And he refused to pretend that the two were the same thing.

No surprise: Cajetan’s harshest opponents were archbishops and cardinals. They considered his approach “imprudent” and “poor stewardship” and “unwise.” My goodness–If you can’t ensure that you can keep the lights on, how can you have a church? If you don’t pay your employees, how can you run a church? If you don’t regularly remit a certain percentage of your money to the hierarchical structure, how can you have a denomination?

In a lesson right out of “Power and Powerlessness 101,” the Church hierarchy met with Cajetan and told him how admirable his aims were, how Christ-like his approach was. And then the hierarchy proposed that Cajetan try out his “little ideas”–but with the understanding that if things didn’t work out (meaning if/when some congregations ran out of both money and interest in caring for the poor), the institutional church would step in and help out.

Alas, Cajetan was so excited about getting the hierarchy’s green light that he failed to recognize that he had been co-opted. Cajetan’s efforts to change the church’s paradigm was neutered and reformed as a missionary project (and only for a while). When Cajetan died, his popularity among the common folk led to his sainthood, while church treasurers and archbishops heaved a collective sigh of relief.

Cajetan believed that it is always ok for a church to run through ALL of its money in service to the sick and the poor–and that it is never ok for a church to save up any of its money so that it can merely continue being a church next week, next month, next year. It proved too much for Cajetan to expect that he would be any more successful with the Christian leaders of his day than Jesus was with the rabbinical leaders of his.