Catholic Stock Portfolio for Moral Investing
(Note: I update this post periodically with changes to the investments and the rationale for adding or removing any specific stocks.)
Goal: Invest in companies that do not violate Catholic moral teaching
We can take a few different approaches:
1. Invest in a Catholic Mutual Fund
We could invest only in mutual funds whose ostensible goals are to invest from a moral Catholic perspective (e.g. Ave Maria funds, Aquinas funds).
This route outsources our investment decisions to others and comes with the risk that these people or organizations will make poor decisions, either from a Catholic moral position and/or from a financial standpoint.
At first blush, investing in Catholic mutual funds, like Ave Maria and Aquinas, seems like a no-brainer: pay a bit higher fee (around 1% typically for these kinds of funds) but you can be confident that the managers of the funds are investing in a Catholic way.
In fact, I used to own funds from both of these companies. I no longer do.
I evaluate these fund families by 1) looking at their managers and Catholic advisory boards (here's Ave's for instance), and 2) looking at the specific equities held in their funds.
Just taking Ave Maria as an example, their advisory board has people on it whom I do not have high confidence 1) are aligned with my Catholic sensibilities in many areas, nor 2) (even if they are aligned) are engaged and competent at evaluating companies from a moral standpoint.
Your mileage may vary, and you may be super-impressed by all the people on those boards. I am not, and even find some of them problematic (as in, people who may choose companies diametrically opposed to my views!).
Second, look at the equities the funds invest in. Not to pick on Ave again, but I selected two of their funds, and the top holdings both contain Microsoft (e.g. their Growth fund).
Microsoft, and any Big Tech firm, are opposed in countless ways to the Catholic Church and the Catholic Faith.
As a Catholic, I don't want to hold any stock in Big Tech, whether Apple or Facebook or Twitter or Google, or Microsoft.
I grant you that those investments have been lucrative over the past ten to fifteen years (say, 2008 to 2022). But lucrative is not a sufficient condition for us to invest as a Catholic.
Knowing that Ave Maria sees a company like Microsoft as not being opposed to Catholic moral teaching raises big alarm bells for me.
My conclusion is that outsourcing your investment decisions to a Catholic mutual fund company is not acceptable.
Update: While I have objections to the criteria of the Catholic funds, a Protestant set of funds called Inspire Investing are actually more Catholic than the Catholic ones! Check them out here: https://www.inspireinvesting.com/
2. Outsource to a Financial Advisor
For instance, we could hire a financial advisor (e.g. Edward Jones) and let them invest our money.
We could even hire a Catholic financial advisor (whether he works for himself or a bigger organization) and hope that he invests in line with our moral understanding.
Unfortunately this route is unlikely to result in good investment choices. At best, it would be no better than investing in Ave Maria or Aquinas funds, and may be far worse depending on the person.
3. Just invest in index funds
What about investing in index funds, like S&P 500 index funds?
This approach is the most problematic, because you are guaranteed to invest in companies that directly or indirectly promote or sell goods and services that directly contradict Catholic moral teaching.
Not only are such funds heavily invested in Big Tech companies, but they also include Big Pharma and countless other companies that profit from immorality and evil.
One difficult consequence of not being able to invest in such funds is that most 401(k) plans limit one's investments to such funds, making it near impossible to have a 401(k) that is morally invested.
My decision on my 401(k) is currently: invest in it to get my company's match, but since I have no moral options other than a dollar-pegged money market fund, I put my money into that.
So, my money earns no interest (and with inflation loses purchasing power), but with a 50% company match I am still doing better than I would had I not contributed to my 401(k).
4. Take ownership of our investing decisions
The final option is to take direct ownership of our investing decisions and hand-pick stocks, bonds, and equities to invest in.
This route is the most painstaking, time-consuming, and financially risky of the four options, but it is the one that I have chosen, since the other three do not pass muster.
I would rather invest morally and make less money (or even lose money) than invest immorally.
This route means you "make your own mutual fund" or ETF, not formally of course, but informally by buying individual stocks and (moral) funds and allocating a percent of your investment capital to each as you deem prudent.
I list below my current portfolio. I update it regularly, because oftentimes a company that passed my bar will begin to fail it.
For example, Hershey's fired their employees who declined to be injected with the experimental vaccines. That action is enough for me to jettison them from my list.
Coca-Cola decided to become Woke-a-Cola with their horrendous employee "training" materials. I jettisoned them.
Now, maybe you don't want to spend the time or think you have the expertise to make individual investment choices like this. Fair enough, but your choice is either to spend that time and grow your expertise and do so, or not invest at all (a valid approach), or outsource your investment decisions and almost certainly end up investing in immoral companies.
The Lionheart Catholic Portfolio
(Last updated: 4/13/2024)
Asset | Area
BTC (Bitcoin) | Cryptocurrency
- best to own the real thing and self-custody, but could buy the ETFs e.g. IBIT, FBTC, etc.
XOM | Oil/Gas
EPD | Oil/Gas
ET | Oil/Gas
CLR | Oil/Gas
INFL | Inflation ETF
LAND | Farmland/Real Estate
CAT | Building Equipment
ADP | Payroll
URNM | Uranium
SRUUF | Uranium
PHYS | Gold
PSLV | Silver
SWBI | Guns
Additions and Removals
When I add or remove stocks from this list, I will update here with the reasoning behind the decision.
Also, I am interested in hearing from you, if you have input into any of the above companies. Some of them I have not (yet) been able to find a problem with, but I suspect that they may be problematic in ways I have not yet discovered.
11/21/22:
Removed:
GBTC | Bitcoin
ETHE | Ethereum
Unfortunately, Grayscale has not been transparent that they hold full bitcoin reserves in their trust (via Coinbase Custody), and their parent company has exposure to Genesis (which is melting down due to 3AC and now FTX melting down).
Coinbase Custody has recently attested they hold the full bitcoin reserves of GBTC, but I don't trust any of this now.
One should be able to rely on a regulated Trust not doing fraudulent or speculative dealings--why not just pocket the 2% hefty fee and be happy?--but given the behaviors from 3AC to FTX, I now have 0% confidence in these companies to act in a legal and virtuous way.
Removed:
GOLD - Barrick Gold Miner
This is a big daddy gold miner, but I did more research and began getting concerned about the accusations of human rights abuses in their African mines.
https://earthrights.org/wp-content/uploads/barrick_fact_sheet_-_earthrights_international_1.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrick_Gold#Human_Rights_Abuses
I also suspect they are a tool of the globalists, so I would rather double-down on better gold miners.
11/7/22:
Removed ABBV (AbbVie) due to moral concerns with their Humira drug using monoclonal antibodies (from Chinese Hamster ovary cells) but more broadly that they are doing experimentation that could also include human fetal cells from aborted babies or other chimeric (animal-human hybrid) cells.
5/16/22:
Removed MCD (McDonalds), since it has crappy food and due it deciding to leave the Russian market for virtue-signaling purposes.
9/6/22:
Removed MMM (3M) due to potential catastrophic loss from the lawsuits from its subsidiary's ear protection product to the military.
Other Investment Classes
I invest beyond equities as well, for instance, I think gold is good for insurance and wealth preservation purposes, and that Bitcoin is good as a speculative store of value and hedge against system collapse.
For detailed info on a total portfolio for a Catholic, you can get my book Lionheart Catholic II by just paying shipping and handling.
