Thank you for your interest in supporting me and my work! There are several ways I invite you to consider:

1) Prayer:

Prayer is the fundamental form of support. Making prayer a priority is not just a nicety, convention, or formality before asking for money. In the Christian tradition, theologians probe the things of God based upon His self-revelation. Our reason, indeed our whole being, is engaged in the service of something that transcends reason (and elevates it without violating it). Hence, we need God’s help to do our work, and to do it well. Grace is absolutely essential if we would not mislead ourselves and others. And prayer, the tête-à-tête with God, is the means He has given, indeed commanded, us to use to seek fulfillment of our needs and others’ from His providential hand. I am certain that I rely upon the prayers of others, including many I do not now know personally.

2) Understanding and Helping Others Understand:

In any controversy, people are tempted to overly hasty judgement, glib remarks, and attacks on persons rather than thoughtful critiques of ideas. You support me and my work—and certainly will be personally enriched—when you investigate the great treasury of the Church’s Tradition. In this case, I include Scripture in that Tradition, by which I mean to encourage you to learn more about reading Scripture, the Chuch’s book, as the Church through the ages has read it. Then interject the informed remark, the charitable comment, in discussions and conversations, including those in which passion distracts from Truth. Such comments seem particularly needed in the blogosphere.

3) Invited Lectures and other opportunities for conversation:

As my commitments permit and God wills, I am happy to join personally in conversation and discussion through invited lectures and the like. I have done so in settings ranging from the very local to the national and international. Contact information is, of course, under the “Contact” tab. Please put “Lecture Invitation” in the Subject line if you choose to email me.

4) Purchase of Books: All book sales support my work. Different avenues of purchase have different advantages:

• If it’s just the ideas you’re after (and I agree they’re the first thing), then the least expensive purchase option is probably to be found here via Amazon.
• Next, direct purchase from my publisher, Eerdmans, gains you a discount from the list price (though not so steep as at Amazon) and routes me a little (~$1) more in royalty.
• Finally, I have a limited number of copies myself, which I will sign upon request. These are available at list price ($55 hardcover/$35 paperback) plus S&H. In most cases, that probably comes to $60/$40. Please put “Book Request” in the Subject line if you request a book via email. However you contact me, make sure to indicate if you want the book signed. (I don’t do that automatically, because some people prefer their books unsigned.) Payment can be by PayPal (see below), postal money order, or check; the book will be shipped after payment is received. (For checks, that means when the check clears.)

5) “Retroactive Scholarships” and Research Grants:

Opportunity and Need. I originally planned on becoming an engineer. I leave it to your imagination to consider the difference in availability of scholarships for women in engineering versus women in theology, especially lay women studying Catholic theology at international institutions. Couple this with the fact that studying theology was a “second” education for me: after my bachelor degree and first major job, I ended up studying full-time

• 1 year, 2 summers, of philosophy in the U.S.
• 4 years of theology in Austria
• an unexpected additional 3 years of doctoral study in theology in Rome.

While I did receive some scholarships (for which I am very grateful), I say in all seriousness and with some dark humor in my “Acknowledgements” in Light in Darkness that “I will not be able to forget [the] assistance [of the U.S. government’s academic loan program] for quite some time.” Read: “I have really substantial academic loans” and doctors of theology are not paid what doctors of medicine are.

An Odd Situation. When I was in school and seeking to diminish the necessity of loans by finding scholarships and grants, I discovered that, for tax reasons, foundations cannot make donations to individuals. Moreover, since they must make them to institutions, once a person has graduated, there is no mechanism for supporting past academic achievement. In other words, foundations can diminish some students’ future academic loans by taking a risk (albeit calculated) on them while they are in process, but the same foundations cannot diminish past academic loans of graduates who have proven their abilities. Conversely, graduates who receive academic debt relief must count as straight income what would, a few years earlier, have been treated as scholarship. Some legislator will significantly help constituents, and parents and students in general, by supporting measures that remedy these odd situations.

Make a Difference. Until then, I invite you to consider research grants or what I call a retroactive scholarship.

Research grants are used to reimburse expenses and pay salary during research; these may be tax-deductible for you and will very significantly support my future work.

Retroactive scholarships would be applied to my academic loans; in other words, they support my past work. As far as I know (standard legal disclaimer ☺: I am not a tax professional and what follows should not be taken as tax advice, etc.), such scholarships are probably not tax-deductible for you, nor tax-free for me. But they still support my work, and if that’s what you want to do, then retroactive scholarships are a huge help. You’ll join the ranks of at least one person who didn’t deduct even his contributions to charities from his taxes, reasoning that it wasn’t a gift if he got something in return.

To establish either a research grant or retroactive scholarship, contact me for further information. Please put “Research Grant” or “Retroactive Scholarship” in the Subject line if you choose to email me.

If you wish to do support me anonymously in one of these ways, thank you—and feel free to use the PayPal option below.