Columnist Joan Venocchi is as typical a baby boomer Catholic as you’ll find. Her objections and viewpoints on the Church are so predictable that you could program a computer to write her columns.
Today she talks about the appointment of Bishop O’Malley to Boston. Her view is that the Church plucked O’Malley out of Palm Beach as a PR move and that primary concern is to get the money flowing into collection plates again. In fact, she mentions money over and over again. Look, no one in the Church is stupid enough to believe that getting people back in the pews is about getting money back into collection plates. In fact, I’d venture to guess that the 5 or 10 percent of churchgoing Catholics who stopped going to Mass over the past year averaged less than a dollar per week in the collection basket.
Am I saying that there’s a direct correlation to the depth of your faith and the amount of money you give? No, but if you want an interesting education in Catholic parish economics take a turn at the collection basket some week. There are some people who drop a twenty in every week without fail (or use envelopes which is a sure sign that something equivalent is in there). Then there are the rest who drop a one or change in the basket. OK, some people are genuinely strapped for cash or maybe just forgot to stop at the ATM, but when you see the same people every week, the guy you know is a professional of some sort, who drives the Beemer in the parking lot and wears the expensive Oakley sunglasses, well, you can make some judgments.
