pay up or you can’t talk to God

Some good friends of ours are practicing Catholics, going almost every week, giving a modest, but for their income, not insignificant weekly donation for, well, whatever roof repairs and work in the community that churches always seem to need funds for.

Anyway, they’d had a few weeks away, some family time, so they’d missed a few weeks at church – not a problem, you’d think – can’t attend every weekend in a year.

So imagine their surpise when they recieved a letter reminding them that they had not only missed church, but that their regular donation had also been missed and could they please see to it to make up the difference when they next attended.

I’m sorry – since when does a church start writing “warning” letters to parishoners because they have missed a week of volountary contributions?  They give a good amount of money too, what are they thinking by semi threatening them?

And with the state of things, its just possible that one or both of them might have lost their jobs, or maybe one of them was sick, or died.  Did they think of that?  Was there a phonecall to check if everything was ok at home first?  The pastoral care that you’d have thought their donations might have gone towards funding?

Yeah, exactly.  The Catholic Church, in all its glory: Pay us lots of cash, or you can’t talk to God and you’ll burn in hell

Nice