Pay 4 Pray

Recently within our community of worship it has taken on a strong emphasis to talk about the economy. However, not the national or even the local so much as the parish and the state of the Church.

Now it is not difficult to draw a straight line from what is going on in the national economy and locally to what is happening within our own Church and her budget woes, however, we do have a history here. Further, what is happening now is that those (few) of us sitting in the pews each Sunday are being asked to "pledge" specific weekly donations in order that the parish can project what will be coming in so as to properly budget its expenditures.

This may sound financially wise, however, more and more has been asked of the faithful sitting in the pews each week and never before have we been on the dole to "sign up" for how much we will be placing in our envelopes each week.

Moreover, the reasons for the budget shortfalls of the Church and our diocese and our parish specifically are many, and have been "bailed out" over and over by those faithful time in and time out. From the multi-million dollar sex scandal that cost our Church more than just dollars, but trust, property, a lot of it's reputation, many parishioners, closed schools, priests and nuns leaving the profession to the waste the Archdiocese of Washington spent over a period of 10 years to the tune of 70million dollars on a consortium of schools that lost millions each year only to close in the end (to be run by a private non-Catholic entity) and while ignoring the fact that their enrollment in these schools catered to children predominately NOT Catholic (most of the children enrolled in the consortium for instance, were over 68% non-Catholic).

Spending millions on Catholic schools with enrollment predominately NOT Catholic AND not attempting to swing these families into our rolls of Catholicism, ultimately will leave us broke.

While some or most of those children and families may be Christian, they are not Catholic and not sitting in the pews at Mass with us on Sundays and assisting us with monetary support. This may sound petty -excuse the pun- but this is an important part of our ministry. If it were not then the Church would not be asking those few of us there now to be Paying to Pray now!

However, those few of us there are simply can not continue to sustain for the masses. We simply can not keep supplying the monetary needs necessary for our children (alone sometimes) and the 70% not sitting with us. The 30% just can not help out the 100%. The parishes are getting older and older and the younger generations simply can not afford to supply the monetary demand being placed upon them.

The answer is for the diocese to close schools, raise tuitionsa and ask us to Pay 4 Pray. This is not acceptable.

So answers are that the enrollment numbers reflect a demographic shift to the South. I am not sure how this has come to the Arch-diocese, but most if not all, High Schools still have a demand for seats so how come the elementary and middle schools are below enrollment? Do families with smaller children move South and families with older (high school age children) move to this area? I don't know but I don't buy that answer to the enrollment problems of the elementary and middle schools.

Our schools must remain true to our Church's core belief and remain Catholic in her teachings and earnestly recruit Catholics into her faith! Every week I have a pastor from a local Church come by my house and ask me to stop by his church (not the same pastor for the same church, but different pastors from different churches) but never have I seen a local Catholic priest stop by a home and invite someone to their Church. Moreover, this is what should be happening at our schools. We should be having recruitment opportunities for the kids and their families several times per year at the school and at different parishes with special masses inviting them to join our community of worship.

That is what Jesus did. This is what Jesus would want us to do. This would help us with our Pay 4 Pray too.