Yes, that’s a classic dodge. You give enough to the church in the envelope and then it’s your “tuition.”. Everything is tax-free that way. Tuition isn’t tax-free, but donations to churches are. See what they did there?

Probably. There are always little pockets of difference out there.

I’m not young, so he would have lived there around 1910.

Yes. And the sad thing is that your father probably went without and no one would have even noticed if he had reduced his offering. They really only pay attention when the rich donors start dropping off. Sad, but true.

Not surprising. The way the whole shebang is organized means they wind up living very insular, self-centered lives.

Believe me I wouldn’t have judged whatever he gave. Most suburban parishes are doing just fine money-wise. The large, immigrant built parishes which are now in the centers of cities and away from houses and apartments where Catholics live are kind of hurting because those old places cost a fortune to maintain and run.

Most parishes have those. I’m not trying to say your family didn’t take this seriously and actually follow those guidelines, but I am telling you that having done the books for multiple parishes around the country almost no one gives more than $20 a week and most people give $1 - $5 if anything. Good for your family…

Well, I’ve worked in parishes in the Northeast, in the Midwest, and in the Southeast. I can, literally, count on two hands the number of families who tithed 10%. So yes, SOME Catholics tithe, but they are a significantly small minority. The vast majority of them throw in somewhere around $5 a week. If that.

Agreed!

Tithe a percentage of your income or put an envelope in the collection?

I am an American, but my grandfather lived in Dewsbury for a decade while making his way here via County Mayo. He never seemed to think that leaving was mistake.

Was that a specific percentage of his income? Because I ran a program for years that depended upon the collection and I was intimately familiar with the weekly printout of who gave what. Almost no family gave more than $400 a year. A traditional tithe is 10% of your income. $400 a year would be a 1% tithe on a $40K…

They are in a distinct minority. I ran a program for years which was run out of the collection plate and I had weekly printouts of who gave what. Almost no family exceeded $400 a year.

Ah, my apologies. I made the usual Gawker/Jezebel mistake of assuming you were writing from an American perspective. I apologize again.

Question for you: I grew up in Florida in the 1970’s and was educated by Mercy Sisters from Ireland. (We had a lot of them here due to not having any native Catholics of our own when the space industry go going and Catholics from Northeastern US cities moved down and wanted parishes and schools. They came from all…

Although the Church itself is a disgusting septic tank of dishonesty, your average parish is not more corrupt than your average county or city office. Catholic schools don’t practice corporal punishment anymore and their teachers have to be certified. She can hate what the 1950’s church did to her mother and still…

Yes, absolute power corrupts and also the men in charge of the Church put very young girls into classrooms full of 40+ kids without ever giving them a single bit of training to be teachers.

I can’t stand nuns, but I find this story almost impossible to believe. Nuns don’t go around asking for money from the collection and Catholics don’t tithe 10%. There’s probably a grain of truth in it somewhere, but it’s been embroidered as it came down to you.

Yeah, and I worked for an order of nuns for 30 years and so did my mother before me. Plus, they educated me and all the women in my family going back to the early 1900’s. You said you’re not Catholic, but are you young? You don’t seem to have a grasp on the full picture of the lives of Catholic religious women. Not…