ROTFL!! That's the best laugh I've had all day!
Catholics know very little about tithing. Many years ago, someone in the National Catholic Register described most Catholics as having deep pockets, but short arms. Most Catholics nowadays are nowhere NEAR as generous as their immigrant forbears, who gave generously of their hard earned money to build the beautiful old churches that are now crumbling in the larger, older urban areas of the US. As their kids grew up and started making money, they left the cities for suburbia, and never looked back. But they still try to claim that they aren't wealthy, so they shouldn't be expected to contribute to their Parishes.
Our parish did a study many years ago, and found out that in our parish of approximately 3000 families, most of whom, while not rich, are certainly pretty affluent, only about 1800 used the contribution envelopes on a regular basis, and the average amount in each envelope, each week, was about $4. A lot of folks make the excuse that they don't use envelopes, but they put cash in the collection basket, but they put a lot less than they think they do, on an annual basis.
That’s very sad. I am a member of a non-Roman Catholic Christian Church.
(It’s not “protestant,” in that it doesn’t care, nor was it established by a “break away” group. Any sinner who wants Christ as his boss is welcome.)
Anyway, I served as an elder for a while and we did pretty much the same study, using checks as our guess. It looked ot us that we had about 75% of 300 families giving (what we guestimated to be, based on employment) about 6-8% of their take-home pay.
I have no idea why we do better. Might be a fluke related to our little church.