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My pastor refused to baptize my son because he hadn’t seen any checks with my name on them in the collection basket.

This may be true of Protestant pastors, but not Catholic.

If you are claiming that this happened in a Catholic church, I suspect that he was joking. Unlike many Protestant churches, the Catholic Church is not in the habit of having a yearly fundraising service where congregants are encouraged to pledge a sum of money.

I AM NOT saying that you are lying, but I DO NOT believe what you are saying. And I certainly DO NOT consider your claim to be "proof" that the Church places any emphasis on the monetary gifts of Catholics.

I was born, baptized and raised in a Catholic family. I was an altar boy and went to parochial school from 1st thru 8th grade. I was taught by 80 year old, 4 foot tall nuns with steel yard sticks. I grew up in the belly of the beast. In class, we had a rotation of boys who would get called out of class to serve funeral masses Everything we did as kids revolved around the Catholic church, be it sports leagues, family get-togethers, neighborhood birthday parties and yes, fundraisers. What made the baptism episode particularly hurtful was the fact that the pastor was a close family friend.

My comments are based on MY experience with the CATHOLIC church. Not the Protestant church. While I still attend the CATHOLIC church (although no longer the church mentioned in my previous comment) I do keep one hand firmly on my wallet. I have faith in God. But as far as any particular church? "Trust. But, verify." sums it up for me.

"the Catholic Church is not in the habit of having a yearly fundraising service where congregants are encouraged to pledge a sum of money."

Yearly? Heck, our CATHOLIC church was having monthly fundraising efforts for whatever community outreach program was next on the list. One of my first recollections of major fundraisers was when I was a young teen and our CATHOLIC church (NOT Protestant) was purchasing homes for Vietnamese refugee families in our area back in the early 70s. Yes, we were encouraged to put money in the basket. The "pitch" was always attached to the end of the sermon. Not a particular sum of money, mind you, but we were encouraged to donate whatever sum you were able to donate. They even published the weekly donation totals in the following week's church bulletin. They published a weekly total, a yearly total and they published the percentages being donated to whatever fundraisers that were running at the time.

In grade school, we had canned food drives for the local homeless shelters all the time. And if we didn't bring in any canned food, we were denied recess and had to write essays about helping the poor or serve out some other form of penance.

As to whether you think I'm lying or whether you believe me or not, I really don't care. I didn't set out to convince you one way or the other. I am citing my personal experience as it related to my "one hand on the wallet" comment.

Don't misconstrue my comments as having anything to do with my faith in God and Jesus Christ. But my comments DO have everything to do with the organized CATHOLIC churches I have been involved with in my life and how I have learned to approach these organizations.

I’m the bookkeeper in my parish and I don’t even know who gives what unless it is a memorial gift in someone’s name.

That said, there is a woman who does record the envelopes, and those who use envelopes do so for a purpose and less than 30% of the people do. So if our priest looked at the envelopes and decided who could do what because of them, 70% of the parish members and their families would be out of luck.