Pay to Pray?

My Gram is a devout Roman Catholic and invests a huge amount of her time and money into her faith. She mails out checks to different convents to support them, and in return the nuns of the convents offer to take prayer requests. I learned of this when she showed me a form letter they mailed her telling her how her money was being put to use and how they had been praying for Anne (my name was written without the "e"” on a fill-in-the blank line) and communicating with my deceased grandfather through prayer. I thought this was really sweet of Gram to ask them to pray for me, but was this for real? Was she getting her money'’s worth? I suppose she thought so and that's what counts, but how would she know if they had actually prayed for me or not? I'm not suggesting that nuns are scamming her because it is a legitimate church, but they didn'’t even take the time to send her a personal letter or to spell my name (or hers for that matter!) correctly. I guess it'’s what you believe in and what makes you happy, but in this day and age, trusting anyone with your money is a risky prospect.

Another example Gram brought to my attention was her local priest. This 55-year old man was getting edgy with the church guild because people weren'’t giving enough money to the church to "“adequately support" it. As it turns out, the priest had two days earlier traveled almost 200 miles to be fitted for two custom suits to be made for him in Italy. This man who took a vow of poverty is bitching at elderly members of his parish with limited funding for not giving enough money to support his expensive taste in clothing. He recently started sending around the collection a second time.

At the very same church, Gram dedicates so much of her time to serving on her church guild and working on fundraising events-- —just to pay the church'’s bills. Bean suppers, used book sales, dances, bake sales, raffles, bingo, yard sales, and all sorts of other events are hosted on a nearly weekly basis. Surely it is common for other churches to struggle to stay afloat as well. It seems ironic that people of so much faith and trust in God have to scramble to keep the church together; even more ironic is that many members toil away at multiple jobs just to put dinner on the table and pay the bills. On the other hand, a priest, who took a vow of poverty, is provided with more than just the essentials by those very same church members.

That is why it is so infuriating to hear of instances of affinity fraud, in which a person tries to relate to others that are members of a specific demographic, often religious groups or the elderly, and get close to members in the group to gain their trust and then their money by scamming them. A local example is back in December when a woman embezzled money from her church's collection plate that was supposed to go toward church humanitarian efforts abroad. Instead, the woman purchased a shore home and a breast enlargement. There are many more instances of this type of dishonesty and greed within some churches related to money issues, even some of our "holiest" can turn out to be immoral. I wonder if they thought about how God might be watching...