One question

[GMDino]

(09-04-2023, 11:18 AM)basballguy Wrote: They would love to (seriously) I'm sure.  But most churches can barely afford to keep the lights on with donations dude.  

If you wanna target ridiculous mega churches then cool but don't act like all churches are money hoarding machines.  

So, yes and no.

I can only use our local parishes as an example as that is where I attended.

My home parish built a brad new, larger church to replace the one that was 20 years old (with a school) in 1983.  It was paid off about five years ago.

They didn't count on a downturn in the economy, a drop in population/attendance OR a priest who stole from the coffers.

Same diocese, different church after I got married:  I was on the board for a year.  The priest wanted to put a new roof on the rectory.  We were informed that w had enough money to do it BUT under the rules we had to BORROW the money from the Diocese and pay it back with interest.  I assume this was to help keep THER coffers filled to "help" the poorer churches.  

Now, again, this was while my former parish was still struggling to pay off their "new" building that was 20 years old.  And they didn't get help.

The diocese also runs an annual campaign where each church is given a certain amount to collect in donations to help the diocese with misc things.  *IF* the parish raises more they get to keep that.

The church I was married in was closed because of a lack of priests.  We all moved to another local church (almost literally across the road) and told our church would remain as a chapel because the cemetery was located on church grounds.  The diocese tore it down within a year without telling any of us.  

Mind you that was in the black, so all the funding moved to a second, already existing location, and the new one still says they can't afford fuel every year.

tl;dr The money is there.  It is controlled by the higher ups and could be used to help the parishes but they "need" to hold on to it "just in case".

A lot of those funds go to missions to convert foreigners in the hopes they will become priests so they can move them to the US to make up for dwindling numbers here too.