Stop The Church, I Want to Get Off
This morning I was awakened at the prime hour of 8:40 AM by a phone call from, of all things, someone purporting to be with the Franciscans.
In case you missed this piece of religious history, the Franciscans are a mendicant, or 'begging', order in the Catholic/Anglican churches, founded by St. Francis of Assisi. As near as I recall (and I could certainly be wrong, it's been a long time since my Western History classes) they didn't live in monasteries like some other monastic orders, but were 'traveling' monks, devoted to a life of simpllicity and service to their fellow man. They generally avoided gathering mundane wealth and goods, preferring to devote themselves to good works.
That's why, when the guy on the phone mentioned who he represented, I had a momentary moment of 'What the [insert your favorite expletive here] is going on?'
He then proceeded to tell me about ten young men who were working hard to become priests (didn't mention them specifically by NAME or anything, just that there was this group) and went on to ask if I might be insterested in helping them. Supposedly I could do so by allowing them to send me some kind of subscription offer. No money needed now, I could make my decision when I received the 'paperwork'.
Now, I'm a little fuzzy on this, because I was just awakened, remember. However, I still had the presence of mind to say, 'No, thank you, I'm not interested, but I do wish you good luck' in the pleasantest voice I could muster before I hung up. It probably wasn't all THAT pleasant, but I made the effort.
I guess the point is that I'm used to the Baptists, Fraternal Order of Police, Jehovah's Witnesses, Moonies, etc. etc. phoning at odd times throughout the year and attempting to interest me in sending them money. But this is the first time I've ever heard of anyone associated with the Catholic Church, let alone a branch of said that I've always associated with a lack of concern for worldly gain, soliciting donations.
All right, maybe this is in a sense a return to their roots, with the phone call substituting for an actual person holding out his hand and asking for whatever alms could be spared. They rely on the charity of their fellow man. Problem is, I guess, the impersonal nature of it. Exactly how did they choose me? I'm about as far from a Catholic as can be imagined. Ok, maybe it was a random dialer list. That's pretty standard these days. Add to that my impression that telemarketers and salesmen aren't supposed to call before 9 AM in a given time zone (that might be incorrect, could be 8 AM these days, or I might just remember wrong0 and you wind up with my general impression that this is Just... Wrong.
It's the Information Age, to be sure. However, all this ease of communication somehow reduces the human element, sometimes, and this is one of them. If I had met a friar on the street and he had told me the same story, asked me for a dollar or two, I might well have given it to him, because it would've been one human being talking to another. Fortune would've brought us together, not a randmly chosen printout of numbers in a particular ZIP code.
In trying to reach out and connect with as wide a group as possible in order to make their requests for donation more efficient, paradoxically, it seemed to me they were removing the human connection, the spirit of true giving, that a church, any church, is supposed to engender.
Or am I mistaken about that too?
In case you missed this piece of religious history, the Franciscans are a mendicant, or 'begging', order in the Catholic/Anglican churches, founded by St. Francis of Assisi. As near as I recall (and I could certainly be wrong, it's been a long time since my Western History classes) they didn't live in monasteries like some other monastic orders, but were 'traveling' monks, devoted to a life of simpllicity and service to their fellow man. They generally avoided gathering mundane wealth and goods, preferring to devote themselves to good works.
That's why, when the guy on the phone mentioned who he represented, I had a momentary moment of 'What the [insert your favorite expletive here] is going on?'
He then proceeded to tell me about ten young men who were working hard to become priests (didn't mention them specifically by NAME or anything, just that there was this group) and went on to ask if I might be insterested in helping them. Supposedly I could do so by allowing them to send me some kind of subscription offer. No money needed now, I could make my decision when I received the 'paperwork'.
Now, I'm a little fuzzy on this, because I was just awakened, remember. However, I still had the presence of mind to say, 'No, thank you, I'm not interested, but I do wish you good luck' in the pleasantest voice I could muster before I hung up. It probably wasn't all THAT pleasant, but I made the effort.
I guess the point is that I'm used to the Baptists, Fraternal Order of Police, Jehovah's Witnesses, Moonies, etc. etc. phoning at odd times throughout the year and attempting to interest me in sending them money. But this is the first time I've ever heard of anyone associated with the Catholic Church, let alone a branch of said that I've always associated with a lack of concern for worldly gain, soliciting donations.
All right, maybe this is in a sense a return to their roots, with the phone call substituting for an actual person holding out his hand and asking for whatever alms could be spared. They rely on the charity of their fellow man. Problem is, I guess, the impersonal nature of it. Exactly how did they choose me? I'm about as far from a Catholic as can be imagined. Ok, maybe it was a random dialer list. That's pretty standard these days. Add to that my impression that telemarketers and salesmen aren't supposed to call before 9 AM in a given time zone (that might be incorrect, could be 8 AM these days, or I might just remember wrong0 and you wind up with my general impression that this is Just... Wrong.
It's the Information Age, to be sure. However, all this ease of communication somehow reduces the human element, sometimes, and this is one of them. If I had met a friar on the street and he had told me the same story, asked me for a dollar or two, I might well have given it to him, because it would've been one human being talking to another. Fortune would've brought us together, not a randmly chosen printout of numbers in a particular ZIP code.
In trying to reach out and connect with as wide a group as possible in order to make their requests for donation more efficient, paradoxically, it seemed to me they were removing the human connection, the spirit of true giving, that a church, any church, is supposed to engender.
Or am I mistaken about that too?