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ElizMary
Guest
said:
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ElizMary
Guest
Fortunately, the vast majority of Catholic parishes do not charge for RCIA, and they shouldn’t. Our parish has assisted with costs for a local parish that is struggling. That’s what responsible stewardship is about.
We will have to agree to disagree on this one.
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Phemie
Guest
I’m on my parish’s finance council and I’ve had to argue against a fee for baptism. I keep repeating that we cannot charge for a sacrament. The actual amount each baptism costs the parish is less than $20 which, with around 20 baptisms a year, is not a large amount. Like some of the posters above, I’m willing to purchase the supplies myself if it means that nobody is left with the idea that they are paying for a sacrament because we ask a fee for the obligatory preparation.
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Lapey
Guest
The stipend for baptism at my home parish is $10 for a registered parishioner and $20 for a non-registered person.
I’ve done some checking, we do not have a stipend for RCIA. CCD has a stipend of $40 if you can afford it and it is advertised that way so there is no confusion; most do pay it.
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bben15
Guest
I can understand charging a fee for RCIA classes. But, if financially unable, the fee should be waived.
Also, charging a fee for a sacrament is unacceptable. It is simony, and a cleric who commits it is automatically suspended. They can ask for a donation, though.
Also, charging a fee for a sacrament is unacceptable. It is simony, and a cleric who commits it is automatically suspended. They can ask for a donation, though.
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Joannm
Guest
We don’t charge a fee for RCIA but I know of parishes that do not have good financial situation and do ask the RCIA candidates to make a donation towards materials. If you have a big RCIA materials can get expensive. We give each person a bible, many Catholic Updates, and handouts that we have to copy for them. We also have to pay for coffee and milk (the team rotates bringing donuts and cookies). We have robes made for the Elect and while women in the parish sew them for free we do have to buy the materials. We also buy flowers for those being baptized or confirmed. I have ordered a number of videos for candidates to watch (the Catholicism series was well over $100 and a new one I just bought is $100. Some parishes give candidates a Catechism, a workbook, or other books. So you see there are many expenses for RCIA that many parishes cannot afford. Asking the candidates for a donation helps keep the program going.
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CradleJourney
Guest
JMO - I still feel it should be up to current Catholics to cover the cost of all this for those in the RCIA program. No offense, I really like what you are doing - but I hate the whole idea of “we are going to give you nice things (robes, flowers, snacks, a bible) so give us the money so we can give these things to you”. Asking for a donations from the parish or holding fundraisers for the RCIA materials and supplies is more appropriate and keeping with our mission of evangelization in my opinion (which is worth what you paid for it).
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MSSheBear
Guest
My parish does not charge for RCIA and has an excellent RCIA. (Not just in 2011-2012.) An entry fee would be a turn off to some people. Occasionally we were asked to pay for some small item but we could decline to buy it. Parish members would often donate food for the retreats or offer free DVD’s. But no processee was required to pay for it.
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Joannm
Guest
I said we do not charge them, however if they are becoming a member of the parish they should be making donations as that is a precept of the church. The donation does not go to RCIA specifically but to the support of the parish. Our Protestant converts are very accustomed to making donations and often are surprised that we don’t have tithing.JMO - I still feel it should be up to current Catholics to cover the cost of all this for those in the RCIA program. No offense, I really like what you are doing - but I hate the whole idea of “we are going to give you nice things (robes, flowers, snacks, a bible) so give us the money so we can give these things to you”. Asking for a donations from the parish or holding fundraisers for the RCIA materials and supplies is more appropriate and keeping with our mission of evangelization in my opinion (which is worth what you paid for it).
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Honour
Guest
Yes, I struggled with this concept…how do you know how much is enough and how much is extra?
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TimothyH
Guest
Books cost money at any parish.
All you have to do is tell the parish that you can’t afford it and they should be able to help. As someone else has said, it is not permissible for the Church or a priest to deny a sacrament because someone can’t pay.
I don’t get why everyone so quick to abandon a parish. Why not just make and appointment and explain things.
-Tim-
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Sarabande
Guest
I don’t think our parish charges for RCIA, but I’m not sure. For baptisms at our parish, no one really sets an amount, but we have donated to the parish for our children’s baptisms.
Weddings are a completely different beast. Where I am, it’s not unusual for parishes to charge upwards of $2000 to get married there, just for the use of the church. Then there are extras like, stipend to the priest, musicians, pre-cana, clean-up, etc. My parish is $800. Working with a lot of churches for weddings, I do kind of understand the reasoning for it. Many of the church buildings are very old and the costs of just opening the church up for a few hours with heat, cooling, lighting, etc. are astronomically high, so people really are just paying for the use of the building, not for the sacrament, most of the time. At a former parish, the cost used to be $800, but when they needed a new roof and other repairs, they passed the costs to the couples getting married, raising the price to use the building to $2000 for non-parishioners. They were having between 3-4 weddings a weekend, many of whom were not parishioners, so they were using that income to keep the parish going. It was a small parish with a gorgeous church that many people wanted to use.
What I find a little disconcerting is that I have found that some people who were trying to have modest weddings and just wanted to celebrate the sacrament at a regular Sunday mass or Saturday vigil, were not permitted and could only get married during the allotted times given on a Saturday or Friday and pay the church building fee. Honestly, I feel that if you can celebrate other sacraments during regular Sunday mass, which I see very often at many parishes, why can’t the sacrament of matrimony be the same… and I thought that this could be done, especially for couples who didn’t want or need anything special in terms of the music, processions, etc.?
To be fair, most couples don’t want to get married during regular mass times. If you want to look at some of these couples with a pessimistic view, there are a number who don’t even really care about the actual sacrament and are going through the motions because their parents want it or they just like the pretty church, etc. As someone who does a lot of weddings, I hear it all and am sometimes surprised by these couples.
Weddings are a completely different beast. Where I am, it’s not unusual for parishes to charge upwards of $2000 to get married there, just for the use of the church. Then there are extras like, stipend to the priest, musicians, pre-cana, clean-up, etc. My parish is $800. Working with a lot of churches for weddings, I do kind of understand the reasoning for it. Many of the church buildings are very old and the costs of just opening the church up for a few hours with heat, cooling, lighting, etc. are astronomically high, so people really are just paying for the use of the building, not for the sacrament, most of the time. At a former parish, the cost used to be $800, but when they needed a new roof and other repairs, they passed the costs to the couples getting married, raising the price to use the building to $2000 for non-parishioners. They were having between 3-4 weddings a weekend, many of whom were not parishioners, so they were using that income to keep the parish going. It was a small parish with a gorgeous church that many people wanted to use.
What I find a little disconcerting is that I have found that some people who were trying to have modest weddings and just wanted to celebrate the sacrament at a regular Sunday mass or Saturday vigil, were not permitted and could only get married during the allotted times given on a Saturday or Friday and pay the church building fee. Honestly, I feel that if you can celebrate other sacraments during regular Sunday mass, which I see very often at many parishes, why can’t the sacrament of matrimony be the same… and I thought that this could be done, especially for couples who didn’t want or need anything special in terms of the music, processions, etc.?
To be fair, most couples don’t want to get married during regular mass times. If you want to look at some of these couples with a pessimistic view, there are a number who don’t even really care about the actual sacrament and are going through the motions because their parents want it or they just like the pretty church, etc. As someone who does a lot of weddings, I hear it all and am sometimes surprised by these couples.
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Phemie
Guest
I know that one couple I read about was married at the Sunday Mass. They were both members of the parish, members of the choir, very active parishioners. They saw getting married at Sunday Mass as a way to share this moment with their parish family. They didn’t look upon it as a way to save money. They slipped into the first pew with their witnesses, as parents presenting their children for Baptism would do.
But generally most couples don’t want that, they want to still be the focus even if it’s Sunday Mass. That doesn’t fit what Sunday is about and most priests won’t go for it.
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Sarabande
Guest
See, if my husband and I knew that this was allowed during our engagement, we would have wanted the same thing for our wedding. We were both members of the choir and were very active and would have wanted to get married during the regular mass when our choir sang. It would not have been a way to save money, either, because the fee was already waived for us on the Saturday we did get married since we were choir members. It was a special waiver for choristers since we gave so much of our free time to them on the weekends and holidays without pay. That’s not to say we didn’t have a beautiful, spiritual wedding mass. We did. It was perfect and the best part of our day, but I think we would have both loved a Sunday mass, as neither one of us really liked having too much attention on us (and I think I would have preferred not having to process in or out of the church. That was the most awkward part for me. haha!)
I would agree and I think that is why most couples wouldn’t want a wedding during a Sunday mass since they would not be able to choose their readings, the music, have a procession, etc. That said, the people I knew who wanted to get married on a Sunday were not wanting the focus on them, as well. They wanted something modest, nothing over-the-top. Their weddings were simple and honestly, some of the loveliest and elegant weddings I’ve sung for because you could tell it was about the sacrament and they really believed in what was going on.
Neither one of my children were baptized during a regular Sunday mass. One was baptized on a Saturday. The other was baptized on a Sunday afternoon. We weren’t charged any money for the use of the church, even if the sacrament took about as long as a half hour to 45 min. wedding ceremony without the mass. Now, I’m not in the position to criticize, and like I mentioned before, I do understand some of the reasoning as to why a charge is made for couples getting married outside of the church mass times. I’m one of the first people to defend a parish’s reasoning to couples who complain to me about the costs. Most don’t realize how much money it takes to just open a church building between 100 and 250 years old (many of the churches in my area are this old). But…is it also common for other parishes to charge the same for parents who want to have their child baptized outside of a regular Sunday mass or for a family member to schedule their loved one’s funeral mass, etc.? Or is this usually just a fee for people getting married? If it is, a part of me feels like it might be a little unfair, especially to people who really do take the sacrament seriously. Perhaps they should charge something for the use of the building, maybe graduated, depending on the length of the sacrament. That way, the costs might not be so high for wedding couples, if everyone shared in it. I don’t know… just throwing around ideas.
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Phemie
Guest
We don’t have private Baptism so obviously we don’t charge parents for the use of the church. All our Baptisms are celebrated during Mass, generally the Sunday Mass (whether on Saturday or Sunday) but sometimes, for a very good reason, we’ll celebrate one during a weekday Mass. All are done the same way, and the family processes in with the altar servers, reader and the priest. If a wedding was celebrated at the Sunday Mass the couple would process in the way it’s written up in the Rite of Marriage: just behind the priest who would have greeted them at the door of the church with their witnesses and perhaps their parents.
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Sarabande
Guest
That handles the situation of charging for the use of the church at your parish.
Do you know if they would charge the parents for the use of the church if they did do private baptism? Our parish doesn’t for baptisms. We just give a donation of our choosing whether during Sunday mass or for a private baptism, but it does charge for use of the church building when a couple gets married. Also, how do they handle it for funeral masses? Is the charge the same as for weddings?
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Phemie
Guest
Our parish is a bit weird when it comes to funerals.That handles the situation of charging for the use of the church at your parish.
We live in an area that still has vast tracks of crown land, land that belongs to the province, not to individuals. Said land can be ‘granted’ for a nominal sum, usually the cost of the paperwork and surveying. This land cannot be sold without paying full value to the government.
In our town, each parish was granted a section of land for its cemetery but all in the same multi-acrea area that the town had designated as ‘cemetery land’. Each parish’s cemetery abutted another parish’s cemetery, Catholic, Anglican, Jehovah’s Witness, Salvation Army, Pentecostal, all in the same ‘field’, for want of a better word.
Our former Bishop was used to the Cathedral Parish where there was no Catholic cemetery but a ‘town cemetery’ which the town cared for. There might be a ‘Catholic’ section but it was still the town cemetery. So when the time came to expand our cemetery and the government consented to grant us more land, he refused to accept it, feeling that it was the town’s responsibility to provide us with a cemetery. Odd thinking, but there you are. Of course the town had no interest in doing that.
There things stood until the Ministerial Association put together a Cemetery Committee made up of reps from the cemetery committee from each parish. Our pastor at the time, knowing how the Bishop felt, decided that the cemetery committee for our parish would be an at arm’s length entity with its own bank account and not accountable to the Church.
This M.A. Cemetery Committee had the cemetery cleaned up, each section delineated and signs erected, and in general the place was fixed up and beautified. A fund raising campaign helped pay to install pillars along the edge of the cemetery that is along the town’s main street.
At that moment, our parish, which had never charged for funerals before, found out that other churches did charge for cemetery upkeep so, since then, the funeral home imposes a $200 or $250 fee on all funerals and that money is then turned over to our parish’s cemetery committee. The parish sees none of that, but the Catholic Cemetery Committee used the funds to apply for and pay for the granted land that the Bishop had once refused. AFAIK, the land wasn’t granted to the parish but to the Committee.
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Sarabande
Guest
Yes, that is unusual. Thank you for that detailed explanation. I do think there is always something similar in terms of oddities when it comes to various parishes or dioceses. It’s nice that they don’t charge for use of the church building for funeral masses? Is it the same for weddings there as well?
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Phemie
Guest
We never used to charge for weddings but then a new priest came and a fee of $150 was imposed on couples who were being married & doing the marriage prep here and $100 for those who came from outside and had done the prep elsewhere.
It appears from what I’ve received from our new pastor, that the couples are now going to be asked to make a donation of $100 to the parish and will be charged $250 for the use of the church.
Our parish, like so many other rural parishes, doesn’t have a proper choir and music director. Everyone is a volunteer and none are trained musicians or singers so there is no ‘bench fee’ or requirement to use them for weddings. We often end up with recorded music or soloists/musicians who know nothing about the Catholic faith or the music proper to Mass and/or the sacrament of Marriage.
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Sarabande
Guest
The amounts are really reasonable compared to what is charged around my way for weddings, especially since it also goes towards the marriage prep. I think what they charge is fair as it isn’t really that high and for around here, depending on income level, it would be a common donation that people would give (or more) for sacraments other than the sacrament of matrimony.
As I mentioned, it was $2000 at a former parish (the highest I’ve seen… not too common) and that was just for the use of the church for the Sacrament of Matrimony. When I was married, the fee for the church building was $800, although that was waived for us. My current parish charges $800 just for the use of the church building. Most parishes around here usually charges about $800 +/- a few hundred for the church building. Some will include the marriage prep and even the musicians, but most don’t. Again, I can’t criticize, but over the past year or so, I’ve been having trouble seeing how a parish will charge $800 more or less for the use of the church when a couple gets married, yet don’t charge that much or nothing at all when a family uses the church for another sacrament, privately celebrated, such as a baptism or funeral. If charges were more graduated or about equal for the use of the church building during different sacraments, I would have a better understanding of it, but in my area, at least, it just seems to occur only for the marriage sacrament. This is probably more of a regional or diocesan issue.
I understand the dynamics of rural parishes, having spent half of my life in one, and, as an adult, knowing how grateful some of these rural parish organists/pianists, etc. are when they find out that the couple hired a cantor/soloist who actually does understand the mass and the Catholic faith. You can almost see the heaviness lift off of their shoulders. lol! When I advertise myself, I focus on my experience and knowledge of the mass, as I actually prefer to do Catholic weddings when I freelance.
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