Again, I say you’re all making too much out of it!!
You sound like the Protestants who believe that the Vatican keeps a big list of non-Catholics and uses that list to keep non-Catholics from getting jobs, admission into colleges, adequate treatment in (Catholic) hospitals, and even as a death list!
I’ve seen a lot of those pads that have a space to check “NO, I do not wish to be called.” I’m sure there are some churches that abuse these pads, but nowadays, they have to be extremely careful because people are quick to press charges for “harassment.” If I thought I was being hounded by a “cult”, I probably would press charges and get a restraining order.
But that’s not why most Protestant churches use those pads.
One of the really nice things about them is that they help you get to know the people sitting around you. As you fill out the pad, you see the names of the people who filled it out before you, and you now can put names/faces together and know who someone is and where they live–heck, they might even live down the block from you! Cool!
As you pass the pad back down, you can learn the names of all the people in the pew with you, and after church, you can say, “Hi, Bob Brown!” and he can say, “Hi, Jane Smith!”
I don’t see anything wrong with this. I see a great deal of good in it. It gives people a tool to get to know names, not just faces. Our Christian and Missionary Alliance church used to call them “Friendship Pads.”
And no one forces anyone to fill out the pad. If you have a conspiracy mentality, you can just pass it on down and smile at the person next to you. No one will hit you over the head with a big black Bible if you leave it blank.
Again, I think it would behoove Catholic churches to seek more tools for helping people get to know each other. The methods that I’ve seen our large Catholic church use are :
- Coffee and donuts after the 9:30 mass (but not the other masses)
- Ladies salad luncheon
- Church picnic, featuring a keg
- Church pancake breakfast
- Church spaghetti supper
- Church corned beef and cabbage dinner
- Church fish fry
- Church soup and bread lunch (to raise awareness of the hungry and poor )
Do you get the idea?! It’s all about FOOD! And if you don’t like sitting around and eating with strangers (I don’t), you don’t go to these things.
So why NOT come up with some new tools for helping people put names with faces? I’m not saying Catholic Churches should use the Friendship pads, but I wouldn’t have a problem if they did.
In one of the churches that I was a member of for ten years, a dear lady came up with a great way to learn names. She carried a notebook around, and whenever she said “Hi” to anyone that she didn’t know (and she looked for people she didn’t know), she would ask if she could write their names down in her notebook. She would also write down any details about that person, e.g., babies and their names, a pregnancy, what their occupation was, which sports team they were rooting for in the March Madness tourney (we lived in North Carolina, so it had BETTER be one of the local teams!).
Then the next week, she would approach people and say, “Hi,” call them by names, and ask them about their babies, their pregnancy, their job, or their sports team (or whatever she had written down).
She was absolutely delightful, and her notebook was filled with almost everyone in the church. She also used it to pray for all the people she met, not just general “bless them” prayers, but specific prayers about their babies, pregnancies, jobs, or even sports teams!
Again, I see nothing wrong with using tools to get to know people.
And frankly, I don’t have any problem with a Baptist pastor visiting me! Bring 'em on! I’m a converted ex-evangelical who spent my childhood in a Baptist church, and I love opportunities to talk to Protestants about why I left Protestantism to become a Catholic! (Bwoo ha ha!)
This is the lst time i heard such a cases about attendance pads…no such thing in all the churches in my country.