Weekly Bulletin

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DonCoryon

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Hello Everyone,

This is my first post so I would like to introduce myself. My name is Cory and have been a Catholic my whole life, so to speak. I was born into a Catholic family, baptised as a baby, went through my first communion when I was ten. I never went to Church when I was a teenager and started going to Calvary Chapel when I was older. I am 26 now and I want to start attending Catholic Mass and fellowship with my fellow Catholics.

I have a question for everyone regarding the weekly bulletin of my local Parish. To start, I am very turned off by the standard Protestant tradition of always begging and selling things in the name of God. Such as, give a sermon and then sell it, hype products from he church store during intermission of the service (Between worship and the sermon), etc…

I visited my local Parish today to talk to the RCIA per the Parish office instruction. I asked about Mass times and I was given the Weekly Bulletin. The last three pages are all advertisements, everything from Realtors, doctors, and plumbers. I live in Las Vegas so as everyone knows there is a serious casino problem here, however, one of the ads is for the Coast Casinos, which is a group of “locals” casinos about 5 in the valley.

Two questions:
  1. Is it right to sell advertisements in the Church Bulletin?
  2. Is it right to allow Casinos to promote gambling in the Church Bulletin?
God bless all, thank you for all answers that are given.
 
Just about every bulletin has ads - that is normally how they raise the money to pay for the production of the bulletin. Larger churches have their bulletins prepared by a copy/printing service. In my small church we produced it ourselves. I did it for years and around the beginning of 05 someone who did not work a full time job took it over. There is the expense of the paper and toner for the copy machine and the cost of the copy machine. Our church week collection on a great weekend would be around $1,100 - $1,200 and by the time you pay the assessment to the Archdiocese, salary for secretary and priest, utilities for the church and rectory along with the food and gas used by the priest there isn’t much left. The small church I attend in Arkansas does not have ads - they just type it up and run copies and staple them together – we would copy ours on 11x17 paper and fold it so it looked like it was professionally printed.

I would like to think that a priest would review the ads in a church bulletin to make sure that none are offensive or go against the teachings of the church but I’m sure they are so busy that they don’t give it a second thought. If you have problems with any of the ads I’m sure you could let the church office or priest know your feelings – you may not be the only one but someone would have to speak up first.

Welcome back home.
 
Regarding Question #2, the Church is not against gambling, per se, which may be why the ad was permitted.
 
Welcome Home, Cory!

Remember that the advertisement is to make the Church Bulletin possible…it may also allow for Catholics to have information regarding local businesses, i.e. owned by fellow Parishonners (spelling? I am the worst…please forgive me), that can be supported with the idea that the owners are in communion with Rome regarding Church Teachings. For an example, on Catholic Radio in our area a local farm advertises their wares and their services and adds to their adverstisement “We urge you to support the Culture of Life”.

The Bulletin is one small way a Parish will communicate with the members. It is not the only way and the Bulletin is not the reason we are Catholic.

I am so glad you are home
 
Thank you all for the responses. I appreciate everyone of them.
 
Pax vobiscum!

I believe that a lot of the advertisements in bulletins are for businesses that regularly give money to the Church. So that way, the church would be giving people a list of companies that would be good to support, since the owners are Catholic and donate to the Church.

In Christ,
Rand
 
Just to clarify your comment, so that no one will misunderstand…the parish is not putting the ad in as a favor or to give recognition to faithful contributors to the parish.

Those ads are paid for by the business that advertises. If the parish has spaces to fill, they may ask a faithful parishoner who owns a business or works at a business to advertise, because as a faithful Catholic such a person is likely to agree to advertise.
 
jpjd said:
Just to clarify your comment, so that no one will misunderstand…the parish is not putting the ad in as a favor or to give recognition to faithful contributors to the parish.

Those ads are paid for by the business that advertises. If the parish has spaces to fill, they may ask a faithful parishoner who owns a business or works at a business to advertise, because as a faithful Catholic such a person is likely to agree to advertise.
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Are you saying that they shouldn’t be censored to only business that conform to God’s law?
 
No! My comment was not about who should be in the bulletin, it was about who is paying for the ad.

I’m saying that the parish does not pay for ads for businesses. The person’s comment that I was trying to clarify made it sound (to me, at least) that the parish paid for the ads so that they could get businesses in there that were owned by faithful parishoners to give recognition to them.

I’m trying to make the distinction that the parish may ask faithful parishoner business owners to run an ad (paid for by the faithful parishoner business owner), as opposed to the parish putting the ad in at parish expense. See the difference?

Just as a point of interest, our parish bulletin has ads for businesses whose owner or employees are not Catholic…but they do serve the Catholic population, such as funeral homes and nursing homes.
 
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