You wonder why I hate the snow?

Piling up at parishes: cold, wet snow that's hurting the collection





By Mark Pattison
Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Oh, the weather outside has been frightful, meaning that fewer Catholics have braved a trek to their churches during a series of weekend winter snowstorms.

This means in turn that the Sunday offertory revenue is down, creating a hole in parish budgets while at the same time snowstorm-related expenses pile up.

A series of storms have socked in large chunks of the mid-Atlantic region this winter. The first took place Dec. 19, the Saturday before Christmas. A second storm, not as large as the December blast, happened Jan. 30, another Saturday. But an epic snowfall, registering record totals in Baltimore and Philadelphia and dumping massive amounts of snow throughout the mid-Atlantic, started Feb. 5, a Friday, and didn't end until nearly 24 hours had passed. The region was hit again Feb. 10.

Bishops in many of the affected dioceses dispensed Catholics of the obligation to attend Mass those weekends, as safety considerations took precedence.

But as Catholics were missing from the pews, so too were their offertory envelopes from the collection baskets.

"Gone" was the word Father Mark Hughes used to describe the missing offertories.

Of the weekends affected by the storms, the offertories "all together would not add up to one Sunday," said Father Hughes, pastor of Holy Redeemer Parish in Kensington, Md., a Washington suburb.

A few parishioners double up on their offertories if they miss a week, he added. And some parishioners keep current by contributing on a monthly basis "if they've already paid," Father Hughes said. "Then you have the people who throw in the cash. That's gone."

At St. Philip Parish in the Washington suburb of Falls Church, Va., in the Diocese of Arlington, Father Kevin Walsh, the pastor, said the parish's situation is buffered somewhat by electronic giving.

About 20 parishes in the diocese, including St. Philip, use an electronic collection system. The contributions account for about 20 percent of the parish's income, Father Walsh told Catholic News Service in a Feb. 10 telephone interview.

"We were blessed," he said. "You can count on a consistent budget no matter what the weather is."

Even so, after the December snowstorm, "the cost of snow removal was more than the offertory," Father Walsh added.

Snow removal costs loom larger than the drifts piling up in church parking lots.

"We usually experience mild winters here, so didn't' have a whole lot budgeted for plowing," said Redemptorist Father John McKenna, pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in largely rural Seaford, Del., in the Diocese of Wilmington. "It's a disaster."

Father McKenna said that with two weekends in a row with too much white stuff on the ground, momentum gets lost for such things as religious education and preparation for Lent, beginning Feb. 17, Ash Wednesday. "It's ground to a halt," he said.

While the church's parking lot was clear, when the priest spoke to CNS city and county plows couldn't get to the secondary roads where most members of the 900-household parish live.

Father McKenna said it was his "fondest hope" that parishioners would contribute to parish upkeep for the Sundays they couldn't get to Mass, "because the last two weekends have been a washout, attendance-wise," including a 95 percent drop in attendance after the Feb.5-6 snowstorm.

In Kensington, Father Hughes said the revenue foregone from offertories left a hole of about 4 percent so far in Holy Redeemer's fiscal year, "and that's on top of (being) down 10-11 percent due to the economy."

The same company that cuts the grass on the church grounds in other seasons also removes snow from the parking lots. "They do the snow whether we want it done or not," Father Hughes said. "This snowstorm is a blessing in disguise for them."

One bright spot, he added, is that the lawn and snow firm is owned by a parishioner who gives Holy Redeemer a 20 percent discount.

He added he was not likely to ask parishioners to help make up the difference. For one thing, an annual archdiocese-wide appeal was coming up, not long after a series of special collections in the parish over the past four or five months. For another, the parish is not in a financial bind, although the revenue falloff means it will be able to bank three-fourths or maybe as little as one-half of what it usually banks for capital projects.

And, as pastors talked with CNS, the Feb. 10 blizzard was strafing the mid-Atlantic and New England states, and another storm, though expected to be much smaller, was predicted to hit Feb. 16.

END