Starting today, Roman Catholics in the Chicago archdiocese canmake donations to the church or pay their children's Catholic schooltuition as easily as they pay their health club membership or Visabill, with the help of an electronic payment service hired by thearchdiocese.
The Chicago archdiocese is the largest diocese in the country tomake online, electronic and credit card donations and payments anoption for all its parishes and schools, said Joe Mohen, managingdirector of the electronic commerce company Parish Pay, based in NewYork.
By logging on to www.parishpay.com, phoning toll-free (866) PARISH-1 or contacting their parishes directly for an application, ChicagoCatholics can set up automatic payments for weekly, monthly or yearlydonations to their parish; special gifts to the church, or Catholicschool tuition.
The funds can be withdrawn electronically out of checking andsavings accounts or charged to credit cards. The money goes directlyto individual parish accounts as soon as the transaction is clearedand is not held by the archdiocese or Parish Pay for any length oftime, Mohen said.
Donors can skip a month if they choose, switch to a differentcredit card or bank account or make an anonymous donation while stillgetting tax receipts.
There is no charge to the donor and Parish Pay will take 1 percentof all the donations made to the Chicago archdiocese and will charge$1 per month per donor, Mohen said.
"The whole driving force behind looking at technologies like theseis an effort to help people make their giving to the church planned,to carefully reflect on all that God has given them," said TimDockery, director of development services for the stewardship anddevelopment office of the Chicago archdiocese.
"We're trying to encourage our people not only to be better donorsbut, quite frankly, to be better Catholics by honoring God's commandthat we give back a portion of what he's already given us," Dockerysaid.
Enabling parishioners to give money to the church or Catholicschool by having the funds automatically put on a credit card ordeducted from a bank account could double church collections, Mohensaid.
Last year, the Archdiocese of Chicago took in $220 million fromchurch offerings and another $7 million from its annual appeal.
Whether Chicagoans will warm to giving electronically rather thanpitching an envelope into the collection basket remains to be seen.Don Brink, 70, who visited Holy Name Cathedral on Tuesday wasskeptical that the new payment methods will increase donations.
"If they're not putting it in their weekly envelopes, they're notgoing to go to a computer to do it," he said.
His wife, Phoebe, 65, said the electronic donating may be a hitwith younger Catholics.
"Among the kids, that'll be the way to give," she said.
Staff reporter Julie Patel contributed to this report.
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