LETTERS to the EDITOR,

PARISH FINANCING
Success of the Pledge Scheme
SIR,-When the pledge scheme was first introduced into this country and adopted by some parishes as a substitute for footballs and bingo, it met with some very heavy criticism. The critics, one suspects, spoke up against something they knew nothing about.
To begin with, many people considered it wrong to have to call in a fund raising organisation or„ as these organisations were sometimes referred to, "professional money raisers". But all things considered, with most people money is a delicate topic and to ask them to pledge a small percentage of their income each week to the parish needs careful handling. The priest is not the best man to do this.
For one thing. our people are frankly sick of hearing the priest beg for money from the pulpit; and the immediate reaction of most Catholics to a priest calling on them is to dip their hands into their pockets.
The pledge scheme does away with all this it does away too with football pools and bingo--attractive hut avaricious methods of providing an income for the parish. Furthermore. bingo may bring Catholics and non-Catholics together but it does not bring the parish together.
The pledge scheme, on the other hand, awakens the people's responsibility in giving voluntarily without any strings attached and, as it has been said before in these columns, it needs very expert guidance to arouse a sense of responsibility in money matters these days.
Voluntary giving is surely the right spirit in which to give, We give voluntarily when we put money on the plate on Sundays but to pledge to give so much a week is more beneficial to a parish than the present alternative methods of giving through the medium of mild forms of gambling and the two or even three collections Ott a Sunday.
For one thing, the pledge scheme enables the parish priest to budget for the future and secondly, and more important, it benefits the parish spiritually. There is only one collection at every Mass on a Sunday with the pledge scheme. And on to the plate go the pledgegivers' envelopes, containing an amount which is known only to the parish priest, the committee chairman and the actual canvasser. The envelopes are collected at the Offertory and put on the altar to show the spiritual and sacrificial aspect of the pledge, Finally, nobody is forced to pledge anything. Parishioners are quite free to decide for themselves if they wish to join the pledge scheme. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. It works in this parish with little or no fuss and the parishioners, because of it, feel they belong to the parish. And this sense of belonging is something which is decidedly missing in most parishes today.
St. Mary's Priory, Hightield Street, Liverpool, 3.
Dom Christopher Delaney,