I want to start a new thread on this topic. I've heard other people say things similar to Miseremini's quote below. But when you look into the actual Church teachings and precepts, you find nothing to back it up. So I can only conclude that these beliefs are part of American (Baby Boomer?) culture or something, like an unspoken rule that lots of people are still living by today.

1. If you attend the Mass you contribute.

2. The workman is worthy of his hire.  Also it is a precept of the Church.

3. If no one paid there would be no Mass.

4. Just because we are resisting doesn't mean we can throw out all the rules albeit you don't have to be as generous as previously.

1. There is nothing that says you have to. And you don't have to contribute MONEY necessarily. And I could follow your arbitrary "rule" here by putting in $1.

2. If you are concerned with giving the "workman his hire", press a bill (and/or envelope) into his palm after Mass. That gives it to the workman directly. This has the added benefit of showing he has supporters, who will likely continue to support him EVEN IF he did the right thing and left the SSPX! He only gets so much monthly income from the SSPX anyhow. Do you think the priest personally lives off the collection proceeds? I'm here to tell you that's not how it works. I'm married to an ex-treasurer of an SSPX chapel. I know what I'm talking about.

That collection basket is deposited in the chapel's bank account(s), and a portion of that goes upstream to the priory (if any) and some goes upstream to the district HQ and Menzingen. Why support those guys? That's where the real evil is.

The priest is paid by A) checks/cash he receives directly from parishioners (gifts, Mass stipends) and a check written by the SSPX to him every month. Your personal contributions to the collection plate have nothing to do with his income!

Last but not least, there is NO precept of the Church that says you have to put money in the collection basket if you attend Mass somewhere. The precept is "Contribute to the support of the Church". This obligation would be met by supporting Bishop Williamson, Bishop Faure's seminary, Fr. Roy, Fr. Voigt, the Dominicans in France, Fr. Zendejas, Fr. Chazal, (or any other Resistance priest) from a distance and then going to your SSPX chapel and putting in $5.

God will judge your fidelity to this commandment on how much TOTAL (money, time, talents) you have given to building up the Church. And that certainly includes the Resistance! If anything, God will have to forgive you for wasting money on a sinking ship, that could have been used to build up the Church in other places (e.g., the Resistance).

3. But plenty of duped SSPX-ers contribute every week, and will continue to contribute even after the SSPX fully transforms into FSSP part 2. Chances are, your chapel isn't going anywhere.

4. So, in conclusion, the "rule" you speak of doesn't exist, but seems to be rather a personal/cultural interpretation of one of the Laws of the Church, namely "Contribute to the Support of the Church".

The Mass is not bought or sold. There is not a "ticket admission" price. Attending Mass without contributing to THAT Mass's collection is not like climbing under the tent walls of a circus like a naughty 10 year old boy, or sneaking into a movie theater without paying like a naughty 15 year old boy.

The priest isn't putting on a commercial "show" with an admission fee. The poor may attend, and in fact if they are baptized they have a right to attend.

NOTE: the issue of invitations becomes tricky when you're not dealing with normal times -- i.e., when a "church" building is limited in size, owned by a private family, and the "invitees" are theoretically the whole United States population. For example, St. Mary's KS has a ridiculous number of Trad Catholics, because Trads have migrated there from all over the country. Normally a Catholic church in Kansas wouldn't be in constant danger of exceeding its occupancy limit.

ANOTHER NOTE: This kind of dichotomy between "who I should support" and "where I'm forced to attend Mass" is only found in emergency times such as our own. Normally you go to your local parish, and contribute to the massive Catholic Church (parish, diocese, archdiocese, and some goes to Rome) which takes that money and has a network of charities, schools, etc. and takes care of many things.

In normal times, you wouldn't attend some Franciscan convent for Mass but (due to some serious problem with the Franciscans) not contribute much money to them. Why go to the Franciscan Mass then? It's not like that's your only option. Why not just go to another location for Mass, even your local parish, which you CAN support?

Which is why I say: this problem is a unique creature of our Crisis in the Church.

We have lived in many places and have had to attend Indult Masses in the past. We used to not give any money into the collection plate because we did not want to financially support the Novus Ordo or pay off any molestation lawsuits..ick.

We would donate individually to priests in other places and we would sometimes give money to the building fund collection. We used to send a lot of money (back in the day) to the SSPX.

Now, we find ourselves feeling the same way we did back then, in our present SSPX parish.

We give money to Resistance priests, but find ourselves reluctant to give money to the SSPX "plate" as we fear it goes to Menzingen and supports their "agendas" (rebranding survey, anyone??).

We do give money to the school collections, but are reluctant to even give money to the buidling fund itself now, since that money has been mismanaged and we are very offended by the heavy-handed tactics from Fr. Wegner.

Personally, I don't understand why they are hitting up the faithful so hard for money if they have received this $80 million dollar GREC windfall and are building a $20M seminary.

I would like to hear Matthew expound more on how the money from the faithful is used in SSPX parishes, and the percentages of what is flowing "upstream" away from the parish itself.

 

Quote from: mw2016

I would like to hear Matthew expound more on how the money from the faithful is used in SSPX parishes, and the percentages of what is flowing "upstream" away from the parish itself.

It's been awhile since I cut those checks, but I'm pretty sure it was 10% of the general collection. It's not a secret. We gave out chapel financial statements (albeit rarely) showing income, expenses, and asset balances.

Restricted funds -- building, priory, school, etc -- are legally restricted to the use intended by the donor, as with every non-profit.

Interesting.

Phoenix is pretty good about posting their collection plate totals once a month in the bulletin, but they've never said how much of it is sent "upstream," nor any other breakdown of expenses.

P.S. I am still highly bothered by Fr. Wegner's statement a few weeks back about a "fee" every parish pays into a "legal fund" to defend against lawsuits. What the hell?

P.S. I am still highly bothered by Fr. Wegner's statement a few weeks back about a "fee" every parish pays into a "legal fund" to defend against lawsuits. What the hell?

It's not particularly unreasonable in and of itself. Lawyers and lawsuits are incredibly expensive, and they can come up for all kinds of outrageous reasons. If you don't have some kind of system like this in place, you run the risk of having parishes destroyed financially because of malicious or frivolous lawsuits.

Quote from: Last Tradhican

A father generously provides for his son during his youth, he later pays for the wedding and buys the son a car and gives him the money for the down payment on the house. One day thereafter, the son leaves his wife and goes off with another woman. The father then stops supporting his son.

The son calls his father selfish.

Do you know of a case like this? Or is this some kind of allegory?

It is an allegory of the SSPX. How many of the faithful have paid for building the chapels, buying Winona, paying for the seminarians schooling and paying for the priest housing and food, and cleaning up after them? Now, the SSPX is dating another woman, a rich famous woman, has abandoned his wife and children (the faithful and the cause). It happened to everyone of us.

Now they call us selfish for going to mass and not giving them money.

Quote from: Last Tradhican

A father generously provides for his son during his youth, he later pays for the wedding and buys the son a car and gives him the money for the down payment on the house. One day thereafter, the son leaves his wife and goes off with another woman. The father then stops supporting his son.

The son calls his father selfish.

Do you know of a case like this? Or is this some kind of allegory?

Obviously, it's an allegory.

Our parish is pissed that donations are down and they can't figure out why. We have some of our oldest, foundational members who have fled to the FSSP. And then they send Fr. Wegner to browbeat us for money.

Last Tradhican sums it up well.

I don't mean to derail this threat but does anyone know who holds the mortgages on the chapels?  Are they held locally by a bank, parishoner or is it possible the SSPX holds them and charges interest to the parishoners?

Just curious.

If the SSPX holds the mortgages, what a great deal for them.

Maybe Matthew can answer this?