Suffer the Little Collection Basket

Your diarist was dreading going to Mass at the home parish today after a few weeks in Bellingham but — you know what? — not so bad. Father Flapdoodle’s* homily on the loaves and the fishes was short and not awful, though it did arguably veer a little too close to Steven Spielberg’s Theology of the Infallible Child for comfort. Then again, some slack should be cut because the children were what really made Mass worth it this morning.

The church has started undertaking taking two simultaneous offerings, one for the adults and the other for the kids. The adult offering is collected in the usual way. Ushers pass collection baskets, dump them into a larger basket and take the monies forward with the hosts and co.

The children’s offering, for the 6-and-under set approximately, is collected by direct donation. Another basket is placed on the base of the altar. While the adult baskets are making the rounds, parents give children money that they then walk, skip or run up to the front. It’s a bit happy-clappy, sure, but you’d have to have a heart of the hardest metal ore to object.

E.T. make the sign of the cross?

* This is a made up name.