A Tenth Before Taxes

Are bingo, raffles and bazaars preferable to digging down for regular church contributions? Many Roman Catholics seem to think so. Last week Father John P. Weigand of St. Joseph's of the Palisades Church in West New York, N.J. was being given a hard time by his parishioners, for he had had the temerity to call off the "carnivals" and substitute the oldest form of fund raising Christianity knows: tithing.

A tithe--literally, "tenth"--is simply a tax of a tenth of one's income. The ancient Israelites paid it, and Christians carried on the custom; the Synod of Macon in 585 made it compulsory under threat of excommunication. After the Reformation, the Protestants continued tithing until the custom fell into disuse during the last century, except with the Mormons, the Seventh-day Adventists, and several other groups, which have flourished on it. Since World War II, however, tithing has staged something of a comeback among Protestants, though not among Catholics.

Father Weigand brought it up in a Christmas letter to St. Joseph's 23,000 baptized parishioners, and he was not merely suggesting. Tithing, he said, was "God's plan" for fund raising, and he instructed parishioners to give 5% of their incomes before taxes to the church and 5% to charity. The plan, which was "not optional," would not only eliminate bazaars, etc., but also the novena and Mass donations common in Roman Catholic churches. Any family placed in actual need by the 10% donation, wrote Father Weigand. should come to him for help.

Then the phone began to ring. Cries of "dictatorship," questions about enforcement, shrieks of fiscal pain descended upon the pastor's head. Soon the vicar general of the Newark archdiocese, Msgr. James A. Hughes, came to the rescue.

Father Weigand's plan had been misinterpreted, he said; there was no way of enforcing the giving of a tithe, no declaration of income would be required, no punishment would be exacted of those who failed to comply. Said Msgr. Hughes: "I don't like this business of charging that we're totalitarian." Father Weigand contributed to the ambiguous blur by announcing that if tithing was "not optional," it was not compulsory, either. Anyway, the "carnival atmosphere" will be ended at St. Joseph's for 1961, at least. A single exception: the Saturday night bingo games in the church's community center. Almost all the bingo players, Father Weigand noted, are from outside the parish.

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