by Marty Murphy, Director of Finance and Operations
One of the benefits of the new collaborative Mass schedule is that you can always find a Sunday Mass that begins within the next hour or so. Running late no longer means missing Mass.
One question that has come up was what happens if someone goes to a Mass at one of the other parishes in the collaborative, but uses an offertory envelope from their home parish: "Where does my money end up?"
While many local parishes have always been kind enough to forward along offertory that was donated in another parish's envelope, we are in the process of updating our offertory envelopes at the three parishes in the collaborative to more clearly indicate where the money should go.
Within the next couple of months your offertory envelopes will begin to be color coded with a border: Maroon for Blessed Sacrament, blue for Our Lady of Sorrows and green for St. Mary. This border will ensure that your contribution goes to your home parish, regardless of where you attended Mass in the collaborative that particular weekend.
Please remember that you must use an envelope from your home parish for your contribution to be allocated to your account and to appear on your yearly contributions statement. Also, please be sure to write your check out to the parish for which you have envelopes. If you write a check for one parish and use a different parish's envelope, we will call you to confirm your intentions.
Thanks also are due to the ushers and money counters who volunteer many hours of their time to ensure the safe handling and processing of the offertory.