And please, folks, never put cash in the collection basket! It's easy to lift bills and there's no paper trail. Writing a check makes it a lot harder to steal. None of this comes as a surprise to me. A priest friend from California told me several years ago that a friend of his who is a financial adviser and investigator to the Vatican told him the next big scandal would be over embezzlement. It was second hand hearsay for me, but every time I read about an immoral priest supporting a lavish lifestyle with money stolen from parishioners, I remember my conversation with my friend.
