Show Me The Money

"What happened to all those angry Catholics who vowed to stop giving money to the church because of the way the hierarchy had handled the priest sex-abuse scandal"

That what the good people at US Catholic magazine wanted to know.

This cover story in this month's issue reports that giving was actually up 4.9 percent in 2002--indicating those those angry Catholics still gave to their parishes

The only thing that went down were Bishop's special appeals, which were down 2.3 percent.

The giving research was done by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University and showed that Catholics gave "an estimated $58 billion in Sunday collection baskets in 2002."

So while the Archdiocese of Boston is broke, the rest of the US Catholic Church is apparently not.