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New Church Collection Plates Require Ten-Dollar Deposit Or More

Can you imagine waking up and putting on your Sunday’s best to praise the Lord, only to find out there’s a $10 minimum to get right with God? One Australian church is making headlines after introducing an “electronic collection plate” that will accept no less than a ten-dollar deposit.

Huffington Post reports: “St. Mary’s Cathedral in Australia is taking heat for implementing a ‘tap and go’ collection plate. Similar to what you would see at a McDonald’s, these devices allow patrons ― or in this case, parishoners ― to tap their chip-enabled credit cards and pay a certain amount. The Roman Catholic cathedral in Sydney announced the moved on its Facebook page, but the outcry was so swift that the post was deleted soon after ― though, as always, someone took a screenshot.”

The deleted screenshot reportedly read, “The new ‘tap and go’ collection plate has arrived!!! This weekend we will be the first cathedral/church in #nsw to trial this new technology. Multiple payments of $10 can be made my tapping your card once with several seconds in between each transaction.”

The backlash was immediate, as one user reportedly commented: “If you had made it [a] $2 minimum we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation.” While St. Mary’s deleted their initial post, the church did not turn the other cheek when given the opportunity to throw a little shade. “Thanks to the people who took the time to make rational and coherent comments on our recent post about the new collection plates,” the church wrote in a hilarious new post, to which folks had many thoughts:

“Disgraceful that you took it down, but it’s even more disgraceful you have put these in play and thought it was ok to advertise it. Really shows how out of touch your business is.”

“I mean, surely someone within the church realised that paywave enabled collection plates would probably receive a less than stellar reception?”

Are you here to add $10 or more to the collection plate every Sunday? Let us know.