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Thursday, September 28, 2006

ATM for Jay-sus!

Brought to you by your friendly neighborhood Evangelical Mega-Church, although it appears that at least one Catholic diocese in the U.S. had seriously thought about using an "Automatic Tithing Machine".

Those kinds of reservations emerged in Baton Rouge, La., before Baker went into business. About three years ago, the Roman Catholic diocese there worked with a Canadian company to produce a machine that would accept bank card donations from churchgoers. Church officials hoped to place it in the Cathedral of St. Joseph, an imposing Gothic Revival building near the banks of the Mississippi River that dates to the 1850s.

It's not an Aerosmith kind of place. Church officials eventually changed their minds.

"I think that when it actually came time to put a kiosk in the back of a cathedral, it just wasn't quite, well — I'd like to say 'kosher,' but we're Catholic," said Mark Blanchard, the stewardship director for the diocese.

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