About an hour ago, I returned home from Mass. Yes, Catholics do hold Mass on Saturdays. It’s technically called Saturday Vigil, because it’s held in what the Church considers the evening. For whatever reason, the Church as a whole has ruled at Masses and vigils held on Saturdays are valid provided that they take place at or after 4:00. I am now looking out of my bay window over to my new parish, enjoying rum and Coke and plan to keep until enjoying until I can’t see straight. Hey, it’s Saturday and I put up with a lot of crap this week. I deserve this! But I digress.
One source states that Saturday Vigil is considered “an anticipated Sunday Mass,” and attending it satisfies a Catholic’s Sunday obligation (Canon Law 1248). Such a Mass must be held in the evening preceding Sunday.
The origin of the 4:00 time traces back to Pope Pius XII. He chose 4:00 as a start time so that people who have to work on Sunday, such as doctors, nurses and law enforcement officers can still experience Mass and take Communion. It was on October 30, 1950 that he selected that time while walking through the Vatican Gardens. He experienced the Miracle of the Sun.
In his 1953 apostolic constitution Christas Dominus, Pope Pius XII gave permission to Catholics to fulfill their Sunday Mass obligations on Saturday evenings, setting 4 p.m. as the earliest possible time a vigil Mass could be held. Still, why he chose that exact time is still, at least to me, a mystery of sorts.
As many people know, Catholics are obligated to attend Mass each week, as well as certain days considered a holy day of obligation. To not do so is a mortal sin that must be confessed. That being said, the Church does recognize things such as illness, valid emergencies and so forth.
If you’re puking all over the place, for example, that is likely to be a valid reason for missing Mass. Picking up Saturday overtime at work, however, is likely to be considered to not valid as missing Mass was voluntary in that case. But I am not a canon lawyer nor do I hold any position of authority; only the priest can answer those questions and only a priest can absolve you of the sin of non-attendance.
We Catholics take Mass obligation seriously. Or at least most of us do. The Jews feel the same way; their Sabbath starts at sundown Friday and ends at sundown on Saturday. The Seventh-day Adventist church, which I was born into and was involved in until the age of nine, believes the same thing, but the Jews take it way too seriously.
As an SDA child (never actually baptized), I had to be inside at sundown Friday. I had to go to church on Saturday and could not go out and play until sundown, but sundown was my curfew, so I had to play on Sundays when all the other kids were in church and not allowed to play, leaving me to fraternize with a Jewish girl on Sundays. Back then, I did not recognize Jews as greedy liars who made up the Holocaust, so we had a lot of fun together and we managed to get into a little bit of mischief that not even my grandmother caught onto.
But I digress.
I remember one time, many years ago, when a Jew at work absolutely started freaking out because sundown was minutes away and she was not going to make it home in time. She was in actual tears. I had to laugh at her. Yes, I laughed at her right to her face. I mean seriously…freaking out over something like that?
Catholics take Mass seriously, but I have yet to see a fellow Catholic melt down at work over missing Saturday Vigil. You just wake up early and go to Sunday Mass instead. No one needs to cry about it, for crying out loud. See what I did there?
Anyway, I don’t know why I went on that tangent. The purpose of this article is to discuss paper checks. Yes, they still exist. And yes, there are still bank accounts, such as my own, that offer the ability of handling paper checks. There are apparently so-called checking accounts out there that do not offer the ability to write checks. I would say then that such accounts don’t count as checking accounts, but it is what it is, folks.
Given that I do have paper checks to use, I write checks out every week to my parish, which is located literally across the street from my apartment. I write checks for the first offering, the second offering when it happens and the food pantry.
I also donate to other causes, such as paying my fair share of the assessment each parish got to pay off settlements within our diocese for the sexual abuse scandal. I consider the people who filed such lawsuits against the diocese to be greedy pigs and to be awful, hypocritical, evil, cruel and unforgiving pieces of excrement.
But that’s for another day. Oh, wait, I already discussed that.
Anyway, the point is that since I am finally in a financial position to give generously to my parish and diocese, I typically write three to four paper checks each week just for them alone. My current employment sees me dealing with 600-1,300 paper checks a day (over 8,000 a month), so I am not the only one who still uses the old-school form of payment.
Since becoming a Catholic in 2022, I have been a member of two parishes, one being my home parish, where I was baptized and confirmed and one being my current parish that I joined last month due to a move to a much better neighborhood.
Because of my newly-found and well-deserved financial standing, I felt that I deserve to be in a classier neighborhood than the one I lived in for five years. So I moved. One of the selling points, along with a bay window, when I took my apartment is that my current parish is, as I said, right across the street. Given that, however, I now have absolutely whatsoever no excuse for missing Mass.
Up until I moved, my parish was a five-minute walk around the corner. I did take some bye days and as such, I did willingly commit mortal sins, I had to confess. I always told the truth: I stayed home because I didn’t feel like walking. Not a valid excuse. I was given penance, which I served.
As I type this, I am looking out my bay window and I see my parish and hear its hourly bells. Those bells are becoming quite annoying, but what am I going to do? I can’t exactly complain to the priest about the bells that my own parish produces each day. Anyway, given that it takes all of on minute to get into the building, there are now no more excuses!
Anyway, given my involvement in my faith for all these years, I was not always able to donate much. Now, however, I can do so weekly. I’m not going to drop the amount that I spend each week as that is between me and my parish, but I give far bigger amounts than I ever have before. By check. Never cash, as there are dishonest people out there, even in Catholicism. By check!
Both parishes that I’ve been involved with offer methods by which to donate online. However, there’s a problem with that. Each donation by debit or credit card incurs a transaction fee, which takes part of my donation away from the parish.
Contrary to popular opinion, most Catholic parishes are not rolling in cash, especially when parishes such as mine have to give up funds because the diocese negotiated with whom I believe to be terrorists who made up claims, likely most of them false or greedily exaggerated, in an effort to rob innocent Catholics such as myself.
As far as I know, each parish except, apparently, my former one, in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, all victims of obvious greed, has published the amount that they are expected to pay and they list how much money has been donated and how much money is needed. In the bulletin that was distributed today and will also be handed out tomorrow for all to read, we see that my new parish is responsible for $117,394.
As of now, $28,905 has been pledged, but there is no public information as to how much money has actually been collected. Anyone can pledge anything, but a pledge is worthless without the follow-through.
Yes, sometimes you are able to pay your donation and then the processing fee yourself, but every week that you do that, you are basically ripping either your parish or yourself off. Hence, the checks. Why let some greedy processing company profit off of you or your parish? With paper checks, there is no processing fee and the parish gets the full donation amount that you intended them to receive.
Paper checks come in handy on other occasions, even in 2026. I’ve used so many checks over the past few months alone that it’s almost time to reorder. I am still using the same initial order that I put in when I opened my accounts three years ago. Yeah, I ordered a lot because I knew that I needed that many checks. Soon, however, I will have to pay around $18 for another box. But that’s okay, because they actually get opposed to throwing them in a drawer while they collect dust.
My landlord has not teleported to 2026, so every month, a rent check goes out from me on the 1st, sometimes a day or two in advance. He accepts checks and cash. Sorry, but I am not keeping more than $1,000 in cash in my apartment. My previous landlord insisted on payment via Venmo, so up until my move, I did not use as many checks as I am using now.
So there we go: at least fourteen checks are used each month just between church and rent alone. I am not alone at all: some estimates state that 12 billion personal checks are still being written each year. As I see every day at work, paper checks are issued by law firms, insurance companies and even employers. Seriously, who, in 2026, wants to be paid via paper check as opposed to direct deposit either into a bank account or poor man’s debit card?
Most of my bills these days (internet, home phone, cell phone and power) are paid online, so I don’t use as many checks as I did when I moved away from home and into my own place way back in 1996. Back then, before debit cards became more and more accepted, I wrote out 20-30 checks a month.
Though my current usage these days is no longer that high, I do still use checks for other things, things like my hooker. But my checks are good. After all, I’m not Jerry Springer. And anyway, she takes Venmo.
The point is that even in 2026, I still use paper checks as do at least 4,000 other people a week. That’s a lot of paper! Clearly, the check printing companies are still doing well for themselves. As for me, I will never abandon paper checks. I do have to use enough of them every month to justify the monthly service fee and the check printing, and I do.
Why use checks in 2026? Well:
- Accounting. Even in 2026, you still get your canceled check back, so you can quickly provide proof that payment was sent, acknowledged and processed.
- Nostalgia. There’s something satisfying about writing out paper check in an era where online payments are the rule, not the exception.
- Status. Not everyone can write paper checks in 2026, for various reasons. Writing checks shows that you passed a credit check and that you are financially blessed. Poor people, after all, can’t write checks unless they’re bad.
- Cost. By writing a check, you save your payee a transaction fee and you can actually save yourself processing fees as well. Yes, I do have to pay for each order of checks, but when I break it down, I see that each check costs about three cents. Worth it!
Paper checks are going nowhere, at least not anytime soon. It is true that personal checks are not as popular as they once were, but there is still a great demand for them and I am always happy to write a check out. Even in 2026!