The name Kerala leapt out at me from a stunning newspaper article that reeked of indulgences and simony just this week. Kerala, a southern region of India, is home to a large number of Syriac Orthodox Christians. In my time at Gorgias Press I often heard their industry praised and was informed how cheaply fellow “Christians” would work. I even saw the position of a great fellow worker at Gorgias evaporate as his duties were “outsourced” to India. Ah, Outsourcing, thy name is Greed.

I recall the days when Greed was considered one of the seven deadly sins. Apparently now it is an acceptable means of replenishing ecclesiastical coffers. An article on Thursday’s New Jersey Star-Ledger front page bore the headline “Recession hits Indian churches offering outsourced prayer”(!). The article explains that Catholic churches in the United States, hard-pressed for priests, have been outsourcing Mass intentions (dedicatory prayers) to their colleagues in India. The mind spins — American families, wanting a Mass intention dedicated to dear departed Aunt Bertha, sells the option to India where prayer is cheaper. As the headline declares, the Recession has cut into the profit margin of the Indian Catholic Church. I’m no mathematician, but it seems that a degree in accounting might help to sort all this out: Americans sell prayer intentions to priests in Kerala, who (when they aren’t working for Gorgias Press in their spare time) send them along to a God who is supposed to be omniscient anyway? And money changes hands for this? In Kali we trust!

Organized religion requires financial upkeep; only a blind naked mole rat can’t see that. Nevertheless, when religions gain enough financial leverage to become power brokers, it seems that they have slipped their moorings. I have watched hypocritical “prosperity gospel” believers benefit from the hard work of the poor, and I have seen the coffee-table books touting the immeasurable wealth of the Vatican, and I have witnessed the homeless curled up on urban church doorsteps on a cold Sunday winter morning. And I remember what Amos wrote, “For I know how many are your transgressions, and how great are your sins — you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe, and push aside the needy in the gate…” (5.12). And I wonder who might be the safer bet, Yahweh or Kali?

WWAD?