An effort is made in the 1950s to finish the Cathedral of St. Gorboduc by allowing "the pennies of Catholic school children" to fund Whority and Sons architects to complete portions of the ancient church [St. Fidgeta & Other Parodies, 36].
Mr. Arthur "Dutch" Wolohan writes to the Question Box Moderator that his kids keep pestering him for money to ransom pagan babies [St. Fidgeta & Other Parodies, 41].
Mother Ximenes' Handbook for Grade School Nuns features a section that suggests fundraising ideas: "Raffle Your Grandmother Out of Purgatory," having drives (paper, bottle caps, jelly jars), and selling sick-call kits [St. Fidgeta & Other Parodies, 108].
Johnny Dixon and the children of St. Michael's School scour the community of Duston Heights for newspapers and other paper products [The Curse of the Blue Figurine, 64].
First, Bowen notes that "ransoming pagan babies" was the standard expression nuns would use when soliciting donations for the Catholic missions. "The dimes and quarters contributed by the schoolkids would support mission schools in benighted jungle regions, where the pupils would be converted and their souls saved for Jesus. Thus the money was likened to a ransom paid to free their little dark souls from the clutches of the devil."
We realize how silly raffling one's grandmother sounds, but how far from the truth was this? "Not totally off the wall," confirms Myers. "In our pre-Vatican II childhood, we had various prayers, good works, attendances at mass, etc for which 'indulgences' were granted. The most powerful of them, plenary indulgences, would spring you from purgatory altogether. We were always being exhorted to pray for the 'poor souls in purgatory,' on the grounds that our prayers would get them out and into heaven faster. I never quite got the point of this because, after all, people were in purgatory as punishment for their own (venial) sins. It therefore seemed to stand to reason that an individual's punishment should be tailored to fit his own transgressions. So how could we bail someone else out? On the other hand, I guess it did emphasize the 'communion of saints,' the familial bond between the living and the dead that is promised by the Apostles' Creed."
Myers assures us these drives had nothing to do with tree-hugging, ecology, or recycling. "Remember, that Bellairs and I started going to school in 1943, right at the height of the Second World War. Paper drives were a big deal then, though then as now I don't know precisely how it contributed to the war effort. I also remember stomping tin cans flat and bringing them in too. Everybody did this type of thing during the war; schools, the Boy Scouts and so on. At least I think this is what Bellairs was referring to."
"There was a period after WWII when scrap paper was worth enough money to make it worthwhile to collect and sell." Bowen remembers participating in drives during his (non-Catholic) grade-school years. "There were drives of various kinds during the war also, but that was for a contribution to the War Effort, not to raise money. We used to go out every year and fill bags with milkweed pods, which were said to be useful in some way for making lifeboats and lifejackets. I don't know if this was true or not -- since upon reaching Man's Estate I have also heard that a lot of the efforts and sacrifices the public was called on to make were done for the sake of morale rather than the proceeds of said efforts and sacrifices. So, yes, the papers would have been recycled, because it was worth someone's money to pay for them and reuse them. Later we got more wasteful, and the whole idea had to be reinvented. As for whether they were very common in parochial schools, I suppose they were, as these schools were always running on a shoestring."
(also see Catholic Grade School; Montana Women's College)
