Gala

Last night Kate & I attended the annual fundraising gala for the Catholic Student Center at Washington University. We go every year as guests of Beth Schnettler (second from left in photo) who recently retired as Dean of Admissions and is still very active in her support of the students. It's always great fun and it's also a great cause.

Reasonable people disagree on the virtue of these things. There is no question that getting a bunch of rich folks in one spot and having them bid on things donated by the same group of rich folks will certainly incent some to give for the wrong reasons. Who cares? They give. A lot. And, for those who haven't tried to run a non-profit, it's a really hard thing to do without funding.

Jesus went to lots of parties. Seriously. The gospels are loaded with stories of him showing up at the celebrations of the well to do. Sure, those stories also include him throwing out some spiritual truth for them to chew on, but there's no indication that by doing so he buzz-killed everybody's evening. The fact that he kept getting asked back (OK, sometimes he invited himself) would seem strong evidence otherwise.

Likewise, when Father Gary addressed the crowd last night, he had everyone's attention and said some really challenging things. Then, we went back to eating, drinking, and dancing.

Oh, and raising several hundred thousand dollars for the student center. That part was kinda important, too. Kate and I always bid on a few of the lesser items (the big-ticket stuff is way out of our price range; I'm not kidding when I say some of these folks are really rich). For example, there's a  really great wine tasting that we always get tickets for. Next year, it's going to be on my birthday so we bought a whole table and that will be my party.

The programmed part of the evening finishes with the direct appeal. Nothing in return, just hold up your auction paddle if you want to kick some more in. This is the most conflicted part of the evening for me. After all, Christ said we were to give in secret. But, if you want your contribution go get the matching funds (which were 2:1 this year), you have to do it at the auction. Fortunately, it's actually pretty anonymous for someone who doesn't have thousands of dollars burning a hole in their pocket. The "bidding" started at 20 grand, so by the time they got down to numbers we could consider, nobody but the auctioneer was paying a lot of attention to who was bidding.