Saturday, May 06, 2006

DVC $$

So this letter just came in the parish mail:
Dear Congregation,

I am please to introduce myself as the Manager of the ---- cinema. We have a well-equipped movie theatre with digital surround sound, great concession items, and computerized ticketing.

We have been receiving several inquiries from various area churches regarding the upcoming release of the Da Vinci Code, and the purpose of this letter is to provide you with basic information that we hope you will disseminate throughout your organization.

The Da Vinci Code will be playing at ---- beginning on May 19. If anyone within your organization is interested in scheduling a showing of this film for any size group [sic], please feel free to contact me at ---- after ----. We look forward to working with you in the near future and for many years to come.

Sincerely, etc. etc.
I don't recall any such letter coming out to a Catholic congregation prior to the release of The Passion of the Christ. [We did get an invite to a local meeting discussing marketing tactics for Narnia, but that wasn't from a local theater.] Ought I be surprised that many area churches are inquiring? An opportunity for dialogue, no doubt? I dunno. Maybe I should write a letter back to the manager ... hmm ... [The letter was hand-addressed. Guess there aren't enough Catholic parishes around for a proper mail-merge generated label ... :)]

My suggestion? The Othercott. I wonder if we can publicize that in the parish ... oh yah, and time to stock-up on the DVC pamphlets ....

Yah, we all knew it. May 19 is going to be big. :: sigh ::

[And whatever one does, one will never reach the true believer ... :-)]

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gashwin,

Why not involve a good old inquisition?

Sincerely,

Dogwood

Steve Bogner said...

I'm curious as to how the cinema manager would get a mailing list for the parish? Maybe I read that wrong?

I see the release of the DVC as a good time for Catholics to stand up and get some attention, to tell and show people what we're really all about.

Fr. Gaurav Shroff said...

Steve --- thanks for stopping by. There's only 6 Catholic parishes in the metropolitan area. I noted that the letter was hand-addressed --- like the Catholics were an afterthought, or, perhaps, because 6 parishes means it's not worth it to enter those into a computer and produce a mail label. That's all.

The letter was addressed to the parish office, not to individual parishioners. So, no, they didn't get the mailing list for the parish.
[Heck, with the level of organization in the parish office, I doubt that the parish staff would be able to assemble a mailing list for the parish :-)]

Hope that made sense!