There is a growing trend now in many parishes to give little talks or slide presentations to various groups, CCW, youth groups, or men’s groups. Sometimes the same content appears printed up in church bulletins, etc. I speak of “mission trips.”

Sometimes these “how I spent my summer vacation” reports are given in conjunction with appeals to raise funds for this or that impoverished country; sometimes no money is requested—just sympathy and/or admiration.

I’m sure there are people who can afford to spend their own money to buy a plane ticket, pay a hotel bill, and buy their own food in some Mexican or South American, Carribean, or even African location. I’m sure they go to these places to offer help—though the cost of their trip would have been a far greater contribution than just going there and passing out food and clothing. More often, however, these are group affairs, priced and marketed like any other tour, with group rates for flights, hotels, buses, etc.

Doctors Without Borders and other secular volunteer professionals do a great service. And I know of small Baptist churches around here (they have to be small to organize this) who seem to stay packed and ready to go wherever a natural disaster hits—Texas not long ago, and now Louisiana.

What troubles me is the growing market for “mission trips.” The write-ups and presentations given afterwards reveal motivations and gratifications that don’t strike me as wholly Christian charity.  An African friend who lives here now tells me that these summer-vacation “missionaries” were so offensive and condescending that people in his village finally had to be paid to attend their tour-guided handouts. But it’s listening to the tone of those who want to tell us of their spiritual adventures on these trips—not just about how poor the people were but about how their spiritual growth was enhanced, how much more tolerant and loving they became, etc. It all makes one wonder.

I know how cynical this sounds. A couple I know spent over three thousand dollars on a trip to Mexico recently with other Catholic would-be missionaries (arranged by a “Catholic-owned” tour company.) They do talk about how desperately poor the people were, but more about how grateful they were. They tell about the harrowing bus trip into the mountains, about how they worked all day passing out tee shirts and shorts and sandals, dishing up food and serving the people. They want to impress upon their listeners how exhausted they were as they fell into bed in their hotel rooms at night, but how wonderful it felt to help the grateful needy. I have to think about twenty or thirty tourist-missionaries at three thousand each—how much more help that might have been to the grateful needy, but it wouldn’t have provided that gratifying feeling.

As I said, I know how cynical this sounds.