Close readers of my work -- Hi, Mom! -- will recall that this column has fallen victim to the insidious outsourcing trend. It's now produced in Bangalore, India, at the Shecky Gandhi Humor Writing Center. A young man named Surendra -- "Skip" to his American clients -- was given my job, simply because he can do it better, faster and cheaper. Plus, because of the Indian diet, the column is low-cholesterol, although, I would like to point out, higher in carbs.

When I -- and by the way, this is me; Skip called in sick -- disclosed this outrage three months ago, several readers (true fact) e-mailed their sympathy. One even said she'd pray for me, which was very thoughtful.

The woman didn't reveal her religion. But I hope she isn't Catholic, because she might find this news disconcerting: It turns out the Catholic Church is outsourcing prayers to India.

I know what you're thinking: "Is bingo next?"

Shame on you. You should be thinking: "Is nothing sacred?" Or, more to the point: "Is he making this up?"

The answer is, "No, I am not." You can look it up in the June 13 New York Times: "Short on Priests, U.S. Catholics Outsource Prayers to Indian Clergy."

Granted, The New York Times is not the most reliable publication. As you know, it's been caught outsourcing stories to the world of fiction. But this story was not written by anyone named Jayson. And it had holy credible sources.

Here I am not talking about the Holy Ghost, although I would take the Holy Ghost, sight unseen, over, say, Ahmad Chalabi as a reliable source any day of the week and several times on Sunday. The sources are priests and bishops or, as they are known in the hidden recesses of the Vatican, Wielders of Mass Devotion (WMD).

My first reaction to the story, shock aside, was: Doesn't the laity have a role here? Instead of outsourcing prayer, couldn't ordinary Catholics be called upon to pick up the slack created by the priest shortage?

When I was a lad at Holy Trinity Elementary in Hackensack, N.J., task No. 1 was working like heck to avoid hell, which seemed like an even worse option than New Jersey. We were encouraged to say short prayers -- called ejaculations -- that would knock off time in purgatory, a place where you could get burned but in a good cause, sort of as a warm-up for heaven. (Obviously, reducing your sentence in hell was out of the question, since eternity tends to go on for a long time.)

So, a quick "Jesus, Mary and Joseph" was worth 300 days apiece, meaning in idle moments you could rattle off dozens of these little prayers and get a head start on whittling away time you would have to serve in purgatory for bad behavior before being admitted to heaven, although you could never get to the point where they owed you time. Now, as I understand it, the precise time-value of such prayers has been de-emphasized, and the location and mean temperature of purgatory are a bit hazy.

Nonetheless, when I saw the Times headline, I thought that lay Catholics, in their idle moments, could keep the prayer market from going overseas. ("American prayers for American problems!") But, as it turns out, the outsourcing involves Masses. And only priests can celebrate Mass.

These are Masses for "special intentions," such as a sick family member or the repose of the soul of a deceased relative. To its credit, the Church is not outsourcing to save money. The expected donation remains the same overseas -- $5 per Mass. It goes to the Indian priest (the country is almost 2 percent Catholic), who ordinarily gets a donation of only 40 rupees or 90 cents from his parishioners. So it's win-win.

Americans aren't alone in outsourcing Masses to India. The Canadians and Europeans do it, too. British labor leaders are up in arms, even though an Indian bishop pointed out that this has been going on for decades, long before "outsourcing" entered the vocabulary, which seems like a weak defense. ("You think this is bad? We've been doing it for years.")

I have no problem with outsourcing Masses. Catholic means universal. The Church crosses national boundaries. It's not taking jobs, although it could be argued that the Church should expand the priestly workforce by opening it to women and married men.

But I don't want to interfere with Church policy, except to suggest it draw the line at outsourcing confession.