Status: pre-approval. This packet is a proposal being prepared for presentation to Holy Trinity Parish in Lenexa, Kansas. Nothing here has been blessed by a pastor, approved by a chancery, or negotiated with Amazon. It is a design, not a program.
The Holy Trinity Caisse — Founding Packet
Four lanes. One caisse. One neighbor served.
The Fathers' work, continued — with the technology of our own century.
What this packet is
This is the founding packet of the Holy Trinity Caisse, a parish-scale mutual-aid economy proposed for pilot at Holy Trinity Parish in Lenexa, Kansas, under the umbrella of PAIX and in the memory of Alphonse Desjardins and Father Michael J. McGivney.
It is written to be easy to say yes to. Every document is short. Every claim is sourced. Every number is honest about what is reliable and what is upside.
The Rule
One good deed. One witness. One hour. One token.
The four lanes
| # | Lane | Redirects an existing flow that would otherwise... | ...into |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Certified shopping | leak to Amazon and the state | the caisse fund (~17% spread on every purchase) |
| 2 | Deeds and donations | remain the parish's ordinary fundraising | the traditional caisse populaire lane (tokens + dollars) |
| 3 | PAIX Witness | be spent on any of a thousand secular content channels | the caisse fund via YouTube, X, Meta monetization |
| 4 | Professional services | be paid to a market-rate professional outside the parish | the caisse and a parish neighbor, at market rate delivered, at the professional's chosen 0-30% walk-away |
The eight documents in this packet
- Charter — The Rule, six Articles, five Flows, the Order, the Fathers' Work Continued, the Posture, the Promise, and the Public Witness. The framed artifact.
- Two Fathers of Mutual Aid — One page placing the caisse as the third turn of the Desjardins-McGivney wheel.
- Public Ledger — the Dashboard Specification — Nine metrics, refreshed nightly, at a permanent public URL.
- The Economic Model — Four-lane math, year-1/2/3 realistic ramp, sourced line by line.
- Ledger, Shop & PAIX Witness Technical Spec — Nine tables, SQLite spine, vendor and platform abstractions, buildable in one week.
- shop.config.json — Catalog, certification policy, professional-services policy, video-evidence policy, monetization policy.
- Knights Letter — The invitation to your first Grand Knight, with three honest caveats named plainly.
- Certification & Enrollment Flow — 30-second parishioner UX, 3-minute steward nightly queue, five auto-approval rules, professional-services enrollment sub-flow.
- PAIX Witness Content Pipeline — Capture, ingest, cut, distribute, compile, attribute, report — with the guardrails encoded rather than proclaimed.
Read in this order
If you are the pastor: read the Charter first. Everything else is scaffolding around it.
If you are a Grand Knight: read the Knights Letter first, then the Charter, then the Economic Model for the numbers.
If you are the parish steward-to-be: read the Charter, then the Certification Flow, then the Ledger Technical Spec.
If you are a professional parishioner (attorney, CPA, physician, tradesperson): read the Charter's Article VI and the Certification Flow's Part 5.
If you are a diocesan reviewer or legal counsel: read the Charter, the Professional-Services Policy block of shop.config.json, and the counsel-signoff note in the Economic Model.
What the packet asks for
Not money. Not endorsement of a concept. Not a program integration.
- From the pastor: A blessing, and permission to be kept under the parish's roof.
- From the Knights: Recognition as consistent with Father McGivney's charism, and a nominated council of witnesses.
- From the diocese's legal counsel: A blessing of the walk-away structure and IRS receipt language for the professional-services lane, before the caisse enrolls its first professional.
- From the parishioners: Nothing yet. Certification is voluntary. Shopping is voluntary. Serving is voluntary. Giving is voluntary. The caisse is offered, not imposed.
What the packet promises
- The caisse's ledger will be public, refreshed nightly, at a permanent URL, from launch.
- Nine metrics will be published quarterly, in the open, whether the numbers flatter the caisse or not.
- Every figure in every document of this packet is either sourced to a public authority (Amazon Business, YouTube Partner Program, Kansas Department of Revenue, USCCB guidance) or is a conservative assumption stated plainly as such.
- The caisse's posture — that it will not take rent, collect tax, arbitrate, sort winners from losers, sell its attention, or race yachts — will be visible in what it does, not proclaimed in what it says.
Three honest caveats (repeated for the record)
- The professional-services lane needs counsel sign-off — the walk-away cap and the IRS receipt language must be blessed by Kansas jurisdiction tax counsel or Knights of Columbus legal counsel before the caisse enrolls its first professional.
- PAIX Witness monetization ramps over 6-18 months. Lane 3 is $0 in the year-1 baseline. Any revenue there is upside.
- A single scandal can zero out lane 3 permanently. The evidence protocol in the Content Pipeline defines what is never on video; the standards editor is a veto, not a rubber stamp.
The whole ambition
We do not invent. We continue.
Desjardins captured a Catholic people's savings flow and redirected it to their own. McGivney captured the same people's insurance flow and did likewise. The Holy Trinity Caisse turns the same wheel a third time: capturing the retail flow, the service flow, the attention flow, and the professional flow that the wider economy would otherwise extract, and redirecting them, all four, to the neighbor.
Same instinct. Four flows. One caisse. One neighbor served.
Vivat Jesus.