Below in black is a copy of a correspondence I have started to send to genealogy groups in the NY metro area. If anyone has suggestions or ideas please share them. This is a "problem" that has a solution that is acceptable to everyone. We want the records information, the secretaries want to be left alone and the priests do to. I don't know that the parishes are bankrolling much if any money of this by the end of the day. I agree that the costs are a bit steep but don't envision that there are that many requests every day of the month. My ancestors were all Irish immigrants who arrived in Manhattan between 1871-1925. They were Catholics. I am hoping to get a group of genealogists together to approach the Archdiocese of NY to make their sacramental records more readily available to the public. Many births and weddings went unrecorded in the 19th-century so the baptismal and marriage records are the only documents that exist to substantiate a date of birth, maiden name, relatives' names as witnesses etc. The records exist in their paper form only and are kept at the local parish or successor parish if the church was closed/ torn down. I know this is an odd request but my approaches as an individual have not helped, so I am reaching out to see what groups may be interested in approaching the issue in numbers. I am surprised that the parishes don't realize that the an archdiocesan index would benefit them greatly. If a master index existed the archdiocese could maintain it and charge a fee of say $2 a request. Then once we had the right parish we would write to them and pay an extra 10 or even 20 dollars at the parish. If we knew it was the right parish it would make the cost worthwhile. That is a win win for all involved. The archdiocese would get money it does not get currently. The parish would spend less time on goose chases and be fully compensated for its searches. It would also preserve the books because the book would only be searched for the page needed and no more. This would also eliminate any "privacy" concerns that might be raised.