I can't imagine that the estimate of Catholic marriages that were never recorded in the civil records is far off. As someone new to genealogy, I spent much time trying to find marriage records only to realize that they miraculously started showing up around 1900, and none were available before then. I was contemplating that my poor ancestors either lived in sin or ran off to another state to be married before I realized the trend. Their children were bapized in a Catholic parish, their dead are in a Catholic cemetery but no marriage recorded with NYC or NYS. Then the challenge comes of finding the right parish where they were married, and sending off $20 donation checks everywhere trying to find the record. The Archdiocese would benefit in two ways. Definitely there would be much positive media coverage of the availability of this information to the public, particularly tying it into the Bicentennial. But then either it would eliminate the need for parish staff to research the many requests if the information was released to another party to film or index, or it would generate a steady stream of donations if the information was made available via index. Obviously, there is a benefit because many entities are spending time and money to make historical information available. It seems like a new announcement comes out every few weeks. For those that question the right to privacy, the parishes do release the information to anyone that requests it and perhaps sends a donation, so I'm not sure what the difference would be. It just seems like there hasn't been a high-level attempt to find a better solution to the current problem. How could it hurt to try now? Melanie Egan