It might be a Jersey thing. (Both Utah and I are from New Jersey.) In my old Catholic Church, we didn't give our offering at the door, but in one of two to three times they passed the basket during mass. Instead, we had to show our little offering envelopes at the door, and they could tell if they were empty. (Each one of us kids had to give a dime a week. Sounds cheap, but it was the 60's, and that dime would have been 20% of our allowance, if Mom didn't feel guilty for only giving us half of our allowance -- the other half was "saved" for Christmas -- so she gave us the dime out of her weekly allowance.) My parents had to show the big envelope at the door. "The big envelope" also had to include our names on it, because it was proving we "deserve" to stay in the Catholic School too. (I don't know if that paid our tuition or if that was above and beyond tuition. I never asked my parents, since family income was never supposed to be understood by us kids.)
After moving out of Jersey, I lived in two other states and a different part of Jersey (different diocese), where none of that ever happened. So, there is a good chance it was just one diocese in Jersey versus a common practice in The Church.
