Clash of Cultures? Turns Out Religious Ideology Isn’t Always Good For Business

A "pro-life" Catholic pharmacy in a heavily Catholic area of Virginia goes out of business due to lack of customers.

I got to this piece through Pam Spaulding at Pam’s House Blend, one of my favorite sites.

It turns out that religious ideology doesn’t always jibe with the profit motive, so to speak.  Last month according to the Washington Times, DMC, a Chantilly, Va.-based “pro-life Catholic pharmacy that opened with much fanfare” in 2008 closed because of lack of funds.

DMC opened 18 months ago at a cost of $350,000 but was losing in the tens of thousands of dollars per month by the time it closed March 4th.

“We could not make it work financially,” said Robert Laird, executive director for the pharmacy, whose letters stood for Divine Mercy Care. “We could never get that big push to make it viable and finally the board of directors said enough was enough.”

The store did not stock or sell birth control pills or condoms.

It did, however, stock booklets on natural family planning.

According to the Washington Times, “it was one of seven pharmacies in the country that refused to dispense contraceptives for moral reasons, on the grounds they caused abortions, lead to promiscuity or endangered a woman’s health.”

Situated next to a Catholic bookstore, the founders hoped to attract clientele from St. Timothy and St. Veronica, two nearby Catholic parishes totaling 20,000 members. Within five miles were four other booming churches with 30,000 Catholics. And it was situated in the fast-growing Diocese of Arlington with 428,417 adherents.

But regular customers never materialized in great numbers.

“You would have thought we could have made it happen,” Mr. Laird admitted. “We were a niche.”

Pam writes:

This is what happens when the Catholic Church overreaches, putting its head in the sand, thinking American Catholics in Chantilly, Va, which has 20K parishioners in the area and four local churches teeming with 30K additional followers of Papa Ratzi: 1) don’t use birth control, 2) don’t smoke, and 3) don’t read porn.

Apparently, the news has not reached the DMC board of directors.  The majority of Catholics do indeed use birth control and rely on abortion to end unintended and unwanted pregnancies at the same rate as the rest of the population.  People, we know, often say one thing and do another.  Therefore even in a heavily Catholic catchment area a business has to fill its “niche” by catering to the real-life, real-time economic and health needs of its customers, not by deciding for them what is ok. 

Unless it wants to go out of business.