CNW - 10/22/00 Archdiocese asks people to ‘share Christ’s gifts’

Archdiocese asks people to ‘share Christ’s gifts’
Millennium Campaign expected to raise $200 million for parishes, archdiocese

By Michelle Martin
Staff Writer

Coming soon to a parish near you: “Sharing Christ’s Gifts,” the archdiocese’s campaign to remind Catholics that they have a responsibility to practice stewardship, returning the spiritual and material gifts that God has given them to the Lord.

Along the way, the archdiocese hopes to see its 378 parishes raise more than $200 million for its parishes and other needs in the next two years. Parishes will retain most of what is raised.


Paulist Father James W. Donovan, pastor of Old St. Mary’s Parish, blesses the site of the parish’s future church at 1510 S. Michigan as Deacon Timothy Donovan and Bishop John Manz look on. The new church will be built partially with funds from the Millennium Campaign at Old St. Mary’s. Catholic New World/Sandy Bertog

And to anyone who thinks it can’t be done, organizers have one answer: Look at what happened at the parishes who have piloted the program.
So far, 40 parishes have started the campaign; 23 have finished it. And those 23 parishes have raised more than $25 million in pledges, $11 million more than their minimum goals.

“Basically, it’s the Holy Spirit doing the work,” Cardinal George told a group of pastors who gathered to learn more about the program at St. Constance Parish Oct. 13. “The results of the pilot programs are evidence of that. We are calling on people’s generosity, not of their wallets, but of their hearts. It is there, but oftentimes, it’s not called upon.”

Father John Collins, pastor of St. Joachim Parish on the South Side, learned that lesson when he brought the Millennium Campaign to his parish earlier this year. With a congregation of 350 families who range from poor to middle-income, Collins wasn’t sure how his parishioners would react to a call for stewardship—stewardship that might require a conversion of heart, but just as surely required opening the checkbook.

Using the archdiocesan program, Collins set the goal at the minimum: about $209,000, or the same amount the parish had received through its regular collections in 1999. As part of the campaign, 20 percent of that minimum goal was to be earmarked for archdiocesan needs: a new archdiocesan retirement home for priests in Lemont, infrastructure improvements at Mundelein Seminary, help for struggling parishes and paying the administrative costs of the campaign itself.

“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Collins told his fellow pastors. “I don’t like to stand up and ask for money. But I didn’t ask for money. I talked about stewardship.”
Then Collins and a steering committee of parishioners followed the program outlined by Resource Services, Inc., the Dallas-based consultants the archdiocese has hired to help with the campaign.

The parish spent nearly six months making its case, talking both about stewardship and the air conditioning system the money from the campaign would buy. Parishioners produced a video showing what needed to be done in the church—a video that could be taken to sick and homebound parishioners to help them buy into the program. Overall, the process included more than 100 people and drew on the talents and skills of those who attended Mass, but had not yet gotten more involved, Collins said.“They were no longer just faces that you saw on Sunday morning,” he said.

By the time the parish reached “commitment Sunday” in June, when parishioners were asked to make a pledge they would pay off over three years, the congregation came through with $258,000. That number has risen to $270,000, of which $60,000 has already been turned in.

St. Joan of Arc Parish in Evanston met with similar success. Father James Barrett didn’t know how his congregation of 600 families would respond to a goal he set at $1.5 million, more than double the $650,000 annual ordinary income for the parish.

But the church needed work, and it would cost money for a major remodeling project.

By the time the parish reached its “Commitment Sunday,” Barrett had in hand pledges of more than $500,000 from 72 parishioners or families. And one of those pledges was not for money—the family was not financially able to commit dollars—but for prayers for the success of the campaign.
“When I talked about the advance giving, I talked about that pledge, and how I counted the family as among the donors,” Barrett said. “I wanted to get across the idea that they had made a commitment, and that was stewardship.”

In the end, St. Joan of Arc parishioners pledged $1.12 million, a little short of the original goal, but far more than the minimum.

So far, 218 families or parishioners have pledged amounts ranging from $100 to $100,000. Barrett has hopes the amount of pledges will rise when work begins.

Asked the secret of his success, Barrett said his parishioners already practiced stewardship, although they might not have called it by that name.

“I have a very talented parish,” he said. “And a very generous parish. And that’s not unique.”

Perhaps one of the greatest success stories is Old St. Mary’s Parish, founded in 1833. The Near South Side parish has an annual ordinary income of about $316,000; its parishioners pledged $1.6 million. For them, the Millennium Campaign provided the final piece of a dozen-year effort to build a new church on South Michigan Avenue. Ground was broken for the new church on Oct. 14.

The rest of the parishes will roll out their own versions of the Millennium Campaign in four waves, starting early in 2001. Each parish will work with RSI to fine-tune the campaign to its own congregation, and Ray Coughlin, the archdiocese’s director of stewardship and development, expects widespread success.

“There’s enthusiasm building,” Coughlin said. “We’re all doing this together. And when we’re done, it’s going to be the biggest capital campaign conducted by a diocese or archdiocese ever. What’s being verified is the notion that Catholics are very generous people.”

Top