By Michelle Martin
Staff writer

Up to 10 times each month, Marianne Kaiser asks one of her Elizabeth Ministry volunteers from St. Daniel the Prophet Parish to deliver a gift for a family with a new baby.

The gifts are nothing big—maybe a couple of bibs, or diapers, or a donated outfit—but the sense of welcome and support the new moms get is huge.

“When I had my children, nobody said anything,” said Kaiser, whose children are grown. “For the mothers, it’s nice to know someone cares about them.”

The Elizabeth Ministry, a peer-support program for women in their childbearing years, operates in 44 parishes in the archdiocese with assistance and training from the Family Ministries Office.

Family Ministries is one of dozens of agencies and ministries supported in whole or in part by the Annual Catholic Appeal, the annual request for funds that will be kicked off in parishes Feb. 23 and 24.

“Giving Back in Gratitude,” the theme of this year’s appeal, reminds people that “all they have is a gift from God,” said Tim Dockery, director of development services for the archdiocese.

This year, the archdiocese is aiming for $7 million in donations, up from the roughly $6.7 million it raised last year, Dockery said.

The Annual Catholic Appeal generates about 12.6 percent of the archdiocese’s operating income, according to the development office. About a third of the appeal proceeds help pay for the myriad services of the archdiocesan Pastoral Center, from Family Ministries to having the Department of Facilities review parish plans with contractors. A quarter goes to help economically struggling parishes, and the rest is divided between schools and educational ministries and Catholic organizations outside the archdiocese, such as Catholic Relief Services.

Among the educational institutions helped last year was Lakeshore Catholic Academy, a school that serves a diverse student base on three campuses in Waukegan. School Sister of Notre Dame Miriam Patrick Cummings, the school’s principal, said that the $150,000 archdiocesan grant the school received this year made its operation possible.

The school serves students in three aging buildings, Cummings said. The student body is 63 percent Hispanic, 13 percent white and 13 percent black. More than 57 percent are eligible for free or reduced price school lunches.

Building one new building to house all the students would save the school more than $140,000 a year, according to information Cummings provided. The school has started a $12 million capital campaign, in conjunction with the Millennium Campaign, to pay for a new building, and has a plan to become self-sufficient.

But in the meantime, Cummings said, the school needs help from the archdiocese and the five parishes that support it.

To reach its $7 million goal, the archdiocese is hoping for more people to pledge at the leadership level, Dockery said. Donors who give $1,000 or more become part of the Lumen Cordium Society and are invited to a special Mass and reception with Cardinal George. Those who give $250 or more become part of the Bishop’s Society and receive a special pin.

Even those who can’t contribute at that level could probably afford a gift of $100, since all pledges can be paid off in 10 monthly installments, Dockery said.

“A good steward’s giving is planned and proportionate to what they have received,” he said.

But the 2001 campaign brought in less money than the 2000 campaign, when archdiocesan Catholics donated $7.1 million—a substantial increase from the $5.8 million donated in 1999.

Factors such as the slowing economy and the Sept. 11 attacks played a part in the decline, Dockery said, but at least part of it is due to the Millennium Campaign, the $220 million capital campaign that all parishes in the archdiocese will participate in by the end of next year. Most of the money collected in the Millennium Campaign stays in the parishes.

Parishes that are in the pledging phase of “Sharing Christ’s Gifts,” as the Millennium Campaign is known, don’t have to distribute pledge cards in the pews for the Annual Catholic Appeal.

But Catholics must understand that while their parishes and the archdiocese need money for capital improvements, the archdiocese still relies on money generated by the Annual Catholic Appeal to operate.

“When somebody puts a new roof on their house, they still have to pay the gas bill and the electric bill,” Dockery said.

So do churches, a fact that Father Thomas J. Kaminski, pastor of St. Helena of the Cross Parish on Chicago’s South Side, knows all too well.

St. Helena, “the best kept secret on the South Side,” includes about 250 mostly African-American families in a neighborhood bounded by Interstate 57 on the north and railroad tracks on the east.

Parishioners tuck an average of about $30 a week into their Sunday envelopes—one of the highest averages in the archdiocese—the school is almost at capacity and members are active in a wide variety of ministries and activities.

“For a small parish, it’s an incredibly dynamic parish,” said Kaminski, who served there from 1977 to 1988 and then returned in 1997. “This my second time here, and that was no accident. There’s a tremendous amount of ownership here, a very deep faith and sense of community.”

Still, with all it’s got going for it, St. Helena needed a $125,000 grant last year to pay its bills, Kaminski said.

“I believe our people are doing their fair share,” Kaminski said. But without the grant, “we wouldn’t have made it.”