By Michelle Martin
STAFF WRITER

Want to find out how your parish measures up when it comes to participating in the Annual Catholic Appeal?

That’s what the two-page mid-year update in this issue of The Catholic New World is for.

The update, put together by the Office for Stewardship and Development, provides a snapshot of how the appeal is doing, parish by parish and overall, with about three months left in the year.

This year, the archdiocese hopes to raise $7 million through the appeal, the annual request for direct donations from Catholics to help pay for archdiocesan services and operating expenses, said Timothy Dockery, director of development services.

Last year, Catholics gave about $6.9 million to the appeal, missing the $7 million goal by 1 percent, he said. This year, donations are three percentage points off last year’s pace.

“Right now, we have $4.6 million pledged and $4.4 million collected,” Dockery said in early September. “Last year, we had $4.8 million pledged and $4.5 million collected at this point, but we had a record December and still fell short of our goal. We’d like to be over $5 million at this point.”

Feedback from previous donors indicates that the main reason for the fall-off is the success of another development project, the “Sharing Christ’s Gifts” Millennium Campaign. So far, the campaign has raised more than $170 million for parish and archdiocesan capital needs, with 100 parishes yet to participate, and it will likely exceed its original $200 million goal.

But parishes keep at least 80 percent of what they set out to raise in the Millennium Campaign, and the 20 percent that goes to the archdiocese is committed to capital assistance to poor parishes, repairs at the University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary and a priests’ retirement home, Dockery said. It also will help cover the cost the campaign. The archdiocese still needs the money raised by the Annual Catholic Appeal to pay for ongoing programs and services that parishes can’t provide on their own.

“The analogy we use is with homeowners,” Dockery said. “If you put a new roof on your house, that’s an extraordinary capital expense, but you still have to keep paying the gas bill, the electric bill, the mortgage and everything else.”

A few people have mentioned the sex abuse scandal as a reason not to give, Dockery said, but more have said they can’t contribute because of the economy.

The good news is that there is still plenty of time to make the goal, and it’s more than doable if more Catholics give what they can.

“If everyone just pitches in and helps, we’ll do great,’ Dockery said.