By Michelle Martin
Staff writer

When parishioners are asked to give to the Annual Catholic Appeal this year, archdiocesan officials are hoping to raise $7.5 million for efforts that do everything from help fund parishes and schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods to paying for prison and campus ministries.

The 2003 campaign will kick off with a collection of donations and pledge cards from the pews during Masses the weekend of March 15-16.

When the Office for Stewardship and Development set the goal this year, it raised the bar from the $7 million it hoped to collect in 2002—and the archdiocese missed that goal by 10 percent, raising $6.3 million through the annual appeal.

But Tim Dockery, who coordinates the appeal, believes the higher goal can be met as parishes finish the pledging stage of Sharing Christ’s Gifts, the archdiocese-wide Millennium Campaign, especially if pastors emphasize the benefits of giving—both for the church and for the donors.

“Directly, your parish benefits from much of the work that benefits from the appeal,” said Dockery, noting that the appeal funds about 12 percent of the pastoral center’s operating budget. “And the Gospels teach us that everything we have is a gift from God, and God wants us to share those gifts with one another. Remember the parable of the rich young man who asked what he had to do to go to heaven.”

The decision to give to the church helps reinforce one of the church’s most counter-cultural values, Dockery said, by working against the emphasis modern society places on material goods and consumerism.

“It’s a spiritual discipline, a letting go,” he said. “It’s trusting that God will take care of you as he promised. … Someone once said, if all St. Peter had to judge you on when you died was your checkbook, would it reflect your values? Do you spend more on fast food and cable TV than you donate to causes you care about?”

That message of stewardship is one that Catholics heard repeatedly throughout the Millennium Campaign, an effort to raise more than $200 million, most of which went to fund capital needs in the parishes it came from. About 20 percent went to the archdiocese for one-time archdiocesan projects, such as helping to pay for work at Mundelein Seminary/University of St. Mary of the Lake, the Bishop Timothy Lyne Priests’ Retirement Residence and paying the cost of the campaign itself.

While the campaign was a success (See special section), many parishes that were collecting pledges in 2002 opted out of the in-pew collection for the Annual Catholic Appeal. As a result, the amount collected from the pews on the kick-off weekend dropped by more than half, from $1.2 million in 2000, before the Millennium Campaign started, to $500,000 in 2002.

But no matter how much parishes collect for capital projects, the archdiocese still needs the money from the appeal to pay for everything from salaries to the electric bill, Dockery said.

Some people undoubtedly decided not to give last year because of the ongoing clerical sexual abuse scandal that has confronted the church across the United States, but Dockery said that in Chicago, the economy appears to be a bigger factor.

There was a $100,000 drop-off in donations from corporations that match a percentage of what their employees donate, Dockery said. When he analyzed the figures, he discovered that in previous years, many of those donations came from companies that have either collapsed or severely reduced Chicago-area staffing: Montgomery Ward, Arthur Andersen, Sears, Amoco, Motorola.

“That means we’re getting a double hit,” Dockery said. “If an individual is laid off, we’re either not getting a donation or getting a reduced donation, and we’re not getting the matching grant. We were really caught unawares by that.”

To make up the difference, Dockery said, the archdiocese would like to see more parishioners participate. Last year, less than 5 percent of registered parishioners recorded a gift to the Annual Catholic Appeal. If parishes could increase the number of families who give by half—say, have 7.5 percent donate instead of 5 percent—the archdiocese could make its goal, he said.

“It’s everybody’s church, and we need more people supporting it,” he said.