Christ Our Hope: Compassion in Community, November 1, 2009

I want to say a brief word about the feast we celebrate today.  This comes from what the sisters taught me in grade school.  If you look through the list of canonized saints, most of them are Popes and bishops, and kings and queens, and founders of religious orders.  You will find very few ordinary people on that list.  Why is that? 

It takes money to be canonized?  I'm not so sure that's true, but I am sure that it takes a whole lot of people to promote your cause, and most of us here, though we might be holier than some of the saints when we die, we're not going to have a slew of people standing in line to promote our cause.  So I was always taught that this feast day belongs to us.  I don't know if that's the origin of the feast, but I like that thought.

Then, as you know, most of you received this mailing, Christ our Hope: Compassion in Community, so I need to talk about that today.  I'd rather talk about the beatitudes.  If I did talk about the beatitudes, I would say simply that I don't understand them.  Even if I did, I wouldn't explain them to you, because as sure as I could explain them you'd say, "I know what that means," and you'd stop being bothered by them.  So I want you to be bothered by them and by how countercultural they are.

Then I beg your indulgence to talk briefly about Christ Our Hope: Compassion in Community.  On the Archdiocesan part, it lists many things that your contributions to the Archdiocese support.  Now, I don't believe in appealing to people to support things based on what's in it for you, but I want to take that risk.

One of the things listed is support for poor parishes.  I'd like to review how much support Holy Cross has received since I've been here.

When I came, we were $100,000 in debt to the Archdiocese.  That meant we had a hundred thousand dollars in unpaid bills that the Archdiocese had covered for us.  After I had been here a year, they forgave that debt.  For the first three years I was here, they gave us $50,000 a year as an operating subsidy.  From the year 2000 to 2006 we ran $750,000 in debt trying to keep our school alive.  That debt, which was a real debt ‑‑ they were our bills that the Archdiocese paid ‑‑ that was all absorbed by the home missions.  I count that as at least a million dollars in support we've received over the last 12 years.  We couldn't stand on our own as a parish, not to count $3 million for building a new school.  So as you consider whether and how much to give to the support of the Archdiocese, I ask you to keep that in mind.

Then for our parish portion, it asks you on the card, first of all, to say that you will pray for the parish, and that you will come to Mass regularly.  I hope that's something we can all do.  Then when it comes to how the money you give our parish is used, let me briefly summarize -- and this information is all in my bulletin letter.  

We have a very small staff.  We have a full‑time pastor.  With my health issues you could question whether that's true.  We have a secretary for 5 days a week, four hours a day.  We cut that back this past year to save money.  That meant she lost her insurance coverage.  We have a bookkeeper who is less than two days a week.  

We have Jan as parish nurse, and as you look today at the significant presence of health ministry in our parish, keep in mind that the parish does not support that.  That is supported by St. Francis Hospital as part of its community outreach to the poor.  It's done that for 12 years.  We have no guarantee that they will continue to be able to do that, and we have no guarantee about what would happen to that ministry if those funds were withdrawn. 

As for the rest of the money, we have been trying to align our parish goals with the Greater Indianapolis Neighborhood Initiative, GINI, plan for the near eastside to look at what is important to the community and how we align with that.  Education is very important to our community.  A great deal of our funds go to support education, not only Holy Cross School but our religious education.  And let me ask, how many of you went to Scecina High School?  How many have children or friends going to Scecina High School?  A good part of our parish budget goes to support Scecina High School.

The rest of our parish budget goes to keep the doors and the windows open.  Go back in your memory ten years ago.  How many of you remember what our buildings looked like ten years ago?  How many of you remember when you couldn't come up the front steps because they were full of bird droppings?  How many of you remember the church before we redid it?  How many remember the gym before we put new windows and new restrooms in it, or the windows before we redid them?  Well, preserving the historic character of our neighborhood is very important to the near east side, and what we do is very important to that goal. 

And then finally, let me ask you a question, and if you've already read my letter in the bulletin, no fair answering.  How much of the support of our parish do you think comes from our own contributions?  Any guesses?  Half, 30 percent, 10 percent? 

I looked at our budget, and 46 percent of our budget comes from our own contributions.  That's probably a little bit high, because it doesn't count Thanksgiving and Christmas food baskets, and the bulk of that comes from outside contributions.  It doesn't count Jan's service as parish nurse.  So it's probably closer to 40 percent. 

Do you think that's healthy?  What do you think?  Just let me ask for a show of hands.  How many think that's healthy?  It's relative?  We've kept our head above water because a lot of people have stepped forward and increased our efforts in fundraisers over the last several years.  But believe me, if we were going for grants for anything significant, a big question we would be asked is, "what percentage of your people support your parish, and what percentage of your budget comes from your own contributions?" 

I don't know about you, but I think we're in a pretty unhealthy state when it comes to that. Our situation is in a precarious state.  A great many of the people who make up that outside support are alumni from the 30s and the 40s and the 50s.  They're not going to be around that much longer.  

So I just want to ask you to pray real hard.  Only you know what is right for you, and only you know what is possible for you.  My prayer is that we will receive a lot of these cards back next Sunday, even if you have to give it back and say, "I've prayed over it and I can't give anything," that's okay.  At least it shows that you prayed over it.  And so that's my big goal, for people to take to heart the needs of the ministries we have here, to pray over them, to pray over your role in supporting them and to ask yourself what is right for you.

By the way, the other thing I mentioned in my letter in the bulletin ‑‑ and I've looked at this a long time ‑‑ if I were looking at our budget with a business eye and with a real critical eye and asking where we can save money, do you know the one thing we can't afford is a full‑time pastor.  That's the biggest expense in our budget that we could eliminate, but others we can't.  

Now, I'm not offering that as a prediction or a threat.  But as we think about our parish future, do you know that question will loom very large.  What kind of staffing is Holy Cross able to sustain and how sustainable is our current level of operation?  

Seeing Clearly, Homily for October 25, 2009

I want to outline the marvelous story structure in Mark's Gospel that ends today.  In chapter eight people bring a blind man to Jesus and ask him to cure him.  It's the only example in the Gospel of a botched miracle.  Jesus takes the blind man aside and touches him, and he says, "Do you see anything?" 

He says, "I see men, but they look like trees walking about."  Jesus touches him again and he sees clearly.  So there's the story of a healing of a blind man who at first sees not clearly, and then sees clearly.

Then Jesus asked the disciples, "Who do you say that I am?"  They see that he's the Messiah, but not clearly.  He teaches them that the Messiah has to suffer and die.  He teaches them about the cross and about receptivity to the child and about service, and they don't see.  Remember the last three Sundays' Gospels about that? 

The section concludes with another blind man crying out, "Have pity on me." 

And when Jesus says what do you want, he says, "I want to see."  Immediately he sees clearly and he follows Jesus on the way.

It's the last miracle in Mark's Gospel.  We move from here into the story of the passion.  Do you see how beautifully Mark ties those themes together?

Today I want to do a little exercise in seeing in another way.  How many of you got a mailing last week from the Archdiocese about Community and Compassion for Hope?  Good.  If you didn't, we'll have them in the pew in a couple of weeks. 

Ruth Tinsley, our principal, is one of the people trained to speak on behalf of the Archdiocese for that part of the appeal, so I've asked her to do that this morning.

Ruth: Well, I don't know if "trained" is the right word for it, but I have a passion for what I do.  Holy Cross School is one of the recipients of the money that is donated each year for the Bishop's appeal.  And the passion that I have is a passion for education and for being able to reach out and touch children. 

For the last five years I've been a principal, once for a while at St. Andrew-St. Rita, at Central Catholic, and now I'm very proud to be at Holy Cross.  And I have seen what that has done for children.  The Mother Theodore Catholic Academies receive a very large portion of the money that's donated.  When education, Catholic education, first came to the United States it came with the sisters who wanted to teach immigrant children, children who were being left out for many reasons from the meager education that was being offered.  And these sisters worked because they were faithful women who were committed to God.  They worked for their supper; they worked for their church; they worked for the children.  As that education grew, Catholic education became so strong in the United States that it was about the best education you could give your child. 

Somewhere along the line, though, that education became possible only for those who could afford it.  When you ask someone to pay $3700 a year, four thousand dollars a year, six thousand dollars a year for your child's education, a lot of us buckle down and we chose the things that we are going to give up, because we want our child to be educated in a Catholic school. 

But many don't have that ability to buckle down and say, "You know, this year I'm not going to get this," or "This year I'm not going to get that."  And so their children started being left out, not because they didn't want their children to have a faith-filled education, but because they couldn't afford it. 

So whether or not you agree with all of the politics that takes place within the Catholic Church, I think one thing we can all agree on is our children.  Our children are the future of not only the world but of the Catholic Church.  And if we have children who get left out of a good quality Catholic education because it's unaffordable for them, then we've lost something, something of our future as Catholics. 

Many of the children that we educate at Holy Cross are not Catholic, and some people have a little bit of a concern about that.  But our faith has always been about evangelization and bringing children to Jesus, bringing children to God. 

So when you think about where the money goes and how precious money is to each one, how much we need to be able to pay our bills and support our families, everything that you have, anything that you have to offer is going to make a difference.  $2.50 will buy a student a lunch.  $50 will buy a student a set of books.  $250 and you can get a classroom set.  A dollar and you made half the way to buy someone lunch. 

That’s how I have become involved in this appeal, because I see the children every day.  I get to hug them and love them, and, yes, I get to scold them, too.  But our job is to bring Jesus to their lives, and as a Catholic school educator, I get to do that every day.  And what that means is just amazing. 

I tell this story -- and you may have heard this before -- about the three year-old when I was at St. Andrew-St. Rita, and they were practicing the sign of the cross.  And so the teacher says," In the name of the Father..." and you know, teachers make grand gestures, "and the Son, and the Holy Spirit." 

And the little one's wiggling and wiggling and raising her hand, "But, but teacher, my father's name is Ryan, not Holy Spirit Amen."  We get those things and that's what kind of a difference we can make when we offer Catholic education.  Or when we get a communion service one day because Father wasn't available, and afterwards when the little ones ask the teacher, "When did Mrs. Tinsley become a priest?"  Oh, my, we had so much work to do.

But we do that work because we love to do that work.  But it is at a great cost.  Some of our families, for the year, pay under $200 for tuition.  The rest of that is subsidized through funds that we get from the Archdiocese.  Twenty dollars a month, when we break it out by 10 payments, is all it takes for this child to be able to attend a Catholic school.  Get a great Catholic education, and grow up and make a difference.

As you think about what is available to you and what you can and can't do, any little bit will help, and it will keep our school for hopefully another hundred years, making a difference to children in Catholic education.

As Mrs. Tinsley was talking, I remembered when I came here a little over 13 years ago people were still smarting from the time that the previous administration of the Archdiocese wanted to merge Holy Cross and St. Philip's into one.  How many of you remember that?  Well, not only did that not happen, but since then the Archdiocese invested $3 million in building a new school at Holy Cross and has recently invested $3 million in St. Philip's.  During my first 10 years here we went $750,000 in debt on Holy Cross School.  In spite of that, the Archdiocese did not close us but instead has made arrangements to wipe out that debt through the Home Mission part of the United Catholic Appeal. 

And as Mrs. Tinsley said, when you look at all the things that are supported, every one of us can find something we don't like.  Try preaching as I have about the United Catholic Appeal in southern Indiana, to a parish struggling to keep its school open, and answering the question, "Why is the Archdiocese so committed to the center city of Indianapolis?"  Try to tell those people why they should give to the center city of Indianapolis.  Try talking in Terre Haute to a parish that to close a school because of a debt, and they're still paying off the debt. Tell them about the commitment of the Archdiocese to center city schools.  Try talking at Our Lady of Lourdes where they feel that we have an advantage over them because of the commitment of the Archdiocese. 

As you pray and think about this appeal, realize we have benefitted greatly, even disproportionately.  Whatever your feelings about all the other things in there, just realize how extraordinary is the commitment of the Archdiocese to center city parishes.