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?