MARY C. WEAVER
KCHS students for life A student from Knoxville Catholic High School wears a pro-life T-shirt during the Sept. 22 kickoff of Knoxville’s 40 Days for Life campaign. For 12 hours a day, members of the faithful will pray across the street from the Concord Street abortion clinic. page 9
THE EAST TENNESSEE
Volume 20 • Number 3 • October 10, 2010
The
N E W S PA P E R
of the D I O C E S E of K N O X V I L L E
MARY C. WEAVER (2)
DAN MCWILLIAMS
w w w. d i o k n o x . o r g
The Church of Knoxville is growing: dedicating new buildings (left photo shows Bishop Stika at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in LaFollette), educating adults and children (center photo depicts youngsters from Sacred Heart Cathedral School in Knoxville), helping the poor and needy, supporting adult faith formation, and ordaining priests (in the photo at right, the bishop lays hands on new priest Father Christopher Riehl). The Annual Catholic Appeal will be held in November. Please support the Diocese of Knoxville as generously as possible. INCREASING NEED FOR MINISTRIES
As Church grows, so does need for help The second of two stewardship appeals focuses on supporting the diocese’s ministries in East Tennessee. By Dan McWilliams
fore—and with an increasing need for its ministries in tough economic times—the diocese is counting on the faithful to contribute generously to Parish Stewardship Weekend on Oct. 2 and 3 and the Annual Catholic Appeal this November. The diocese changed its Annual Stewardship Appeal this year, splitting the parish appeal from the diocesan one. East Tennessee Catholics are pledging financial support to their parishes for 2011 on Stewardship Weekend, Oct. 2 and 3. In mid-November, East Tennessee Catholics will receive a letter from Bishop Richard F. Stika asking them to contribute to the 2011 Annual Catholic Appeal, which will support Catholic Charities, religious education, and all of the other diocesan programs and ministries. Jim Link, who became director of the Office of Stewardship and Planned Giving on June 1, quickly learned that the Diocese of Knoxville was among the last to have a
combined appeal. “After I was here for about a month, I went to a conference down in Shreveport with all of the diocesan stewardship directors in the Southeast,” he said. “None of them were doing it the way that we were in the sense of combining the parish appeal and the diocesan appeal. All the others have been running separate appeals, and— not coincidentally— they’re raising a lot more money than we are.” Mr. Link returned from the conference and ran the split-appeal idea by vicar general Father David Boettner and other priests, at first with the idea of implementing the change next year. “They all agreed with the idea of unhinging the two but said we should do it this year rather than next,” said Mr. Link. The diocese has a goal of $1.5 million for this year’s Annual Catholic Appeal, a significantly higher amount than the goal from the past several years under the single-collection format. “ASA contributions have actually gone down a little bit, if you
look at where we were 10 years ago,” said Mr. Link. “We were raising $950,000, and last year it was about $900,000. At the same time, there are more Catholics in the diocese and more parishes, so the numbers should have gone up simply because we’re appealing to more people.” Parish-office staffers will likely appreciate the change in the appeal this year. In the past, parishes collected all ASA contributions and sent the diocese’s share to the stewardship office. The new model relieves the parish workload considerably. Mr. Link and administrative assistant Maura Lentz, with the help of newly installed fundraising software, will take over those duties. “The parishes were doing all the bookkeeping,” said Mr. Link. “They were counting all the money and thanking the donors, and at the end of the calendar year they were generating tax-receipt letters.” The latest recession—unlike the last several downturns—led to a reduction in giving nationwide. “If you look at national trends,
giving in the United States has declined only twice in the last 80 years,” said Mr. Link. “The first time was the year after the Great Depression began, and the second time was last year. It never declined [during the other recessions]. The rate of increase narrowed, but it was always an increase.” The Annual Catholic Appeal supports the diocese’s offices of Youth and Young Adult Ministry, Religious Education, Marriage Preparation and Enrichment, and Priestly Life and Ministry, along with seminarian education, faith formation, justice-and-peace education, and university ministry. The largest share from the diocesan appeal–40 percent—goes to Catholic Charities of East Tennessee Inc., whose programs have seen more hungry and homeless people come to their doors as the economy worsened. “Nonprofits like the Church are experiencing an increase in the demand for their services precisely at a time when people are giving less, so it’s a ‘perfect storm’ for a lot of charities, unfortunately,” said Mr. Link. ■ At this year’s Chrism Mass, held March 30 at the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, all the priests of the diocese renewed their commitment to serve the people of God in East Tennessee. DEACON PATRICK MURPHY-RACEY
the Church in East TenW ith nessee growing as never be-