POTENTIAL PROJECT
FOR THE COMPLETION OF THE INTERIOR OF CHURCH
HOW
Good afternoon/morning, everyone. As I mentioned in my bulletin column last week, there are a few things I need to take some time to speak with you about before we begin worship this weekend.
First, I hope that you are all aware by now that our parish debt was paid off in full this past February! We are debt-free! Thank you so much for all your help for the past almost eleven years in making that happen. I hope that you will all plan on coming together next Saturday evening for Mass – which will be at 4:00 pm – and for a meal and some live entertainment. There will be a band playing on the lower parking lot until 9:00 pm just like we do for the parish picnic. Please join in the celebration next weekend. You’ve earned it!
Secondly, I want to talk to you all for a bit this weekend about the next facet of a Potential Project for the Completion of the Interior of our Church.
As I hope you are aware, since last October we have had five What & Why Sessions at which we have discussed the various aspects of the interior of our Church that merit some attention as we consider the possibility of this project.
1) We talked about the Altar and Sanctuary and a ramp for handicapped accessibility. 2) We talked about the Reservation of the Blessed Sacrament in the Sanctuary and an Adoration Chapel behind it. 3) We talked about the Baptismal Font. 4) We talked about Music Ministry needs and the possibility of a Pipe Organ. 5) And we talked about our Confessionals, the lighting, the sound, the flooring, and permanent seating throughout the church.
Each of those sessions drew approximately 150 or so parishioners. If you were not able to attend those sessions, I hope that you will nonetheless make sure you are fully informed about the What & Why regarding this potential project by viewing the videos of those sessions which are all available via the parish website. The password to access them is “joachimandann.”
This weekend inserted in the bulletin you will find a blue sheet that has detailed information regarding the current Cost Opinion we have just received from LePiqueOrne Architects regarding the various aspects of this potential project. On the back side of the sheet you will find detailed information regarding the restricted funding that we already have in hand for a potential church interior project and a realistic projection that, even at the most costly end of the Pricing Estimate, we could easily have a project fully funded in a year-and-a-half to two years. At the lower end of the cost estimate, we could have a project fully funded as soon as a year from now.
I reiterate my promise to you that any project we may choose to undertake regarding the interior of our church will not result in any more debt. There will be no more debt!
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There are a couple of matters pertaining to the context of parish life that have been raised in some of the sessions we have had so far, and I believe it’s my responsibility to address them with everyone so that I can be as sure as possible that everyone is fully informed about things regarding parish life. I offer these thoughts to you for your prayerful consideration.
- Concern about parish mergers and anassertion that our Parish is dying
Some have suggested that the idea of spending money on the completion of the interior of church is an imprudent one because they question whether there will be parish mergers or consolidations in this part of St. Charles County at some point down the road. One person even went so far as to characterize our parish as dying even now.
Here are the facts. At present we have 1560 households in our parish whom we consider to be “active parishioners.” These are people who have registered in the parish and with whom we have had at least one known interaction in the past five years.
We have an additional 640 households who registered in the parish once upon a time but with whom we have had no interaction that we know of within the past five years. These folks we understand to be “inactive parishioners.” Our Evangelization Committee and a team of 30 parishioners are making visits to those families this spring to invite them to reconnect to us. This is the third time we’ve done this in the past eleven years.
With regard to the 1560 active parish households, 969 have a head of household over 50 years of age. And about 2/3 of those are between 50 and 65.
So the largest percentage of our parish is middle-aged. That is not the same thing as dying! (I am coming up on 54, so middle age better not be dying!)
The majority of our parishioners, therefore, are fifteen to twenty years away from aging out of their homes or downsizing and that means we are fifteen to twenty years away from any really significant turnover in population within our parish boundaries. No demographer I have spoken with will venture a guess about where the replacement population for our part of St. Charles County will come from 20 years from now. It is too far down the road.
I believe that there is a lot of life to be lived in the next fifteen to twenty years and I believe that we need to invest in it. If we choose to do nothing based on a fear that 20 years from now the neighborhood may look drastically different and parishes may have to merge, I believe it would end up becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. I would also add that even if there may happen to be mergers and consolidations of parishes at some time in the future in this part of St. Charles County, having an unfinished church or a worship space that isn’t fully what the Church’s liturgical norms call for would not serve our parish well at all in terms of being the site chosen for maintaininga Catholic presence.
We may for the most part be middle-aged right now, but I believe we are nonetheless vibrant and viable. I believe we have a lot of life and ministry ahead of us here. And, I believe it is an absolutely appropriate time to invest in completing the interior of our spiritual home.
- Anassertion that the money should be used for school
There are some also who have raised concern about the challenges we are facing with regard to our full-time school and who have suggested that the money should not be spent on church but should be used to lower our tuition so that we would be more aligned with what St. Joe’s charges.
I need to share some facts with you. We currently have 216 students in school from K-8. As of today, our registration for next year is 186. We are doing everything we can to push marketing. That is the reason for that announcement that you have been hearing at the end of Mass Sunday after Sunday, which you are probably sick of by now --- that we need you to be Ambassadors for our school. That is not just nice noise. It is the truth!
If you happen to be on Facebook, I encourage you to like and to follow our School’s Facebook page --- “Sts. Joachim & Ann School – St. Charles.” As you browse the page, share the posts you find there on your own page. Brag about our school so that your friends can see it and so they can see our kids and the great things they are doing and the great things that happen here every day. Make sure the good word about our school spreads where it needs to --- beyond our own eyes and ears.
The challenges we face with regard to school are not unique to us. The same challenges are being faced by what is now called Seton Regional school – they have 256 students this year as a combined student body from St. Elizabeth, St. Robert and St. Peter. And of that 256, 59 of those childrenare not Catholic. They are Buddhist or Hindu families from India who are here on work visas working for Mastercard. Without their non-Catholic students, Seton Regional School would already be under 200 in terms of enrollment as an already combined school from three parishes. St. Cletus’s enrollment right now is 211. All Saints’ enrollment is 209.
Everyone is facing the same challenges. And I have to tell you, honestly, that more money for school will not change that.
Our subsidy from the Sunday Offering to support our School next year will be $358,000. If we charged what St. Joe’s charges for tuition our subsidy to school would have to be well over $500,000 a year. The money that we are considering investing in the completion of our church would only allow us to do that for a handful of years and then we would be right back where we are now with regard to school.
I would also invite you to consider this. In 1957, the average cost of 8 years of Catholic elementary education was approximately $1800. That was also the sticker price of a top-of-the-line ’57 Chevy. Eight years of Catholic elementary education in our school here at Sts. Joachim & Ann today costs just over $40,000 ----- which is the average sticker price on a 2018 Chevy Tahoe SUV. The cost of Catholic education has not outpaced inflation in any other area of the cost of living. The challenge about Catholic schools is not the price – it is the culture and what is perceived to be valuable and affordable or not.
Every time a family says that they won’t enroll in our school because they can’t afford it, we direct them to the tuition assistance that is available ---Alive in Christscholarships and Beyond Sunday scholarships. The vast majority of the time, in our experience, those families look at the household income criteria for qualifying for tuition assistance and they say either that a) they make too much to qualify for assistance but they still cannot afford the tuition or that b) they qualify for help but the maximum $2000 a year scholarship they could receive still isn’t enough to make tuition affordable in their eyes.
I suggest to you that spending more money on our school is not going to change anything about that, because the most significant issue facing Catholic schools is the pool of available students. With every next generation of parent raising a young family, the percentage of people who are connected to Church and who believe that faith formation is a value is a smaller and smaller percentage than ever before. And, of those who are connected to Church and who may likely consider making use of a Catholic school to educate their children, the size of family that those parents are having today is smaller and smaller than it ever was.
There are several places throughout the Archdiocese now – normal suburban areas similar to ours like Crestwood, Webster Groves, Shrewsbury and Affton in South County-–- where the challenges regarding Catholic schools are equally manifest and where tough decisions have already been made in groups of parishes to combine and regionalize their efforts in providing Catholic education. As far as I know, none of those decisions have resulted in any loss of viability to the parishes themselves.
As long as my hands are on the steering wheel here, any family who wants a full-time Catholic education for their child will have access to one. I just cannot promise that it will always be a matter of us owning and operating our own school. We will do it for as long as we can. And we will do it the best that we can. That’s why we are pushing marketing so hard this spring. However, in today’s culture and climate it simply is not realistic to expect that owning and operating our own school can go on indefinitely.
I realize that there are some, maybe even many, who may disagree with me about these things and that’s fine. I believe it would be irresponsible of me, though, not to provide you my best effort at understanding the reality of theseissues in what I believe is an informed way.
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With regard to the Church Interior what is next?
We have had the What & Why. Today you have information regarding the How. What comes next is the Whether or Not.
The last three weekends in May, after all Masses, there will be opportunity for every “active parishioner” to complete an input form for your household representing your family’s disposition of mind and heart about a potential project to complete the interior of church.
I ask that you please be sure to watch the videos of the What & Why Sessions if you didn’t attend any of them, so that you are fully informed regarding the various aspects of the Church that are under consideration and the rationale for each of them. I ask that you review the information inserted in this weekend’s bulletin. And I ask that you give all of this your prayerful consideration.
And as always, friends, I thank you for listening.