Sees financial potential

Today, stewardship -- sharing time, talents and treasures -- is the way parishes should support themselves, even if the idea hasn't exactly caught on everywhere.

"There is tremendous financial potential for parishes and dioceses to meet their programmatic needs if people would respond to that stewardship call," said Jack Manning, director of the diocesan Bishop's Appeal and Stewardship Office.

With seven out of 10 people registered in parishes not contributing to the weekly collection, the benefits if all of those people gave something to the Church would be significant. Those Catholics who do contribute give an average of 1 to 1.5 percent of their income to the Church.

"If people heard that stewardship call and increased their contributions to two or three percent of their income, the Church or parish revenues would double or triple," Mr. Manning said. "The preference is for people to understand what stewardship is about. The reality is that the majority of us haven't taken that stewardship message to heart."

There are two aspects of stewardship, Mr. Manning said:

* theological, in which Catholics respond to their baptismal call to share their time, talent and treasures with the Church; and

* organizational, in which the Church has a responsibility to use, in a prudent way, the resources entrusted to its care.

Someday, Bingo may no longer be needed to raise money for parishes, and that would be fine with Mr. Manning.

"Do we have to have Bingo? Probably not. There is not a policy against Bingo. It's a policy of pro-stewardship. It hasn't been fully received [in a way that would] allow us to eliminate Bingo, which is what we would want to do," he said. (PQ)

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