The Catholic Church Of Southeastern Wisconsin:
A Light To The World

Most Reverend Timothy M. Dolan, Archbishop of Milwaukee

My brothers and sisters in Christ of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee: I always enjoy the opportunity to write you about matters close to my heart.

Today I want to talk about you, me, and our future. I'd like to talk about our goals, our vision, our priorities, and where we are going as the Church in southeastern Wisconsin.

Before considering the future, though, I'd like to take you back forty years, to 1964. Remember what was going on? I sure do: the Cardinals won the pennant and beat the Yankees in the World Series! But I also remember that what Pope John Paul II has called "the second Pentecost of the Church," namely, Vatican Council II, was in full swing. Although only fourteen, I vividly recall the hope, excitement, and promise of those days.

In fact, this November, we celebrate the fortieth anniversary of one of the most pivotal documents of the council, Lumen Gentium, "Light to the World." Simply put, the Church was summoned to obey Jesus and be the "light to the world."

Four decades later, we 720,000 Catholics of Southeastern Wisconsin are challenged again to be a light to the world. All our goals, plans, and priorities, boil down to this: the Church must be the light of Christ to the world.

How can we best provide light? For the last two years, since my arrival as your archbishop, I've been doing a lot of listening to you. I've visited half of our 219 parishes, many schools, dozens of our healthcare, charitable, and fraternal organizations, and met with thousands of people.

The good news is that there is a lot of light in the Catholic Church in southeastern Wisconsin. The deep faith, the generous love, the noble hopes of our priests, deacons, religious, and people are radiant! People love the Church!

The sad news is that there is also some darkness. Nothing too new here. That was true even back in the Church of the Apostles. Even St. Gregory the Great, fifteen centuries ago, compared the Church to dawn, since dawn had both darkness and light. So, we have to be realistic and admit we have some darkness in the Church we love: people falling away from the faith; the ongoing ramifications of the clerical abuse scandal; the attacks on marriage and family; the advance of the "culture of death;" people ignoring the Church on issues of peace and justice; the need for more vocations; the decline in Sunday Mass attendance and the celebration of the sacrament of reconciliation; ignorance of the faith among children, youth, and adults; money problems; rampant immorality; division in the Church between those who think the Church too slow and stubborn in embracing change on any number of issues, but especially regarding women's ordination, priestly celibacy, and sexual morality; and those who think the Church has lost its identity and focus by trying to alter the unchanging truths given us by Christ and passed on by Tradition...Well, I better stop here!

Last year, as you might recall, I commissioned two initiatives: the parish planning process and a strategic planning process. The brave souls who participated in these two valuable undertakings told me, "Archbishop, when this is all done, you'll have to think long and hard about what you hear and learn. You'll have to make it your own. Then you'll have to articulate a vision, goals, and priorities. Tell us where you hope we can go, and lead us there."

Honestly, I get somewhat hesitant when talking about goals, visions, and priorities. After all, we have the Bible, the supreme teaching of Jesus, and the Magisterium of the Church. What else do we need? I recall St. Francis of Assisi. Remember when he went to ask Pope Innocent III to approve his new religious order? The Pope replied, "Show me your rule of life." Francis reached into his brown habit and pulled out the Gospel of St. Matthew! For him, that was enough. It should be for us, too.

But, I realize that we have to take the timeless teachings of God's Word and His Church and apply them now.

I have got to tell you something I did last year. When the planning processes began, I wrote down the vision and goals I personally have for our archdiocese. There were six of them. I put that list in the kneeler in my chapel. Then I held my breath and waited, praying that the goals that I heard you express, and the priorities that surfaced in our parish and strategic planning processes, would at least be somewhat close to mine.

Guess what? They were almost identical!

One clear message I hear from all of you: we have to move ahead! Any one of the problems I listed earlier can drag us down. But, as one of you mentioned to me, "Archbishop, we can't be stuck in maintenance, we have to be about mission." How right you are! Or, to use the analogy of Jesus, this is not the time to wade in the shallow water, but a time to "cast out to the deep!"

So, you asked for it. I invite you, I encourage you, I challenge you, I need you, to join me on an "adventure in fidelity," as the Church in southeastern Wisconsin strives to be a "light to the world." Asking your collaboration and commitment, and relying upon the grace of God, I set these six priorities:

Seek ye first the kingdom of God

It really all comes down to that mandate of our Lord, doesn't it? To preach Jesus, His message, His person, His kingdom, is our supreme goal. Thus we summon all Catholics to deepen their union with Him, to accept Him as their Lord and Savior through faith and conversion of heart, in prayer, worship, pursuit of sanctity and virtue, openness to His Word, acceptance of His teachings as handed on by His Church, and celebration of the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, all in the communion of the one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church.

Now, this is an important number one goal, not only in principle, but strategically. See, many of our pastoral priorities deal with external dimensions of the life of the Church, and rightly so. But, every call to renewal in the Church must begin with an interior conversion of heart. As Jesus taught, "The kingdom of God is within!" The Second Vatican Council spoke of a universal call to holiness. The temptation, of course, is to think that all our problems in the Church are "out there." If we could just make certain "systemic changes" in the Church, all would be hunky-dory. 'Fraid not! Because the real change, the genuine renewal, the authentic reform, has to start within, in our hearts and souls.

Let me propose some practical ways we as an archdiocese can further this goal of "seeking first the kingdom of God":

• An emphasis on the Sunday Eucharist as the heart of our spiritual life, with vigorous efforts to promote faithful weekly attendance at Sunday Mass, creative programs to encourage Catholics to return to Sunday Eucharist, and encouragement to every parish to ensure that the reverent celebration of Sunday Mass, with full and active participation of all the faithful, in conformity to the liturgical expectations of the Church, is of the highest priority. Our strategic parish plan placed as its main priority that "all have access to the Eucharist in its totality, namely, word, sacrament, service, and community."
  Recently, a pastor at one of our parishes spoke to me about his major goal for the parish. "I want to make Sunday Mass the centerpiece. If I can increase attendance, make the Mass as spiritually nourishing as possible, feed my people well with a substantial homily, make sure all are involved in preparation, reverent and attentive prayer, and participation, with first-rate music, and enhance a climate of hospitality - well, I figure everything else will fall into place: evangelization, social justice, education, catechesis, and stewardship."
  Well said! I agree wholeheartedly.
• I remind every parish, school, and Catholic organization, of the policy of the archdiocese that Sunday morning is left free of scheduled sporting and social events. Nothing should take precedence over Sunday Mass.
• Prompted by the Holy Father's declaration of a "Year of the Eucharist" from October 2004 to October 2005, I call for a renewed catechesis on the teaching of Jesus and His Church on the centrality of the celebration of the Eucharist, and the doctrine of the Real Presence. I encourage every parish to foster prayer before Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. I commend our parishes who ensure that the sick and homebound receive the Holy Eucharist frequently, brought to them by properly prepared and commissioned extraordinary Eucharistic Ministers, and I am eager to promote the timely concept of the emphasis of this archdiocese of "Eucharist without Walls" which powerfully reminds us of the implications of the Eucharist in our moral lives, in the way we treat others, of allowing Sunday Eucharist to influence our lives Monday through Saturday.
• A concerted effort to promote a return to the sacrament of reconciliation. One of the most powerful and practical ways we respond to the call of Jesus to interior renewal and conversion of heart is through a genuine personal celebration of the sacrament of penance, often during the year, especially before Christmas and Easter. I ask our priests, deacons, parish directors, catechists, and teachers to encourage our people to return to confession, with a mature understanding of its power, and urge our pastors to continue to see that confessions are regularly scheduled.
• Continued training of priests, deacons, religious, and lay ministers to serve as competent spiritual directors to our people, with promotion as well of the excellent retreat opportunities in this area

To Strengthen our Parishes

The parish is the frontline of the Church. All diocesan efforts exist to serve the parish, not vice versa. As Pope John Paul II has taught, the parish is "the family of families."

Just last month I had the joy of returning to the parish where I was raised, Holy Infant Parish in Ballwin, Missouri, for its golden jubilee. There I thanked God for the gift of growing up in a parish where I was welcomed, loved, educated in soul and mind, prepared for Christian discipleship, encouraged in my priestly vocation, and sustained by a community and neighborhood sharing my values. Holy Infant Parish was a real spiritual family and home.

My goal is that every one of our 219 parishes in the archdiocese would be the same. In my two years as your archbishop, as I have met thousands of you, one of the first things you tell me, usually with enthusiasm and pride, is what parish you come from. That's good!

Now for some practical goals to strengthen parish life:

• A continuation of the study of archdiocesan structures to make sure they are at the service of our parishes, and to see how we can even better help them. The central offices of the archdiocese need to determine, for instance, if our parishes would appreciate more extensive centralized services for purchasing, payroll, and building and property supervision.
• Ongoing implementation of the conclusions of the parish planning process, leading to the opening of some new parishes, expansion of present ones, merging and consolidation of others, with the prudent distribution of clergy, lay pastoral ministers, and resources.
• Encouragement of the archdiocesan council of priests to continue its discussions, with eventual resolution, of how to relieve our parish priests of the lopsided burdens of administration of finances, buildings, property, and personnel, so they can be true shepherds, pastors to the souls of their parishioners, not just managers and executives.
• A continued commitment to form men and women who discern a call to serve Jesus and His Church in lay ministry, and men as deacons, in our parishes.
• The fostering of a dominant spirit of evangelization in our parishes, energetically inviting those who have fallen away, or those who have never known the Church, to encounter, worship, know, and live Jesus in the communion of His Church.

To foster a sense of vocation in the Church

One of the major teachings of the Second Vatican Council is that every member of the Church, through the sacrament of Baptism, strengthened through the Eucharist and Confirmation, has a sacred responsibility to live and spread the gospel of Jesus Christ.

To form our people of that sense of vocation is indeed a major goal of the archdiocese.

But I also want us to promote as aggressively as possible specific vocations in two areas:

Marriage

Not long ago, I asked our archdiocesan pastoral council to discuss the promotion of vocations to the priesthood. An articulate woman on the council particularly caught my attention. "Archbishop," she began, "you're barking up the wrong tree. There is a vocation crisis, alright, but it's not primarily about vocations to the priesthood. We have a shortage of vocations to lifelong, loving, faithful, life-giving marriage! You take care of that one, and you'll have all the priests and sisters you need!"

Bingo! She's right! The dismal statistics back her up: I am afraid that many of our young Catholic couples are not getting married in Church, are living together without the sacrament, and that many sacramental marriages tragically end in divorce. It is an urgent pastoral priority to foster the sacred vocation of husband and wife, father and mother.

Priesthood and Religious Life

I say it again: Jesus is calling men today to serve Him and His Church as a priest, and men and women as consecrated religious. The problem is hardly that He is not calling; the problem is that we are not listening. We have to start listening and answering His summons!

I know it's too soon to call it a trend, but the number of our seminarians is going up. The experience of other dioceses leads us to believe that, if a bishop, his priests, and his people make the promotion of priestly and religious vocations a daily priority, great things happen. Let's do it!

A few practical ways:
• I want to establish the Nazareth Institute for Marriage and Family Life to strengthen the vocation of matrimony. Among its mandates will be the following:
1. Solid teaching on the virtue of chastity, and the dignity and permanence of marriage, in all our schools and religious education programs;
2. Renewed emphasis on the preparation for marriage provided to our engaged couples;
3. A network of support for our married couples, especially attentive to those experiencing struggle, including the availability of sound counselors committed to saving the marriage, spiritual direction, prayer, retreats, and the encouraging support of other Christian couples;
4. Solid catechesis to engaged and married couples on the moral demands of marriage, including the Church's teaching on sexual love and on the gift of children, with instruction in natural family planning;
5. Defense of the dignity of the nature of marriage against attacks by society and legal initiatives;
6. Formation on moral issues, with an emphasis on family values, helping our people become critical consumers of the media and entertainment industry;
7. Protection of the life of the baby in the womb, and promotion of values and initiatives in society to protect and assist children and their parents.

For two thousand years, society and culture have looked to the Church as the most ardent defender of marriage and family. We can't let them down.

• The commitment of every parish to foster within three years a vocation to the priesthood, consecrated religious life, or the deaconate. I want every priest, deacon, religious, and lay person in the archdiocese to become a vocation recruiter, personally asking our young people to consider a vocation to the priesthood or consecrated religious life.
• Continued consideration by our priest council about the fairest and most effective way to welcome foreign-born priests into our archdiocese.

Strengthening of Catholic Education and Faith Formation

The title most often given Jesus was "teacher;" His last command to us was "go teach!"

You spoke loudly and clearly during the planning processes: you love our Catholic schools (grade schools, high schools, colleges and universities); you want the Church to help in your primary duty of raising your children in the Catholic faith through our schools and programs of religious education; and you realize that formation in the faith is lifelong, not stopping at graduation; you deeply appreciate our teachers, catechists, faith-formation leaders, and youth ministers and want to help them.

One of the best things that the Church does is teach. She has been a "light to the world" as a teacher.

You also raised some worries:
• You are anxious about the tremendous financial burden of our Catholic schools.
• You worry that we are defeatist about our schools, and have given up on them, especially on building new ones or expanding present ones.
• You fear that our schools are losing their Catholic identity, becoming more "private" schools than religious ones.
• You are anxious that Catholic schools are becoming a luxury for the wealthy, not an option for the poor or the struggling middle class.
• You have expressed concerns that our programs of religious education get short-shrift, do not get enough time, attention, or resources, and must depend upon volunteers who, while very generous and well-intentioned, have no professional background.

• You worry that, even after years of catechesis in our schools and religious education programs, our children still do not grasp the essentials of their Catholic faith, because religion classes are an afterthought, teachers lack proper competency, the content of the faith has been diluted, with "feel good" theories and dissenting opinions replace sound catechesis in the faith. As more than one of you commented, "I send my kids to Catholic schools (or religious education classes) not to hear what the teachers 'feel' or think, but what the Church teaches."
• You are aware that young adults are particularly tempted to drift from the faith, because there is nothing offered them in the Church from the time they leave school until they themselves marry and have children, an age that is becoming later and later.
• You see the need for adult faith formation, so that you can find at your parish - and not have to go to the local evangelical Church - Bible study, instruction in prayer, and creative classes on the doctrine and moral imperatives of our Catholic faith.

How about some practical ways to respond to these legitimate worries?

• Getting serious about our promise that Catholic grade and high schools be accessible and affordable to every Catholic child and young person in southeastern Wisconsin:
• This means putting our grade and high schools on reliable financial footing, with tuition assistance available to help every child who wants to attend a Catholic school but whose family cannot afford the entirety of tuition;
• This means that every parish has a grade school it calls its own; those parishes who do not have their own parish school would have a close, collaborative relationship with one nearby, and would help support it financially and by encouraging and assisting their children to attend;
• I have commissioned our archdiocesan Schools Advisory Board to undertake a professional study of our thirteen Catholic high schools, with the goal of strengthening existing ones and possibly building new ones.

• We must assure that our teachers are committed to the Catholic identity of our schools, that every day begins and ends with prayer, that a class in religion is taught daily by competent teachers with the skills they need, ever faithful to Church teaching. I recently met an excellent teacher who had just been hired at one of our elementary schools. She told me that, during the interviews, she was asked many questions about her background, her own credentials, references, and experience. That was all expected, she observed. "But," she concluded, "nobody asked me if I believed in God and was committed to the Catholic mission of the school! That shocked me!" That shocks me, too! That shocks our parents as well! As Brother Bob Smith, our archdiocesan director of education and faith formation, repeats, "Our schools are Catholic. We never hide that or apologize for that."
• The archdiocese must deepen its resolve to provide first-rate formation for those brave and generous women and men who want to teach religion in our schools and programs of religious education. We need to be as serious about the qualifications of one we commission to teach the faith as we are about one we hire to teach math.
• Our young adults, those in the 18-35 range, need to experience the inviting embrace of the Church, and be satisfied in their longing for a mature comprehension of their faith, equipped with the tools to explain and defend their religion in a society more enamored with The Da Vinci Code and the Left Behind series, than with The Catechism of the Catholic Church.
• We pledge to support our catechists invested in such wonderful initiatives as the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, "Theology on Tap," adult faith formation sessions, and, especially, in our critical programs of religious education for children and youth. Like it or not, over half of the Catholic children of this archdiocese are not in a Catholic school. While I pledge to work on decreasing that statistic, we must be realistic and assure that our religious education programs are high-powered, creative, compelling, and ever-faithful to the teaching of Jesus and His Church.
• As we ask our lay men and women to take their place as energetic disciples of Christ in the world, and to accept the invitation of Jesus to be leaders in His Church, we must assure that their knowledge of the faith matures and deepens. Recently, an executive at one of our excellent Catholic hospitals observed, "Archbishop, I am so honored to be in this role of leadership and service at a Catholic hospital. I view it as a ministry, as a vocation, not just as a job. But I worry. I have an M.A. in healthcare administration, but my education in my faith stopped when I was fourteen." He's right to be worried! I'm worried, too! If we are challenging men and women to take their rightful roles as leaders in the Church, bringing gospel values to business, politics, health care, the marketplace, culture, art, and science, well, we owe them the proper formation in the faith to do it well!

We have an excellent program of adult faith formation at St. Francis de Sales Seminary; our five Catholic colleges and universities offer exceptional programs; many of our parishes work hard at it. As an archdiocese, we need to see that these initiatives - and new ones, if necessary - are strengthened and expanded.

• Finally, for all practical purposes, the most consistent formation and instruction you receive in the faith comes, for better or worse, at the Sunday homily. We must then, ensure that our priests and deacons are effective preachers, providing them proper training before and after ordination, and devising ways for our people to offer constructive feedback on the quality of their sermon.

Emphasis on our mission of justice and charity

The poor, suffering, marginalized, and searching have always looked to the Church, founded by the one who taught "whatsoever you do to the least of these, you do to me," for care, compassion, and love.

This archdiocese can hold its head high for its long tradition of charity and advocacy for justice. We must not let up.

Today, we face new challenges. One is "compassion fatigue," as we simply are tempted to get tired of helping the poor and suffering, wondering if anything helps. Two, as our Catholic people, thank God, continue to move up the economic ladder, we can at times be lured into forgetting the needs of those left behind. Three, we can get comfortable in caring for our own narrow interests, sometimes "congregational" in our view of the Church as limited to my little community and my needs.

No! We are Catholic. We are members of the Church universal. We hurt when someone in Sudan, Haiti, or our inner-city hurts. We are constantly beckoned beyond ourselves. As St. John Chrysostom wrote, "Some view the parish as their world; others better view the world as their parish."

When all is said and done, our eternal salvation - the goal of our lives - will depend upon how we treated those in need. Jesus told us that. Some resolutions:

• I ask every parish to ensure that it has a high-profile outreach program to help those in need. For instance, St. Vincent de Paul societies, twinning with other parishes, and cooperating with shelters, soup kitchens, and other charitable initiatives. The promotion of the corporal and spiritual works of mercy is a duty for us, not a hobby or nice idea.
• We want to strengthen and expand our excellent Catholic Charities, our archdiocesan network of service to those in need.
• We need to listen to you in your observations that there can be overlapping of services in archdiocesan structures, and that we need to do a better job of coordinating our outreach. Thus, we want to develop a long-term social ministry plan for the archdiocese, rooted firmly in the Church's teaching on social justice.
• Certain areas of our mission of justice and charity need strengthening:
• Our defense of the life of the baby in the womb. While we preach a consistent ethic of life, the premier social justice issue today is the tragic lack of respect for the fragile life of the baby in the womb. I want to work towards a full-time "respect life director" in the archdiocese, and the re-establishment of a Respect Life committee in every parish.
• We must strengthen our presence in the central city, particularly among our African-American brothers and sisters.

• In the past, our grandparents rose to the challenge of welcoming immigrants and refugees from Poland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Croatia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Bohemia - just to name some of the countries from where they came. Now it's our providential turn to embrace our brothers and sisters who come to us from Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, the Pacific Rim, Asia, and from Ghana, Eritrea, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Sudan. They are as much at home in the Church as we are, and rightfully look to the Church for a warm place of worship, the sacraments, education for their children, and encouragement and help in getting settled.
• Our Catholic hospitals, health-care facilities, nursing homes and assisted living facilities are a source of pride. But we need to help them remain truly Catholic, not to become just bureaucracies, businesses, or warehouses.
• Our homilies, schools, and religious education programs equip us all to be apostles of justice and peace in a society that seems bent on selfishness, greed, comfort, violence, and war.
• We maintain our splendid traditions of support for the missions of the Church universal, and international outreach to the struggling Churches of other countries;
• Finally, in our care for God's poor, we are conscious that we Catholics are part of a wider community, and we are proud and exuberant partners in all programs of ecumenical and communal efforts.

Stewardship

I hate to admit it, but a lot of this comes down to money. To even begin to accomplish the noble goals outlined above, our duty is to get serious about the biblical virtue of stewardship.

What's that? It is the humble and grateful recognition that everyone and everything we have is a gift from our loving Father, who only asks that we use it well, and return some to Him and His Church so that His kingdom can be furthered and those with less can share in His abundance.

What we give back to God in His Church, then, is not just a nice idea, or a couple of dollars thrown into the basket on Sunday. It is a way of life, where we consistently return to God a carefully proportioned chunk of our treasure, our time, and our talent, offering it as an act of gratitude and love to the God who will never be outdone in generosity.

It is putting our money where our mouth is, as we realize that all we want our Church to do cannot be accomplished unless we sacrifice our money, our time, our talents, sharing them with God, His Church, His people. Some goals:

• Over the last three years, the Catholic Stewardship Appeal has exceeded its increased goal, a tribute to the resilient goodness of our people. I call for us to keep working for an increase in the CSA for each year, until we can reach an expected annual income of $10,000,000.
• I am directing the central offices and services of the archdiocese to work to the goal of living within the constraints of a budget based on what we take in
• from the cathedraticum, that assessment levied on every parish.
• I have directed our excellent office for stewardship to look into the feasibility of an archdiocesan capital campaign, which would be used to subsidize the educational and charitable endeavors of the archdiocese, while also establishing the beginning of an endowment for the central ministries of the archdiocese.
• I ask every priest and deacon to devote one homily a year, flowing from the Liturgy of the Word of that Sunday, to promote and explain the biblical virtue of stewardship.

In looking this over, I confess some trepidation and disappointment: A fear, as I have articulated a demanding vision, and may have tried to accomplish way too much; a disappointment, as perhaps my enumeration of priorities may have overlooked some of the ones you were hoping to hear.

All I can say is that, when all is said and done, the accomplishment of the demands of discipleship, the furtherance of His kingdom, the implementation of His last mandate to "Go out and teach," and the salvation of our souls do not depend on me anyway. Nor does it depend on you. Thank God, because we'd botch it. Our reliance is on the Lord, and Him alone. His power is sufficient, His mercy is there when we fail. All we can do is open ourselves in trust and humility to His grace and promptings.

But He has let us know that He invites our cooperation, our sacrifices, our commitment, our efforts. He will never impose Himself upon us. All He wants is our faith and love, and that can never be forced.

Thus, while calling you to trust and prayer, I also call you to action. If you are only spectators, watching the plan unfold or criticizing from the sidelines, it will not work. The days of saying, "The Church should do this..." are over. The new statement is, "We of His Church, full of faith, hope, and love, need to do this..."

So, the choice is ours: light or darkness. Listen to voices around us and there's plenty of reason for darkness, gloom, pessimism, doubt, despair. The troubles and problems are towering, many of them our own making. Satan, sin, selfishness, stubbornness, scandal - all strong forces to be reckoned with.

But listen to Jesus, who rose from the dead, and there is infinite reason for light. The Church is still the "light to the world," and not even the gates of hell can conquer it. Pope John Paul II speaks, not of the "autumn," but of the "Springtime of Evangelization" budding in the Church.

Listen again to God's Word from the Book of Habakkuk, our first reading from the first Sunday of last month:

"Then the Lord answered me and said: write down the vision . . . so that one can read it readily. For the vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint. If it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late."

"You are the light of the World!"