Dear Parishioners,

One of the first requests ever made to me when I came to the parish was that we would have a yearly financial report. Apparently, this report has not been given for several years. So, I made it a priority to make sure that we had one. Now, today, in an insert in the bulletin we have that financial report.

As you can see, overall our parish had a good year last year with over a hundred thousand dollar surplus. How- ever, I also need to point out that we have this surplus for two main reasons: First, we sold the property of the old rec- tory last year and we are not going to see that income again. Second, we have not been paying all of our diocesan bills. This has been a problem for over the last ten years or so and was only recently pointed out to me by the Diocese. Last year alone, we owed the Diocese $177,498 for the clergy medical insurance, property insurance, the assessment, pen- sion and priest pension. We cannot let this continue because, from the Diocese’s point of view, we could afford to pay them if we did not have a school. So, it threatens our school’s stability. I am right now working with the Diocese to find a good solution in the future and I will let you know more details as they develop. Furthermore in the near future, we will need to replace the roof of the church and half of the gym roof which will also cost us money above our normal ex- penditures.

I am strongly against any solution that would close our school. However, I feel a need to bring this up in order to be transparent and honest. I believe Catholic Education is a highly important mission of our parish and we would be greatly impoverished if we ever lost our school. We have a good school with good children and incredibly hard working teachers and staff that go out of their way because they believe in Catholic Education. So, even though my previous paragraph may sound pessimistic about the school’s future, I assure you that I will do everything I can to support the school and its mission. We just started a new School Board which has many wonderful ideas on how to promote the school and to integrate the school more into our regular parish life. So, I expect great things for our school’s future and definitely nothing is going to change in the near future.

Other than that, I just have a few brief announcements:

• Deacon Jim Walsh is recovering. His colon was removed two Mondays ago. He misses the parish greatly. And when I spoke to him, he said that he was, “the living example of the power of prayer”. So please keep praying for him.
• Thank you to everyone who donated to the St. Vincent dePaul Thanksgiving Program. You all did so well that they had hardly any room for it in the pantry. This food will go a long way to make sure that about sixty families in our com- munity will have a happy Thanksgiving.
• Today is World Day For The Poor. So, if you are able, please make a donation to Catholic Relief Services or pray for them.
• Thank you all for the positive response towards the Latin Mass. Apparently, more people really want to see a Latin Mass here than I expected. So, I even more look forward to offering those in Advent. I plan to have an information ses- sion about the Basics of the Latin Mass on December 7th at 7 pm in the Chapel. (The first Advent Latin Mass will of course be the next day on the 8th at 5:30 pm.)

Peace,

Fr. Carter