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How the Diocese Is Helping Our Parishes
- Assisting immediately all parishes with their current financial stresses by suspending diocesan assessment billing for the month of April. Parishes will not have to pay the April bill and that monthly amount owed will be cancelled permanently for April. In late April, this will be revisited for the May assessments based on circumstances at that time.
- Making financial guidance and planning assistance available to all parishes with a focus on projecting cash flows and calculating each parish’s weeks of operating reserves based on the expected reductions in offertory and adjusted for online giving and rental income.
- Providing recommendations on how to pay employees in April in keeping with Catholic priorities for care of our staff and their families.
- Earmarking and making available diocesan funding to provide 0% emergency loans to certain parishes with demonstrated urgent financial needs based on their current financial statements and detailed cash flow projections.
- Investigating what state and local government programs may be or become available to assist parishes.
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How You Can Help Your Parish
- Simply click the “Donate” button and select the amount of your gift. You can choose either a one-time gift or a recurring weekly gift. If you select the recurring option, you determine the duration of time that your parish will receive your weekly contribution. All recurring gifts will be charged on Sunday of each week
- Select your parish from a dropdown menu.
- Complete billing and payment information.
- Click “Donate Now” button
- You will receive an email acknowledgement of your gift.
- All gifts are credited immediately to your parish. Funds received will be electronically transferred to your parish each week.
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March 27, 2020Dear friends in Christ,
Our parishes are life-giving places where the faithful join in the celebration of the Eucharist, grow in their faith, and come together in charity. We embrace the joys of baptisms and weddings and shed tears at the funeral of a member of our parish family. Simply put, our parishes are our spiritual homes and serve as a refuge, especially in our times of need.
Now, our parishes need our help.
Like so many families in our own Diocese and throughout the country, our parishes are struggling. Even though the public celebration of the Mass is temporarily postponed, our parishes remain as powerhouses of consolation and encouragement because the private celebration of the Eucharist continues. Priests continue reaching out to provide pastoral care and support in new ways of keeping a parish family united and at prayer until the joyful day when we are gathered around the altar again. Parish staffs are serving their communities from home. Many parishes are live-streaming Masses and connecting with their people via social media. At the same time, parishes must meet salaries, pay for utilities and other necessities, and manage expenses – all without the regular Sunday offertory.
Just one week without the generous weekly support of the faithful and parishes face a hardship. Several weeks without it, and they face potentially crippling difficulties.
I ask you to help your parish continue its pastoral care by making a weekly contribution online. Simply click here at helpmyparish.thankyou4caring.org. There, select your own parish and make either a one-time gift or a weekly recurring donation. These contributions will then be forwarded to parishes promptly. As non-profit organizations, parishes are dependent on your generous giving.
In these unprecedented and uncertain times, families that are struggling themselves may not be in a position to financially support their parish in this manner. I speak on behalf of your pastor in saying that I understand completely. If you are faced with such a situation, I ask for your prayers for those impacted by the coronavirus outbreak and for our Church. Your prayer is a matchless gift.
Thank you for being such good and faithful parishioners. I know how much you love your parish, and our Church is blessed by your stewardship.
With the promise of a daily remembrance of you at the celebration of the Eucharist, and commending you to the care of the Blessed Virgin Mary, I am
Faithfully yours in Christ,
Most Reverend Arthur J. Serratelli, S.T.D., S.S.L., D.D.
Retired Bishop of Paterson -
