CRS head to bishops: Talk us up
The head of Catholic Relief Services is asking his brother bishops a favor: “Brag about us a little bit.”
Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York, who chairs the Baltimore-based relief agency, spoke on Monday to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which is meeting this week at the Mariott Waterfront Hotel in Baltimore. Dolan said Catholic Relief Services, the overseas relief and development agency of the U.S. bishops, remains little known even among Catholics:
Even though CRS is recognized as a leader among humanitarian agencies for its professionalism, innovation and efficiency, the fact is that many of your parishioners have not heard of us.I recently heard a troubling fact. CRS conducted a survey, using an independent polling agency, and asked Catholics to name a humanitarian agency that works overseas. And do you know how many mentioned CRS? Only 22 percent. And that was a huge improvement from the previous year, when only 11 percent named CRS. We have a lot of work to do! We do not spend a lot of money on advertising, as do other similar relief agencies, as less than 5% of our budget goes for overhead.
That’s why I’d like to ask a favor of all of you, my brother bishops. Because CRS is your agency, brag about us a little bit. Perhaps you could write an occasional column in your diocesan newspapers about the work of CRS. Perhaps you could encourage your parishes to get involved in Operation Rice Bowl, the CRS Lenten program. Or maybe you could encourage you priests to mention CRS from time to time in their homilies. Or better yet, they could get involved in our Global Fellows program – we send priests, deacons and seminarians overseas to see the work of CRS first hand, and they come back as some of our best ambassadors.
Dolan concluded with an anecdote that he said illustrated how CRS works, and the impact it has.
CRS serves people because of need, not creed. We don’t help people because they’re Catholic; we do it because we are. We evangelize by our witness. We testify to the faith through our charity. In case you think this message might be lost, let me share with you an encounter that the Secretary General of the Ethiopian Catholic Secretariat, Abba Hagos Hayish, had earlier this year. You see, CRS has donated several drilling rigs to the Ethiopian Catholic Church to tap deep groundwater. The borehole now provides 2,400 households with access to clean water. These are families who previously had to trudge hours to fetch clean water. This daily chore kept children out of school and made the lives of the village’s women much more difficult.As Abba Hagos toured some of the communities benefiting from this work, he approached a woman filling a 5-gallong jug with water from one of the system’s taps.
“What do you think of this water project?” he asked her.
“It’s wonderful!” she exclaimed. “Look how clean this water is. Our life has changed.”
“Do you know who is responsible for this project?” Abba Hagos inquired. The woman put down her water jug and looked at him with a slightly puzzled expression.
“They call themselves Catholics,” she said, emphasizing the strange word at the end of her sentence. “I’m not sure exactly what that means, but we give thanks to God for their work.”
“By their fruits you will know them,” says Jesus. That’s evangelization.
Comments
This approach makes me proud to be a supporter and a Catholic. After 41 years away today I am being directed by God. Sometimes I am frustrated in my understanding of what he wants. Yet over time he has taught me more in 6 months than my prior 54 years. It is humbling for all I did and did not do he still remembered me. I only hope to be of service as he sees fit. God Bless!
Posted by: Rick Casey | November 17, 2009 1:51 PM
As long as CRS fails to protect faithful wives in sub-Saharan Africa from their HIV-positive husbands, CRS is guaranteed an inexhaustible supply of dieing women to care for. CRS's sycophantic support of the Vatican's hardline against the use of condoms to protect the lives of these innocent women is morally indefensible and ignores well-established principles of Catholic moral theology which a number of non-African and non-American national conferences of Catholic Bishops and individual Prelates have cited in their public statements of support for the use of condoms as a moral imperative if a HIV-positive husband insists on having sex with his spouse.
The consistent and proper use of high quality condoms in these circumstances is a pro-life strategy which could save hundreds of thousands of lives each year.
The papal sycophants in the USCCB,
by their implicit support of the Vatican's obdurate stand against the use of condoms by HIV-positive husbands, share with the Vaticam complicity in the HIV/AIDS holocaust in Africa,
They are failing to show Christian compassion for our African sisters.
These women are victims of their male-dominated societies and their male-dominated Catholic church.
Posted by: William Schuch | November 18, 2009 4:34 PM