DIOCESAN NEWS
04/27/07
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CSA funds enable services, Raff says
By Fabvienen Taylor
JACKSON — In preparing young couples for marriage, Louise Dillon, director of Catholic Charities’ Office of Family Ministry, asks them to consider — long before starting a family — to imagine living on a single income.
“We encourage couples to imagine what it would be like,” said Dillon. “I’m not talking about sliding into poverty, but in terms of scaling back in the areas of eating out, entertainment or keeping a car longer.
“Then one of them — husband or wife — could be at home with their small child, or children.”
“In marriage prep workshops we discuss how with both of them working, with both of them having full-time schedules — how do you contemplate managing with children, with day care, which is really expensive, with the hidden costs, like illnesses?
“Babies get sick more when they are in day care,” said Dillon.
In making such a lifestyle change, Dillon said the couple might realize a better quality of family life. The often-cited issue of quality time/quantity time should not be considered in terms of one versus the other, she said, but as a “both/and” situation. “It — caring for a child, children — can’t be for just a couple of quality hours a day.”
Dillon knows whereof she speaks having been a stay-at-home parent while raising, with musician-husband Sherman Lee, seven children.
These days, Sherman Lee Dillon stillworks primarily at night and on weekends but on weekdays, he operates a day care for a host of Dillon grandchildren.
The idea of cuts in lifestyle in this consumerist era of having a little bit of everything may be considered too much of a sacrifice for many. But Dillon said there is an added benefit to such a sacrifice.
“Children are tiny babies for only a short time, and for only once,” she said. “It’s nice as a parent to be there, to be a part of that.”
Families could reap tremendous benefits from such an arrangement, even though it would have to be, for many, temporary.
“Maybe they would realize a better lifestyle in terms of family life, a better quality of life because they would not be going in so many directions and feeling so fragmented. I think living a rushed, fragmented life is one of the hardest things for young families and really stresses their marriages,” she said.
Dillon’s office runs a variety of programs for couples from the engaged to those getting remarried to persons coping with widowhood and becoming single again.
Individual and family counseling, natural family planning, marriage enrichment, World Marriage Day, and other parish-based services are offered.
“We do try to offer, I think, a whole range of programs that fit into the whole continuum of the family-life cycle,” she said.
The programs are funded through the Office of Family Life and are available in in the Diocese of Jackson through Catholic Charities offices in Jackson, Natchez and the Northeast office in Vardaman.
Programs and services through the family life office receive funding from the annual Catholic Service Appeal (CSA).
In addition to Catholic Charities the CSA funds the areas of evangelization, mission schools/parishes, priests’ retirement/clergy assistance, campus ministry, and seminarian education.
The 2006 CSA received donations and pledges in the amount of $1,159, 009. Most recent figures reflect that 1,104,965, or 95 percent, has been collected, according to George Roman, director of the Office of Stewardship for the Jackson diocese.
Allocations made from the 2006 CSA are: $474,973 to Catholic Charities, $125,000 each to evangelization and mission schools/parishes, $93,196 to priests’ retirement and $30,642 to clergy assistance, $87,050 to campus ministry, and $20,000 to seminarian education.
Roman said the goal for this year’s appeal is $1,200,000. The theme is “Share Your Blessings” and it is scheduled for the weekend of May 5-6.
Linda Raff, executive director of Catholic Charities, said the CSA provides a base for the agency to build on every year.
“The CSA is critical because the monies from it are unrestricted dollars which we can apply to Catholic, parish-specific programs where there is no funding source, no grants, no government money available,” Raff said.
Last year, she said, the CSA enabled charities to direct $32,000 of the 2006 CSA funds they received to their Northeast office in Vardaman.
“We are hoping to expand services in our Northeast office because of the increased numbers of people and increased need for services there,” Raff said. “We have an advisory board up there which works very diligently to help met the needs.”
It is challenging, Raff said, to try to meet needs in a diocese the geographical size of Jackson’s.
“We realize we are concentrated in the Jackson and Natchez areas but we know there is a whole rural scene out there we need to be more relevant to.”
Reaching out, expanding services has been a major focus throughout the history of Catholic Charities, Raff said.
“It began in the 1880s when orphanages were established in Natchez because families were unable to care for their children. Charities has always focussed on meeting unmet needs in our communities.”
“We have a long history, tradition of looking at our state and seeing where no one was addressing a need and designing a program to address it. Another example goes back to the 1960s, when charities built low-income housing in the Mississippi Delta, and on the Mississippi Gulf Coast,” Raff said.
“Catholic social teaching tells us we have to respond not only to our families’ needs, not only to our particular parish needs, but to go out into our communities and beyond. It teaches we must also focus, prioritize on the poor and vulnerable, must be a visible sign of God’s love for all people,” Raff said.
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