by Bill Maloney
Once again, the faithful of the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas were overwhelmingly generous with their gifts to Archbishop’s Call to Share 2023. Thank you. This weekend, we kick off Archbishop’s Call to Share 2024. With your gifts, we are hopeful to exceed our goal of $7 million.
This past fall, we hosted o ur annual Call to Share kickoff luncheon for our priests, parish staffs and Call to Share-supported ministry leaders. Our intention was to bring together the ministries and our parishes.
After all, that is what Call to Share is all about. It is about shared ministries.
If you were to take a tour of each of our 104 parishes, you would find that each one is staffed in its own unique way. For some parishes, it might be a part-time administrative person; others may have multiple ministry leaders. But, none of the parishes have the resources to support all of the ministries that are offered throughout the archdiocese.
One great example of this is our office of marriage and family life. This office trains couples to do marriage prep, offers retreats for the engaged, weekends for marriage enrichment, and most recently, they have begun offering a parish-based program for couples married seven years or less.
Another example is our vocations office. Late last year, the vocations office hosted a “Quo Vadis” retreat for young men to help them discern a call to the priesthood. Over 80 young men attended. In addition to the retreat for men, the archdiocese hosted a discernment retreat for women that was attended by more than 60 women.
In 1973, “Call to Share — Prayer and Study” took place throughout the archdiocese. Over 25,000 parishioners participated and contributed their insights to help shape the future of the church.
The results of this study indicated that 90% of the recommendations pertained to the parish level and should be implemented at the parish level.
The study also revealed the need for outreach ministries and services that were beyond the scope of their own parishes and demanded the attention and support of all parishes.
These recommendations resulted in Archbishop Ignatius Strecker launching “Call to Share — Responding to Need” in 1975.
Here we are, almost 50 years later and we, as parishes, now share the support of over 40 ministries that serve the archdiocese. All of our parishes benefit from Archbishop Strecker’s vision of shared ministries.
For that reason, your annual support of Call to Share is vitally important.
I encourage you to listen to Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann’s homily that you will hear at your parish this weekend and prayerfully consider the invitation to share in support of our ministries.
