Catholic Arkansas Sharing Appeal 2020

Published: February 2, 2020

Bishop Anthony B. Taylor recorded the following homily to be played at all Masses in Arkansas on Feb. 1-2, 2020.

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Bishop Taylor

In the Gospel of John, Jesus tells us: “I give you a new commandment: love one another; just as I have loved you ... by the love you have for one another, everyone will know you are my disciples.”

These words of Jesus give us insight into the cost of discipleship. It is measured by our love for each other and in our diocese, one of the ways we express this love is by supporting the Catholic Arkansas Sharing Appeal (CASA), which is what I would like to speak with you about today.

The outreach of CASA is immense across our diocese, and I would like to highlight some of the ways your support is sharing the love of Christ with each other and our neighbors. The Catholic Arkansas Sharing Appeal helps to:

• Fund the salaries of diocesan employees, including in our Catholic Schools Office, which serves 26 schools throughout the state;
• Catholic charities with immigration offices in Little Rock and Springdale (They spearheaded the One Church initiative to help the parish in Warren last year and now Hamburg);
• Prison ministry in 19 prisons;
• Youth and young adult ministry;
• The Arkansas Catholic newspaper, which is now available free of charge in electronic form, while still producing a print version available by subscription;
• Campus ministry at 10 universities throughout the state;
• Our tribunal, which handled almost 300 marriage cases last year at no charge;
• Our Office of Faith Formation, which offers formation for catechists throughout the state and formation for 57 men scheduled to be ordained permanent deacons in 2022 — 22 of which are from northwest Arkansas;
• The Family Life Office, which offers marriage preparation programs in Little Rock and in northwest Arkansas, plus Natural Family Planning training and marriage encounters;
• Our Office of Hispanic Ministry, which recently has arranged for Spanish-speaking sisters to serve in Batesville and Newport;
• Our offices of ministry to deacons, to religious and to priests — assisting with the ongoing formation of our priests and religious, including our newly ordained priests and first-time pastors, as well as our missionary priests from outside the United States;
• Our Respect Life Office, which advocates vigorously for the protection of life from the moment of conception to natural death — they sponsor our annual Mass for Life, promote the March for Life each year and offer Project Rachel to bring healing to those who have been affected by abortion;
• The St. John Catholic Center, which hosts retreats and other activities almost every weekend at Fletcher Hall, and oversees St. John Manor, our retirement home for diocesan priests;
• Our Office of Vocations and Seminarians, which promotes vocations, assists with discernment and pays the bills of the men in formation to serve as priests in Arkansas;
• And finally the usual administrative offices, including my own.

In addition to these programs, which reach every demographic in every part of Arkansas, we also use $100,000 collected in the Catholic Arkansas Sharing Appeal each year to provide grants to our Catholic schools, and another $100,000 for grants to parish religious education and youth programs.

Moreover, your response to this appeal these last 10 years has enabled us to build a House of Formation for seminarians located at (Our Lady of) Good Counsel Parish in Little Rock. Your past donations have also provided money to reopen a building for use by Catholic charities and remodel our Fletcher Hall retreat center, used by hundreds of Catholics every weekend of the year.

I know all this may sound overwhelming, but people tell me I need to do a better job of letting you know what CASA funds, so I hope this helps. Actually, there is more, but even so, I hope the sheer volume of this list will make it clear just how important your contribution is. When you contribute, you become my partner in providing these services to people in every corner of our state ... things that would not happen without the Catholic Arkansas Sharing Appeal.

As in the past, I ask for 1 percent of your income and I ask for everyone to participate ... even if you can’t quite manage 1 percent at this time. As disciples of Jesus, let us be courageous in our love for each other, especially towards our sisters and brothers in Christ, by being generous.