PARISHES REPRESENTED: Our Lady of the Assumption; Our Lady of Mercy; St. Ambrose; St. Clare’s; St. Francis de Sales; St. Pius X

PURPOSE: EXPLORING THE SERVICE MINISTRY OF THE CHURCH (Parts One and Two)

SCRIPTURE READING, Matthew 25:34-40, by Fr. Burke.

Shared Litany by Vic Gilbert. Response: Give us a share of your wisdom, O Lord.

SECOND READING, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, by Fr. Burke.

Shared Litany by Vic Gilbert. Response: Who will speak if we don't speak?

PART ONE

SR. ANNE: The first part of this evening we are going to look at the service ministry. This may be led by volunteers at the parish level assisting with annual projects, such as organizing Christmas gifts for families in need. It may be an agency such as Catholic Charities aiding people with developmental disabilities, or mental illness, or addiction. It may be ecumenical addressing hunger or homelessness. It may take a form of advocacy, organizing opportunities to speak out on issues of concern. That's what we're going to look at tonight. And I hope you're not disappointed, and we'll do all of this evening in English.

A 5-minute small group discussion followed on:

• What service needs exist in the region served by our Planning Group?
• What social issues challenge our communities?
• What is in place to identify, and respond to, community needs?

A large group discussion followed concerning the question:

HOW ARE PARISHES INVOLVED IN CHARITABLE/SERVICE MINISTRY?

ANN WALSH, St. Clare's: We have a food pantry at St. Clare's because we have people who can't always meet their needs during the year. We have welfare motels right near the church, and I'm going to assume that a lot of the people come from there. At Christmas time, we take care of families. And we also have different organizations like Birth Right, and the Christ Child ministry, the giving tree where they put suggestion items on the tree…….the parish responds to that very quickly. And in May they do a baby shower, and they get a lot of response to that.

DAVE EADS, St. Clare's: We withhold a certain percentage of our offertory, and we work that money back into our Social Concerns Committee. That is like three or four percent of our offertory. And that committee then decides when people or organizations from the parish who bring cares and concerns to them, they bring that to them, and that committee then takes those funds and works it back into the community.

GEORGE CLINE, St. Clare's: At Christmas, we also collect toys for needy families in the parish, and any of the toys that are left over after the parish is served, we donate to the Schenectady City Mission.

JACK EGAN, St. Pius: We have a very active bereavement committee. We have a camp for exceptional children. We have a Public Policy Committee that meets monthly. We have an ongoing program with sister parishes in Georgia. We also do food collections and pastoral care. At Thanksgiving, we have a Thanksgiving clothing drive. We go to the hill towns with winter clothing.

FR. FARANO, St. Pius: We also have a blanket drive, and a sleeping bag drive for homeless people. For our sister parishes in Georgia, we do a number of drives throughout the year because their ministry is with migrants. So, we have over-the-counter medication drives, school supplies, and things like that.

FR. DUBOIS, St. Ambrose: At St. Ambrose, some of the things that we do are, each week we give 5 percent of our collection to different charitable organizations. We have a very active food pantry. We have a very active Parish Nurse Program. We have a mission trip to Mississippi four or five times a year to the Biloxi diocese. We have a very active St. Vincent de Paul Society that takes care of the poor consistently and constantly. We have a bereavement group. We have all these other groups that have mentioned, plus the ones that we have -- and some I can't even think of right now.

FR. BURKE, OLA: At Our Lady of Assumption we have a number of the same programs. And I would hope that that's one of the things that an ad hoc group might be able to look at and maybe better facilitate some of these things. In addition to that, one of the things that we do in the faith formation program here is, each class at each grade level is given some kind of service project as a social outreach during the year. For example, the first grade does cards to anyone who we know are shut-ins and nursing home residents. Second grade, they make special jubilee flowers for the Sisters of St. Joseph who are celebrating their jubilees. The third and fourth grade, they do two projects with Our Lady of Hope. So, it kind of goes through for each grade level. When they get to the junior high and high school level, they do things at the different food pantries, prepare a meal, and so forth. The high school kids have been involved in St. Benedict's Camp.

STEVE MAWN, St. Francis de Sales: St. Francis de Sales also does a number of the things that these parishes have mentioned. We collect a lot of stuff. We have a shoe collection, a coat collection, school supply collection, giving tree at Christmas time, we collect vitamins for the Philippines. One of our parishioners is a doctor who goes back to the Philippines each year to minister over there. We collect cell phones, eyeglasses -- that's all done through our social outreach committee. We have a clothing receptacle in our Maria Drive parking lot for people to drop them off; all of which goes to the poor. We have a very active food pantry. We have emergency food supplies for people who need food desperately. We send care packages to the troops overseas. For a number of years -- not the last year though -- we have done tuition assistance for prisoners who ask for help to get college credit, and financial assistance to people in the area who are needy.

SR. JAMES, St. Ambrose: Continuing what Fr. Dubois was talking about, at the school we are involved in a food drive with the Little Sisters of the Poor, we have a Troy clothing drive, our dress-down money goes to Rice Bowl, Muscular Dystrophy, Cerebral Palsy, March of Dimes, we had a family burned out by fire, arthritis collection. One of the children established that.

FR. WALDRON, Our Lady of Mercy: We contribute to the inner city mission group that's down on Central Avenue, and to a family in Mexico through Christian Children for Aging Adults. And the Service Committee also makes special gifts for the shut-ins besides food at Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and Easter. And the parish gives very generously to the needy. We don't take a portion out of our regular income because there are some people who give only to that and see that as a very high priority.

SR. ANNE: Let's move to the next question:

WHAT TYPES OF JUSTICE/ADVOCACY ACTIVITIES ARE PARISHES INVOLVED IN?

MARY BETH BUCKNER, St. Francis de Sales: I don't think that Catholics are as good at the justice as we are with the charity. I think that charity is when you're giving -- like, I always love the expression you give a fish to someone who is hungry rather than teaching them how to fish or empowering them. And one of the things I always liked are warm human hands because I felt that that was more empowering than the actual people.

To me it becomes almost like a political thing. But I do feel very strongly that we should be doing more to help people so that they don't need our charity, that they no longer need -- the way they put it here in the article about the Catholic Campaign for Human Development…….they assist people to rise out of poverty through empowerment programs toward self-sufficiency. And I just think that a lot of the stuff which is mentioned is charity, but it's not the second part of it which is the justice part, and about promoting social change in institutions, and public collective actions which solve structural injustices directed at the root causes of injustice. And it is controversial a lot of time.

So, that's just kind of what I read in this article. And I keep getting that feeling again, and again, and again. And being, you know, kind of involved with my own daughter who is not making a living wage, but working very hard. So, I feel real strong. I don't want to have to give her charity, or I don't want her to feel she needs it. I want her to get paid what she truly deserves to get paid. She's doing an honest day's work with human beings, and she's paid less than fourteen thousand dollars a year as a teacher's aide -- in case anyone is interested in what it is. So, I just feel real, real strongly from a personal standpoint.

Also I'm on a nursing home complaint hotline. And you can bring as many flowers, and plants, or whatever to the people in the nursing home, but -- maybe I'm a little negative from being on the hotline -- but the stories I hear day in and day out about the conditions in the nursing home and the amount of staff, and what we pay our staff, the real care givers of the people who are the nurse's aides, and they're not paid living wages -- they're not paid living wages. And they're doing the scuff work so to speak, they're doing the real nitty-gritty: Washing up, cleaning, toileting, feeding, things like this. And I don't know what the answer is. I'm sixty-two years old and I wish I could have done more in my lifetime to find an answer to it. But I think that that's one place where we need to focus.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I concur with that whole analysis. We need to empower the people, not just give them more things. We need to look at the whole process, not how we can help one individual person.

SR. ANNE: A lot of people were nodding while you were saying that, affirming what was said.

The question that follows that is:

HOW DO PARISHES CURRENTLY COLLABORATE WITH CATHOLIC CHARITIES?

CARLA HOOD, St. Francis de Sales: I have never known Catholic Charities to ask for any help other than money. I mean, I've never heard of Catholic Charities saying we could use your help doing whatever. All they ever ask for is a donation.

PEG GRIFFIN, OLA: I'm on the community maternity services. And I think that's one of the organizations through Catholic Charities that has identified a problem with pregnant teenagers and have tried to come up with a solution to educating the ladies to get them so that when they are done with the pregnancy they have an education so that they do not continue to go through the cycle of pregnancy, can't get a job to pay for everything. They're giving them an education. So, I think that's one of the programs that sort of addresses the question both of justice and of breaking the cycle.

GAYLE BOUCHARD, St. Pius X: A couple of years ago, community maternity did reach out to us at St. Pius X to renovate some of the rooms at Heery and Joyce Center at community maternity, and we renovated the room for the teenage girls and got a whole bunch of families involved in that process. So, they did reach out to us to do something.

FR. BURKE, OLA: I do think that Catholic Charities could and should reach out more to parish communities in terms of what their needs are. I think many times they are recipients of monies that come through various collections and Bishop's Appeal. But just going on what I just heard, it came to our attention here last year at Assumption through a parishioner that Farano House needed some assistance. So, we went in to the charity fund and gave them a donation to help them. And I think if that word was out and more pronounced, that they would get a better feedback, a better response to what their needs are. So, I do think that their different agencies need to be more present in the parish communities.

NANCY ACEMOGLU, St. Ambrose: I'm sorry, I was late and I missed part of this conversation. But we have had a long-standing relationship with Catholic Charities' various ministries - Farano House, Heery House, all of them, especially during the holidays. And I think the important thing is to have the contact there so we have an ongoing communication. And what we try to do is -- not in a big way -- but find out what their needs are and just go back and forth. It's not like once a year or anything, it's ongoing. And people -- I found through the various projects that when an awareness is created, it's amazing how people are always looking for that community service, especially families that are looking to set an example for their children, and it's just such a rewarding experience. And I think that people are always looking for those types of hands-on community service experiences.

WHAT OTHER COLLABORATIVE EFFORTS RELATED TO SERVICE MINISTRY ARE PARISHES INVOLVED IN?

Five minutes of small group discussion followed on the question:

• In light of the reports given, what three suggestions would your small group choose as a practical response to supporting and encouraging service and advocacy efforts?

SR. ANNE: Perhaps now we could hear some of the recommendations. We want practical suggestions that we could look at for supporting and encouraging service and advocacy efforts.

NANCY VOLKS, St. Clare's: We thought a practical example would be to network with some of the other social concerns committees. And maybe not in all areas, but in some areas there are things that we can do better as a group, we could work on that. And then if there are areas that -- most of us have food pantries so it wouldn't be practical to combine the food pantries -- I just think we wouldn't have the space to do it. But what we were talking about is we don't have a clothing place, but our people can certainly contribute to your clothing, whoever has clothing. And other areas we talked about……medicines and things like that……….we don't do that but we can help. So, kind of if you have a network of where we can share. And then maybe we could have one project that we do all together.

JOLENE DIROLF, St. Pius X: Just taking that one step further. If there was a way to have that organized so that it's not just a once a year thing, but that as a group we would know St. Pius does sleeping bags. So that if in March you're cleaning out a house and moving, that you can go to a web site and find within these parishes who does sleeping bags? Where can I send these blankets? So, it's not a once a year thing. Because, unfortunately, a lot of times things end up getting thrown out when there's a lot of needs, but it's not in November when we're collecting sleeping bags. So, maybe if we could do it in an organized manner through a web based program or whatever so that we're really keeping on top of at any point in time I'm closing a household, where can I send the baby stuff so that it doesn't get thrown out.

FR. DUBOIS, St. Ambrose: One of the things I think that we all do as individuals is have a parish ministry booklet of some sort. And some of the things that each parish does are unique to the parish because it's a ministry that they started. We mentioned this several months ago as one form of pooling our resources, that is, putting in all of our ministry booklets that there are ministries in each of the other parishes that everybody can be involved in. So that we as a Catholic faith community of Colonie can be involved with one another on a practical basis. Rather than continue to re-invent the wheel, we work together as a team. And it would also be important to have somebody on staff who is coordinating this, who is looking at this, who is getting information from the diocese. Because a lot of times information from the diocese is very poorly translated to the parishes. A certain parish may know something, but many of the parishes don't. And there needs to be better communication on an above-board system where all of the parishes are finding out what needs to be done and how it can be dealt with. But you need people -- specific people who are going to coordinate that, who are going to look at that and address it either through the bulletin, or through letters or whatever, so that people know about it. And I think in those types of things we would be able to work together on a much more practical basis.

MARY BETH BUCHNER, St. Francis de Sales: I think you just mentioned the Catholic community of Colonie -- is that the word you used? I keep thinking about how that's the purpose of us coming together. And I don't feel we're doing enough. Maybe I'm just being impatient, but I would like to see us become -- and that's what I meant when you were saying about networking and why does it have to be a bunch of different sites -- I think either we're going to face it or it's going to hit us -- we're going to hit this brick wall and it's going to be there. And I think we're not addressing that enough in our meetings to become the Catholic community of Colonie, or come up with some ideas about becoming a Catholic community of Colonie, and what sites will we be using. And I just would like to see more coordination and less “my parish does this”, “my parish does this”. What does the Catholic community of Colonie do together?

DOLORES MURPHY, St. Ambrose: I would like to follow-up on what has been said. We have said that we have needs in Colonie. We have defined those. We have defined the fact that we have means to address those needs, each individual parish doing it a little bit different. We have people who want to do it. What we're talking about now is who has the expertise to lead us from putting band-aids on these situations to really helping people. My thought is in the diocese it should be Catholic Charities. And as a practical suggestion, maybe they could be more involved in what goes on in the parishes. They could be an oversight to direct us. We don't have the expertise they do, we don't have the ability to bring all of this knowledge together. And I don't want to say a database but that's almost what we need. Who has got what, and who can do what, and if we find a need that we can't take care of who is going to help us. And I think that should be the role of Catholic Charities. They belong in our parishes to help us. As a Colonie community, yes, maybe -- well, not maybe -- I think that we really should be working together, but we need somebody to help us and to give us some kind of oversight.

FR. WALDRON, Our Lady of Mercy: As a follow-up on that, coming from the rural areas, Catholic Charities does do that kind of thing. For instance, my family comes from Herkimer County where my sister works. They have a Catholic Charities office, I think in Ilion and Herkimer. And they have food pantries. And while many projects are being done between the parishes out there in the communities, it's run by Catholic Charities and known as Catholic Charities. But in this area that isn't done. Catholic Charities here is just known as an office downtown; whereas, in other areas in the diocese they are more hands-on, just as you're suggesting.

FR. TONY CHILDS, St. Ambrose: Two of the practical things I think that perhaps in follow-up with what we discussed -- and I've had this experience as to what Fr. Waldron is speaking of, having served in a rural parish -- is that at the deanery meetings the local director of Catholic Charities will always attend the deanery meetings. It's not been my experience that that's the case here in this area. And one of the best means of communication that perhaps is very woefully underutilized that could happen is that there could be a weekly column in the diocesan newspaper, The Evangelist, the official newspaper of the Diocese of Albany, or Sr. Maureen Joyce, or any other higher ranking official of Catholic Charities, to regularly communicate with the entire diocesan community.

FR. FARANO, St. Pius X: Just on the question of advocacy, I think Charities can do the education piece for us. I'm picking up on an idea that Frank [DuBois] had. I think the issue is they could send out Martha Pofit, for example, who is very familiar with a lot of the advocacy issues, anything from a just wage to this terrible thing we have just been through with the migrant issue. They can do the education. I think it's what Frank said, that we need somebody on our level who can coordinate the information they give us, and then invite those who are willing to become involved on a parish level. And that involvement could be writing a letter, sending an e-mail, making a telephone call, it could be more than that, it could be less than that, depending on what's needed on a given issue. But the simplest thing would be to put in our bulletin a few times the web site that you can go to for the New York State Catholic Conference of Bishops Public Policy Committee -- there's a web site that you can go to. So, once in a while we try to publish that.

But I think that what Frank said about the services a minute ago makes a lot of sense also for the advocacy. We just merged our Public Policy Education Committee with our Adult Faith Formation. And one of the reasons we did that is there was an overlap of the work. But also because a couple of the key people in our Public Policy Education Committee, one moved – they retired and moved, and a couple of others got off for other personal reasons, and then you can't get anybody else to come in. So, I don't think it's a question of a lack of willingness on the part of the parishes in Colonie to get involved in advocacy. I think we need the help, and I think the help is available, but somehow on our level we need to get somebody who is willing to be the shepherd of that, just like we have somebody who leads the other ministries in the parish.

FR. BURKE, OLA: Just to add one thing to that. I think what St. Pius does with its Public Policy and Pasta……I think that's an excellent program. But if we can open that up and have the six parishes participate in that, they can do things that -- you know, a larger group working together can go back out and share the education. Because I think lots of times it can be daunting to people. And if you have a group who are already active and share that wealth of information, it's only going to grow.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Wouldn't it be possible for us to hire a coordinator who will get us to work together and be aware of what's going on in each parish?

ERIN MUIR, St. Ambrose: We just talked pretty much the same as everybody else about what it would be like if we could collaborate among the six parishes. We were talking about -- three of us here from St. Ambrose -- about our parish partnership and how we have been in an effort to get skilled people to go down to Mississippi. And it had been suggested at one point that if each of the parishes could sponsor a couple of skilled people and we could do a trip together how much more work could be done -- if we could do that. And we said it's probably true of most of the things that we do, that -- you know, we all have very strong parishes here, we're very blessed in this particular area. And to multiply that times five, more efforts would be really something to see. So, we were pretty much saying the same kind of stuff everybody else has said.

SR. ANNE: Has everyone had a chance to be able to give us the practical suggestions? One more we need to focus on:

• What do we need to strengthen?

PEG GRIFFIN, OLA: Communication among the parishes, Catholic Charities, just communication and coordination.

FR. FARANO, St. Pius X: I think we need to strengthen the advocacy piece.

FR. WALDRON, Our Lady of Mercy: It's one of the hardest things to talk about because immediately people say you're being political when you talk about charity. They're perfectly willing to have an appeal, but if you mention any other issue like this, people aren't very addressing.

PEG GRIFFIN, OLA: I think for the justice side, we need to address politics because that's the only way you're going to change the process.

MARK KEEGAN, Our Lady of Mercy: I think it's an issue of inclusiveness among our people as opposed to exclusiveness. When you look at the person who is knocking on the door who doesn't have a job and who's hungry as a family member, then you do what you can to get him or her a job and to get him or her fed. But if you're looking at this person as a person who's looking for a handout, and you give him 20 bucks and say “move along, here you go”, it's a whole different thing. So, if you advocate for people with an attitude of inclusiveness, that they're a family member, or they're a parish member, or they're a community member, it becomes less about the politics and more about the individual. And I just think that if we look at a person who includes everybody, as opposed to one who says this is for other people, then it becomes much easier to convince people that the politics of advocacy is the right way to go.

JOLENE DIROLF, St. Pius X: Picking up on what was said earlier, sometimes if there is a project to kick-off this kind of coordination between the six parishes of the Catholic community of Colonie, it really helps to set a tone. So, I guess that would be a suggestion of mine is that, yes, we talked about what to strengthen, but then to decide on an action that as six parishes we can get to take steps towards forming a community service.

MARY BETH BUCHNER, St. Francis de Sales: This is to say how excited I am to hear this discussion right now. I don't know if other people feel the same way.

BILL MIELKE, Our Lady Of Mercy: I think we go about recruiting people the wrong way. Typically there's an appeal, “we would like your help”. So what? So does the rest of the world. How about instead, “here is a goal we wish to fulfill”, and address why it's in your best interest to get involved. People take ownership of their own ideas, but they're rather reluctant to take ownership from somebody else, particularly if there's work involved. But if you can show them that it's in their best interest to get involved, there will be less work for everybody all concerned. The project will be over with sooner. I always hit them with, "We have a lot of fun, and I bring great food". Whatever it might take, focus on the wonderful benefits of being involved. I constantly tell people it's a lot more fun to work at the church fair, to plan it, and to provide it to the community, than it is to go as a participant. And so, I think we may want to reconsider how we voice to our friends and neighbors and fellow parishioners how much they themselves would be getting out of whatever this effort happens to be. And when people know about this, I think if you look at it from that perspective, I think we may be able to get many more of our people involved than we have already.

(Sr. Anne suggested taking a break, during which she requested that each pastor think of one person who they would like to establish this ad hoc committee so this can be done at the end of this evening.)

PART II

SR. ANNE: We now begin to look at August. In the service ministry part of August, we are going to include hospitals, nursing homes, assisted-living facilities, those who are imprisoned or jailed. How are those in hospitals, nursing homes, and assisted-living facilities currently receiving spiritual support, and how are parishes involved?

FR. DUBOIS, St. Ambrose: We do weekly hospital visitation. We have a deacon, who does nursing home visitation, assisted-living. We also have people who bring communion to a number of places. And we also take care of Millview ourselves, which is in our parish, once a month with Mass.

NANCY VOLKS, St. Clare's: We have the same at St. Clare's. We have a committee that goes to the hospitals, nursing homes, assisted-living places each month.

FR. FARANO, St. Pius X: We do communion services in some nursing homes on a monthly basis, the same as others.

NANCY ACEMOGLU, St. Ambrose: I'm just going to add that, in certain health facilities like Our Lady of Mercy, they have a pastoral group and they have a Sister on staff.

BILL MIELKE, Our Lady of Mercy: We also have a list of people who are living at home, and we bring communion to the shut-ins at their homes.

SR. ANNE: Let's move to the second one:

• How are those in local jails and prisons receiving spiritual support, and how are parishes involved?

St. Clare's responded that they are not involved.

St. Pius X responded that they are not involved.

FR. DUBOIS, St. Ambrose: We only visit when we know that somebody from our parish is affected, or that somebody has asked us to visit. We don't do it on a regular basis.

FR. BURKE, OLA: It's kind of an “on-call” for us.

FR. WALDRON, Our Lady of Mercy: There is a program called REC for certain prisons, and some parishioners work regularly with it. But it's not something the parish does.

FR. CHILDS, St. Ambrose: Plus when it comes to jail and prison, there are chaplains in the state prisons, but you can't just walk in to a jail like you can to a hospital. They're very, very particular.

JOLENE DIROLF, St. Pius X: One of the things that we used to do, and it might be a nice thing that we can do as a community, is collect Christmas cards, put stamps on them and deliver them to the Albany County Jail so that prisoners there could send Christmas cards and have communication with the outside. And you're correct, you can't just walk in. But that was a way that we could reach out to those who wanted to be able to send out cards.

SR. JAMES, St. Ambrose: Father, I think there's a gentleman in our church, Fred Field, who maybe does ministry with people in jail. And twice a year, the school signs cards with the first name. They have a retreat day at the jail, and they divide up into different groups, and the children send them cards filled with hope. At the end of the day, they enjoyed reading their cards and they have sent us back posters.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I was just going to add that, in another way, we support the families of the prisoners. There have been a number of families with social service issues -- it could be financial, or clothing, or whatever it is – but it's ongoing.

DOLORES MURPHY, St. Ambrose: I would like to propose that maybe we consider -- when I was working for the Office of Children and Family Services, we had a mentoring program by computer. So each person, each adult, was a mentor – was cleared, had a background check, et cetera – we were paired with one juvenile. And that person would send you e-mails just to talk to somebody. I mean, I don't know if we could do something like that, but for the adult population it might be something we want to consider. But again it's very rigid as far as who can do it, and a background check, and how often, and they can't know your real name and that type of thing. But it may be something we want to consider.

SR. ANNE: The third question is:

• What types of justice/advocacy activities are parishes involved in that relate to the domestic and worldwide church?

NANCY ACEMOGLU, St. Ambrose: At a parish level, for years my husband and I were involved with Armenia, and the parish became involved with it. So, we would be travelling abroad and the parish supported -- not that the parish supported it financially, but we had shoe drives, we had various things, we had ice cream socials, and it all went to that cause -- you know, the broader picture other than just local or state.

ERIN MUIR, St. Ambrose: Every year in January, for the past four or five years, we take a group of teens to the March For Life in Washington, D.C. and participate in that.

FR. FARANO, St. Pius X: Sometimes in the sister parish relationship you get involved in the issues that they're involved in. And we became somewhat involved with our sister parishes in Georgia when there were sweeps that took the migrants out of the camps and separated families. There was some little assistance we were able to give at that time. So, a number of our pastors or parishes probably have sister parish relationships, not just with the parishes in this country but overseas. And I think in that way sometimes you get involved with some of these conditions.

FR. BURKE, OLA: I think this is one of the missing ridges that we have between charity and justice. Because when you look at this question and you realize throughout the year the number of special collections that are taken up for worldwide and national concerns, that's an outreach. But it can just stay at the level of “I put the money in the envelope” and then it's over and done with until the appeal comes back the following year. How do you continue to make that bridge? It's not easy to get them together.

NANCY ACEMOGLU, St. Ambrose: Just another thing I thought about. This past winter with the fighting in Afghanistan, someone had approached us in regard to needing shoes and boots to be sent abroad. So, that was another international type of a program that we did parish-wide. And really all we did was put the boxes out. So, it was a small thing, but it ended up being a lot of aid to the country. The people became aware of it, and when they saw it, they wanted to thank us.

JACK EGAN, St. Pius X: Our public policy has been involved in the New York Catholic Conference on the legislative day that happens in March. We go down and talk to legislators about issues that the conference is very interested in and trying to get them to vote on.

FR. WALDRON, Our Lady of Mercy: I have a question about the clothing that you're speaking of sending abroad. A number of years ago the diocese had a Thanksgiving collection. They stopped it because they said it was more costly to get that clothing together and ship it abroad, and it was much better to send money and have things be bought locally. So, you were saying sending shoes and thing abroad?

NANCY ACEMOGLU, St. Ambrose: Yes. It depends on the country; it depends on the contact. We were involved with it for many, many years. And if you have an agency like NGO that will do it for you, it doesn't always cost as much.

JOLENE DIROLF, St. Pius X: It definitely depends on the situation. In the company I work for we recently did a drive collecting supplies for children -- school supplies -- in South Africa. And we were very disheartened to learn that they're all sitting in Customs nine months later and can't get into the country.

PEG GRIFFIN, OLA: Another option is, rather than giving things to people, is having a prayer program that would focus prayer and grace to try and improve the environment -- you know, get the communities together for one purpose for one hour to say we are going to pray for world peace, we're going to pray for poverty, we're going to pray for world hunger. Pick a cause and maybe try a little prayer for one purpose and see if that will have a little better effect on the whole global area versus one giving food.

FR. CHILDS, St. Ambrose: Again, I think it comes down to something that's been mentioned repeatedly. Its communication and being better or more well informed as to what a particular need, or topic, or advocacy issue is that needs to be raised on the larger scale or the greater diocesan-wide community. Which again could fall under the auspices of “The Evangelist”, which certainly has significant room for opportunity to do these things that perhaps it doesn't always seem to do. Maybe we could concentrate some resources.

I received a newspaper from another diocese that, every election year, whether big or small, they always print what the Catholic Conference of that particular area's points are, and all of the different legislators that represent the local areas and what their positions are. Not advocating one over the other but just letting the Catholic constituency know what it is that they are voting on. I've never seen anything like that in our Evangelist. And it would be so refreshing and so positive and helpful especially in our kind of culture that we live in for them to do something that. So, it really comes down to a better communication.

FR. FARANO, St. Pius X: Sometimes I wonder about the number of appeals that we're asked to do, things that we've done that come under the initiative of the parishioners. For example, the sleeping bag thing. Who would have thought of that? We did it for the City Mission. They took them out and handed them out. That came from a parishioner.

But you get so many. Maybe this is where if we could do some coordination among ourselves – I don't know if it would work, but we could have a concentration somehow of these appeals. We're not going to all do all of them. But maybe if once we get together, we could find out that “here's six or seven that we probably ought to do together”. But somehow I think we need to address the number of appeals we get.

I mean, you could have something -- you could put a box at the door of the church every single week. Not that you don't want to do that, but then it's like everything else, people hear this -- and we were just talking ourselves -- like, we have a monthly food drive for Sacred Heart food pantry. And they're very generous to that. But I would say it's a percentage of people who remember to bring something, and it's the same people because they have been committed. Many others who could, don't. And I don't think its lack of good will, that they don't want to bring in a can of peas. Maybe it's just that they're so used to hearing it every month, and it goes right over their head. Using that principal, I think sometimes there could be fatigue that sets in on the part of our people. Every week they're asked for something. And yet the needs are there and you hate to say no. But it's hard. So, maybe some coordination among ourselves. At least that's something we're experiencing. I don't know if you experience that in other parishes. But it's just the number of appeals, not money. But we get so many requests. Maybe we need a wider coordination. I don't know what direction that would go in.

DAVE EADS, St. Clare's: We have been coming to these meetings for seven months, and I have never heard all of us collectively say the same thing. And I really feel that we should put a motion on the floor that let's all six parishes hire a service and advocacy coordinator -- we could break up the cost between the six parishes -- and have that person do the networking and some of the coordination and get our efforts going in the right direction. And I don't want to wait another six or eight months of meetings to do that. I think if we tell the six pastors to come up with a job description, that we could move forward on this and we don't have to wait. We can do this, and we can do this now. And for seven months worth of work I think it's the best thing that we can come up with.

MARY BETH BUCHNER, St. Francis de Sales: I second that. Also I like the idea because I feel like if we got somebody who's an expert, and we list and categorize all this stuff and eliminate unnecessary duplication, that we would have a wonderful end product.

CAROL GOMEZ, St. Ambrose: I don't know if this is going to come out right. But we have a Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, we have Catholic Charities. It seems to me that we already have everything in place that we need. What we need is more communication and a better liaison between them and our parishes so that we know what each parish can do and what should be done. I think maybe one of the reasons our parishes start doing things on their own -- like so many of us have a sister parish -- is because perhaps we didn't know the opportunities that were already in place. When you read a report of all the things that Catholic Charities do, I don't know that each parish knows what's going on. And I don't mean to criticize, but I'm just wondering if we don't already have what we need, we could utilize what they have better.

ERIN MUIR, St. Ambrose: You are probably all aware of the task force for youth ministry that has been formed, and I wonder if maybe something similar to that would help in this area before we get too far ahead of ourselves. We met once to discuss what -- the youth ministers have met to discuss what we do and what areas might be better to collaborate, and we have kept in touch over the summer by e-mail and are planning to hopefully do a focus group that would bring in people from the six parishes to talk about what the needs are, what the needs of the teams are, and the parents, and then possibly from there develop a survey that would narrow down the scope and -- you know, taking steps forward like that. Maybe if a task force was formed, a similar type of thing, a representative who is interested from each of the parishes that could kind of sit down and boil this down a little bit to what we all do and where the areas of collaboration might come from, and maybe it would be hiring someone after that, or maybe it would just be better communication or better -- you know, a point person in each parish or something like that. But just the idea of talking to Catholic Charities, I think maybe it could be spelled out a little bit further that way before we went too far.

MARY BETH BUCHNER, St. Francis de Sales: I was just saying at the break that to expect volunteers to do this massive job is a lot to ask of people who already have a lot of commitments in their lives and their families. That's one point. Maybe there are people at Catholic Charities and other agencies that could -- you wouldn't even have to pay somebody -- but maybe somebody could be pulled from that body that's already a paid employee and be used for that purpose. But I do think we need a certain level of expertise. I don't know whether I'm just not as smart as everyone else, but I don't feel like I have the expertise to do this massive pulling together. And I think you need someone who is really good at organization and looking at what's there. And you could hear what everyone has, there's a massive amount of information, and services, and different things we're all doing. So, if somebody could just look at it, and coordinate it, organize it.

JOLENE DIROLF, St. Pius X: I can sense your frustration in wanting to walk out with a feeling like we have at least identified an action. And perhaps an action might be - - but I was very curious, you know, when Fr. Waldron said that, in Fulton County, it is Catholic Charities in Fulton County and it's known as more than an office. And I think what I'm hearing from the group is that perhaps we should try to follow up on that. Can it be Catholic Charities within Colonie? Can there be a liaison from Catholic Charities assigned to a cluster group of parishes to help directly assisting in the coordination of services of these six parishes, identifying what is there in terms of resources but also as a clearinghouse to move forward needs. Are there needs that aren't being met? That's where we go to. That's the clearinghouse, that whole idea of communication and bringing the communication. You know, it truly -- I consider myself – because I've had interaction with Catholic Charities – to be somewhat aware, but it is still an office down on Main Street. I don't feel that it's in our community. And yet I know we support it a great deal and, quite honestly, I don't think its too much to ask for perhaps a little more decentralization.

SR. ANNE: I don't want you to be frustrated, because these comments are not going to go unheard.

JOLENE DIROLF, St. Pius X: I just don't feel that we need to think that we have to hire someone. We may be supporting that.

SR. ANNE: I'm going to ask -- I know there are a few more hands -- but we need to go back to just addressing these few questions that are here rather than just keep going. So, I will respect these two comments, and then move back to that.

BILL MIELKE, Our Lady of Mercy: I was contemplating what can I do to support this – and when my wife finds out, it might destroy 34 years of marriage -- but here's what I was going to take on myself. I'm going to send a letter to all the pastors with a self-addressed envelope, and all I'm going to request is kindly give me the name of the action, the committee, the advocacy, whatever it is -- bereavement, food pantry, I don't care -- the name of a person and a phone number who is considered to be the official head of this group, or the person who traditionally gets involved with it. It all gets mailed back to me. And it's pretty simple……you just say all these parishes have the same function. So, I'll put a list of this item, like bereavement, and all the names of the people and their phone numbers who would be the contact from the different parishes. And when I compile it all, I'll then mail it all back out, and then you'll be able to know one another a little bit more.

FR. DUBOIS, St. Ambrose: One of the things I wanted to say before is that each parish here more than likely has a booklet that has all the ministries in it. What you're talking about is on a little bigger scale would be to take all those six booklets and compile it into one booklet for the parishes of Colonie.

BILL MIELKE, Our Lady of Mercy: Well, I'll send you a letter with a self-addressed envelope, throw whatever you have in the envelope, give it back to me, and I'll compile it, and then I'll mail it back to the parishes. Because I'm ignorant of what happens in my surrounding parishes. And we have unbelievable ideas, but we're all still ignorant. Who do you call? What do you do? And this way, I think, if we at least compile all this and do some kind of organization by function, then get it back out to the parishes. And I think we're going to have a much better opportunity to bring all the ideas that we bring out every month and gel them and get them working.

NANCY ACEMOGLU, St. Ambrose: I think many of us probably are familiar with the directory that Catholic Charities puts out that lists the services that they provide, and contacts, and so forth. And I would just recommend that if you're not familiar with it, get it and familiarize yourself with it, and try to make a contact with the people so that you'll be able to have a better working relationship.

And then the other comment that kind of got into that, was I'm on the Commission on Aging, and what we do is we have a liaison -- we have representatives from each -- it's a Catholic Charity thing, too -- and we have representatives from each parish and they're invited, and they don't honestly come all the time. We had a program recently that was different. But we have specific liaison programs where every parish representative was invited; maybe 30 came when there should have been 230. So, it's not that the efforts haven't been made, they have been made. It's that I think people are really busy.

A 5-minute small group discussion followed regarding the question:

In light of the reports given, what two suggestions would your small group choose as a practical response to supporting and encouraging service ministry:

• for the sick and for seniors in long-term care facilities;
• for those in prison/jail?

DAVE EADS, St. Clare’s: We don’t know who does what. This goes back to coordination. This church takes care of Beltrone as a facility; they go in and they do communion. And I'm sure that there are other churches that do the same thing. But if there are 11 assisted -- and I'm just dreaming up a number -- if there are 11 retirement communities in the Town of Colonie, how do we know that all of the six parishes are taking care of all 11 assisted facilities unless we coordinate that effort making sure that we take care of everybody?

FR. CHILDS, St. Ambrose: Well, that should have been sent in with our parish profile. I remember helping compile it. That was information that the diocese now should have. It was on one of those big things we had to fill out before we started meeting in January.

FR. WALDRON, Our Lady of Mercy: Some nursing homes are under the specific care of a particular parish; they go there and conduct services. But every parish here visits parishioners in every one of these homes.

DAVE EADS, St. Clare's: We all visit our own. But what if there is somebody we're missing? We don't know.

ANN WALSH, St. Clare's: You're probably thinking of somebody who didn't have any parish affiliation, somebody who's in there and nobody ever visits. How do we reach that person?

FR. FARANO, St. Pius X: I think the distinction we're making is that we all have parishioners in virtually all of the nursing homes and many of the same adult residences. And that's going to continue. We're all going to visit our own people because that's what we do. But then there's the institution itself. For example, do we want -- and if we do want -- is there a communion service there, let's say, once a month. Now, we ended up with Beltrone, and we also do the Albany County Nursing Home on Sundays. We go and have a communion service; we consecrate the hosts on Saturday night and one of our guys runs it – a parishioner runs it. So, the question isn't so much the individual parishioners. But what about the institutions themselves? Should there be, for example, a communion service once a month in each of these facilities? And if there should be, is there? And if not, that's something we could organize our own parishioners to do. You can have lay eucharistic ministers do that. So, I think its two levels: the one-on-one which we'll all continue to do because they're our people; but then there are the needs of the individual institutions themselves. Are those needs being met? If not, maybe by collaboration our people could address those needs.

MARY ELLEN EGELSTON, OLA: I have had some personal experience with this just this week. My mother lives now in Florida. She's been in Florida seventeen years. She's alone now, and now coming back here to look at someplace to be close by me and my family. My mother is not going to go to a nursing home; we are looking at independent living places. So, we have been looking at what's available this week. There tend to be communion services sometimes. For the situation my mother expects to go into, there's transportation to a church. But if my mother had to come up here and go to a nursing home, she wouldn’t have a parish because she's coming from Florida. So, I could certainly ask Fr. Burke if she was going to be someplace close by, but there could be any number of people who could come into a situation here who would not have a local -- who came to be near family, their family may or may not be involved in their own parish, although the parent might be. There does seem to be some level of communion service, some of it is resident. One of the places we were looking at, a group of residents meet to say the rosary a few times a week, and there are different things that go on like that among the residents. But I want to say communion maybe once a week, or once a month, maybe Mass once a month or maybe once a week. But in her situation she would still be able to hopefully get out and she would go to Mass on the weekends. But she goes to Mass every day now; so, she's someone who is going to miss that daily kind of thing which I understand is unrealistic to try to arrange.

SR. ANNE: As you sat in the groups, what two suggestions do you want to throw back out to support and encourage service ministry for the sick, and for seniors, and long-term care facilities? Anything else?

BILL MIELKE, Our Lady of Mercy: It just dawned on me that I'm not supposed to do this, but the person I elected isn't here. So, I'll do it one more time. Training for that particular ministry I think a lot of people are a little gun-shy. They think all they're going to do is give you a host and kick you out the door, and then you have to figure it out for yourself. And the other thing was to publish success stories. And I was thinking along the lines of if you had somebody who was bringing communion to someone, and they just had a marvelous time speaking with them, and the person was so grateful that they were there, maybe they could just jot that down and then have it posted on the bulletin board in our foyer. Because as people are walking by they're always scanning it on their way out. And then they see something there where somebody spoke about this positive experience that they had. And before, when I said if you want to appeal to people, show why it's in their best interest to get involved. And maybe this might demystify some of the notions they have about getting involved in service.

SR. ANNE: Anybody else? What two suggestions did you come up with in supporting and encouraging service ministry for those in prison/jail?

FR. DUBOIS, St. Ambrose: Unless the jail people tell us what their needs are, there's no way that we know what the needs are. I mean, it has to come from the inside/out in that particular situation.

SR. ANNE: But that's an important piece of information to have recorded. Anyone else want to add anything to that? What two suggestions for supporting and encouraging advocacy at the local, national and international level?

MARY BETH BUCHNER, St. Francis de Sales: Well, I don't know whether they mean spiritual advocacy or advocacy from care in a nursing home. But I think there's a huge need for that. I don't know if people have people in the nursing homes, and if they're happy with how everything is going. But if they're not, I do think -- I was just saying in our small group that there's nothing legally that says how many nurses aides you need per patient population -- resident population. A nursing home can say I'm going to put two CNA's –- Certified Nurse Assistants -- on tonight, or on this weekend, with 60 patients, and it's legal. They have to be able to fulfill the needs of the residents. Do you think the CNA's -- well, the CNA's can call us anonymously, but they're not going to call us and say, "I'm not taking care of all of my patients". That's reporting on themselves. So, it's a real Catch-22 situation. I think the situation in the nursing homes is not good from my experience on the hotline. I think that there's a lot of great nursing homes, and a lot of people are working really hard. But I think, in general, there's a real shortage. And a lot of times it's the people who own them, the CEOs, who are making the money. It's not always working for the people who are in the facilities.

SR. ANNE: I was leaning toward the justice advocacy.

MARY BETH BUCHNER, St. Francis de Sales: That's what I mean. You need to advocate for change.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Get legislation. Like she was saying, in nurseries you have to have so many people per 5 children or whatever in a day care type situation. If there's legislation that says you must have -- you know, for every 5 patients you have to have one nurse or one nurse's aide and make it a law, then they have to do it.

FR. CHILDS, St. Ambrose: There are many groups that I'm sure we're aware of that do help to raise our awareness at the very least on the national, and international, and local levels, such as Food for the Poor, Pax Christi, Amnesty International -- although that did just get itself in a little bit of trouble, CFCA -- we just had them in our parish for a mission appeal. So, there are groups that do help to raise our awareness, and to make a tangible contribution through some of those efforts as long as we're aware of them. That may be the thing that needs to be done better………to help us become more aware of what some of these larger organizations are, you know, from land mines that are all over the third world countries, to South American concerns, to Eastern European concerns, things like that.

JOLENE DIROLF, St. Pius X: We didn't get to discuss this in our group, but I would suggest that perhaps we consider a community forum for raising awareness and educating about a particular topic and then call for an action effort; so, as a community, a call to action related to that issue.

NANCY ACEMOGLU, St. Ambrose: I don't know if I heard right when you said as a community what could we do as a group to foster this idea. What I was thinking is -- you know, like other activities we had mentioned in the past, we could coordinate an event to support a specific cause. I don't mean to mention the same cause -- but it's close to our hearts -- that there are orphans in Armenia and as a result of the earthquake, they have no parents. And it's run by Catholic Charity sisters from Philadelphia. And it would be very easy to do if we ever wanted to do something at that level. I would be willing to do what I could. I mean, it wouldn't be that difficult of an event to do. We could do it for that cause.

SR. ANNE: Everybody take one more deep breath, and think about just one more sentence with me.

In relation to the service ministry of the church, what do we want to strengthen?

The following suggestions were stated:

• communication.
• networking.
• unison and organization. Unison, coming together as a community and the coordination necessary.

SR. ANNE: You have been wonderful, just wonderful. You deserve a month off. But one thing I'm going to ask before we say a prayer -- and it will only take two minutes -- if each pastor can name one person who we hopefully can create the ad hoc committee with, and come on up here for a few seconds, and we'll finish.

(Sr. Anne also requested that the attendance sheet be signed by everyone, and stated that the next meeting is on September 5th at St. Pius X.)

SR. ANNE: Have a wonderful, wonderful summer. We are going to make our ad hoc group work a little bit for us, but that's all right. And that's why these suggestions are very important to hear. Because, hopefully, they may come up with ways that we can implement some of these things immediately, and give us some suggestions for September. That would be great.

So, let us now close with the Prayer of St. Francis.

(The meeting was adjourned at 9:15 p.m.)