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Dear Cardinal Cupich: enough with endless Capital Campaigns!

Dear Cardinal Cupich: enough with endless Capital Campaigns!

Last updated on: January 5, 2025 at 11:41 am by Jane the Actuary

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Dear Cardinal Cupich: enough with endless Capital Campaigns! 2025-01-05T11:41:26-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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From 2014 to 2015, the Archdiocese of Chicago ran a capital campaign called To Teach Who Christ Is. The Archdiocese’s purpose in the campaign was to generate $150 million for scholarships for Catholic schools, but in order to make the campaign palatable, each parish was instructed to come up with capital projects of some sort or another, so that an additional $150 million of the overall goal of $350 million was for the use of the individual parishes. (In my own parish, the money was used for deferred maintenance needs such as a new roof, windows, doors, etc.) It was promoted as “historic” and “generational” — but in many respects, I should have realized at the time that a “capital” campaign which intends to spend its money on ongoing expenses such as school tuition, is not really a Capital Campaign. For that matter, I had assumed that the “capital” nature meant that the scholarship money would be going into an endowment, but according to Chicago Tribune reporting, back when this existed (July 28, 2019, via the ProQuest library archival tool), that early intention didn’t actual happen, in part because of short-term needs and the large proportion of “funds raised” that came in the form of will bequests from people who haven’t died yet. However, at the time of this article, “there are no plans for another major general fundraising campaign,” according to Betsy Bohlen, the archdiocese’s COO.

And before that campaign, there was a campaign in 2002 and 2003 called “Sharing Christ’s Gifts” for $220 million. At the time it was the biggest capital campaign ever, with fundraising goals set at 100% of a parish’s annual collection. This campaign’s funds largely stayed with the parishes, with only 20% going directly to the archdiocese (plus an undisclosed additional amount according to the Tribune), and did not appear to have a specific objective other than vaguely to force parishes to engage in deferred maintenance, but at the same time as this campaign ran, they also ran another campaign:

The $100 million major-donors campaign will pump money directly into the city parochial schools that have proved to be one of the biggest drains on church coffers. Officials have tried to keep that effort under wraps, hoping to secure a large portion of the gifts before going public with the news.

Were there other large-scale campaigns before this? If so, I can’t find evidence of them. My impression from hints in articles is that individual churches ran their own campaigns as needed, and the Big Shoulders Fund for Catholic schools was an ongoing fund.

But these two campaigns, marketed as “once in a generation” and calling for sacrificial levels of donations, seem to have been just the first two of what appears to now be a once-a-decade cadence, as I have just found out that yet another campaign has been going on since last year: “Generation to Generation: Answering the Call.” Where’s the money going now? 50% of the goal, or $100 million, will stay within the local parishes. Another $60 million is claimed to be to be used to “answer the call to spiritually renew our parishes.” Trying to parse the word salad here is difficult but it looks like they are funding consultants who will work with parishes on “best practices” for outreach and increasing parish involvement. $60 million is a lot for this, though, especially when there have been similar initiatives in the past (such as the Parish Transformation Initiative which I asked readers about in 2015 as my parish was apparently awaiting its “turn” and seems to have been discontinued shortly thereafter) – maybe this actually funds new staff members in targeted parishes? Or is the archdiocese “charging” parishes large sums of money for their expertise, which is then directed to other Pastoral Center spending such as flashy donations by the cardinal, “green” energy, trips to Rome, etc. — or filling in holes left by clerical abuse settlements? $100 million is going to “support for priests” – of which $14 million to the seminary, $23 million to pastoral/professional development, and $63 million to retirement (pensions and healthcare). I’m particularly annoyed at this last one because it says that they have been skimping on funding their pension funds despite the annual collection for the purpose. And lastly, $40 million will go to fund poor parishes’ operating costs.

I’m not seeing anything that looks like a good idea here.

The archdiocese is essentially forcing parishes to defer their ongoing maintenance until the next Capital Campaign, or to come up with capital projects even when they aren’t appropriate, in order to get local parishes to accept this “tax” by the archdiocese. (Separately, I’ve read that it’s 125% of annual collections.) And then they are spending this money on operating expenses. Is this all a matter of trying to force parishes to give more to the archdiocese even when they have communicated their dislike of Cupich’s actions? How often can Cupich play that game? What happens if parishes just say “no”? How many “capital” projects can a parish conjure up? Or will they follow the cardinals’ demands but simply shore up their savings for future operating expenses? And, given the prior reporting, will the archdiocese’s take even go where they say it will?

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Archbishop Cupich

Archdiocese of Chicago

capital campaigns

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