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csma supports ministry through gifts and donations to agencies

Story and photos by LIZ QUIRIN
Messenger editor

Ministry in a small rural diocese takes a group of talented people, often willing to make personal sacrifices to make sure young and old receive services, can participate in liturgies and that all the small but important jobs are completed well.

Each year, the Diocese of Belleville launches an appeal — Catholic Service and Ministry Appeal or CSMA — to its people to support the ministries that are carried out here in many different ways.
A diocesan committee for accountability and allocations visits the agencies and institutions that receive the CSMA money.

Don Bierman, a member of that committee, has spent his time visiting agencies and institutions to see what they do and how they carry out their diocesan mission.

Key to Bierman’s role, he said, was listening to people in the diocese who have such “a passion” for what they do.
“To sit across the table from these people and listen to what they do in the diocese is inspiring,” Bierman said. “It was a real treat.”

People ministering to others, Bierman found, goes to the core of “our faith, it defines what it means to be a disciple of Christ.”

Members of the allocations committee visit every diocesan agency, department or institution that receives money from the CSMA. Then, the committee makes recommendations about how money collected from the appeal can be disbursed to those entities.

Committee members volunteer their time to visit agencies and gather to discuss their findings so that none of the money from the CSMA is spent on meetings.

“It reassures and inspires me to know more about what these agencies do,” Bierman said.

The goal for this year’s appeal remains $1.5 million. As of February 2011, the 2010 appeal had raised $1.2 million or 79 percent of the goal. Parish goals for this year will remain the same as last year. Following are a few stories from some of the agencies that receive CSMA money.

Newman Catholic Student Center at SIUC
It’s a home away from home; it’s a place where students can discuss their Catholic faith, attend Mass and find people with like values.

That’s how a number of students describe the Newman Catholic Student Center at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.

In the last fiscal year, 2009-2010, the Newman Center received $107,500 from the CSMA. That money was applied to Newman’s budget which also included money for the position of campus minister at McKendree University in Lebanon, a position that may be eliminated because of a lack of funding. They are expected to receive money from the appeal this year.

On just about any Thursday evening in Carbondale, up to 35 young adults gather at the center for what they call “D&D.” That would be dinner and discussion, Tim Taylor, Newman Center director said.

Someone who lives in the Carbondale area signs up to bring dinner to the center for those who will gather. Nobody knows exactly how many people will come, but they prepare for about 35 people. The person who prepares the meal generally stays for dinner and the discussion that follows the meal.

Students who participated in a recent D&D and a few others talked about what having the Center on campus means to them.

Brothers Travis and Nathaniel Huffmann said they spend a good deal of time at the Center.
“It’s a second home,” Travis Huffmann said. Travis is also the Grand Knight for the Knights of Columbus college council at the university. Travis said the center is the only place some students feel like they fit in. “They can express their beliefs without fear of ridicule,” he said.

Nathaniel said he spends time at the Center studying and meeting new friends. “It’s a place where people share the same values as you,” he said.

Both Huffmanns have participated in Habitat for Humanity with friends from the Center. “You get to help other people, those who can’t afford a house; it feels like I’ve done something,” he said.

Two more brothers — Brock and Jordan Kabat — from the Mt. Vernon area also attend the university.
Brock Kabat describes the Center as “a place to relax from the pressures of school and work while developing more fully a relationship with God, … a faith that will (be a) guide through college and into life.”

Jordan Kabat uses the Center to “strengthen and explore” his faith with other young people. “Newman is important to me because it allows me to focus on what is really important in life in a time when distractions are abundant.” With “classes, homework, friends and everything else college life offers, it is easy to get lost; Newman Center allows me to refocus on what really matters,” Jordan Kabat said.

Student Scott Gimmy describes the Center as a “spiritual home, an oasis,” a place “to share your joys and sorrows, frustrations and celebrations.”

Other students said they go to the Center for Mass because it is offered at a good time for college students: Sunday evenings at 8 p.m.

“The Newman Center is very welcoming, and without it I don’t know where I would go,” Jamie Dalman said.
Suffice it to say, the students see the Newman Center as extremely valuable for socializing and for building up and supporting their faith.

Jennifer Kramper from New Athens said she went from St. Agatha’s to the Newman Center. “I moved in one Thursday and I was at the Center liturgy on Sunday,” Kramper said. “When I’m at Mass here, I feel very energized because the young people really want to be here; it’s a powerful energy and very moving.”

The Center also has an RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults) program and will welcome new Catholics into the church at Easter time.

James O’Brien, a senior at SIUC, is in the RCIA. The RCIA “has allowed me to grow in my spirituality and my faith,” O’Brien said. He said he is looking forward to being baptized this Easter.

The Center’s mission is “to serve Catholic students at a public university,” Newman Center director, Tim Taylor said.
Not an easy job in an area of the state where the percent of college students that are Catholic is higher than the general population of Catholics” in the area, Taylor said.

With fewer local Catholics, resources — both human and financial — are stretched. While Taylor said he is blessed to have the building located so close to the main campus, he could do more with more resources.

Regardless of the resources, Travis Huffmann said having access to the Newman Center as a college student becomes “a life-changing experience for people who come here.”

Office of Youth Ministry
Is the office important? “Oh my goodness absolutely,” Julie Holdener of Holy Childhood Parish in Mascoutah said.
Holdener is the president of DYMAC — Diocesan Youth Ministry Advisory Council — this year and just completed her duties as one of the animators at the annual youth conference held in Collinsville.

The event brings together youth and adults from parishes across the diocese to pray, to nourish their faith, to make new and renew friendships.

This year about 500 people participated in the conference with the theme: Saints … B 1. Holdener described the two-day event as “genuine happiness, that is to say I felt it in my heart.  Just when I believe I have been blessed beyond comprehension, God surprises me with more love.”

The Office of Youth Ministry coordinates a number of events and keeps youth connected to the office and each other.
“Our mission is to serve those serving the young Catholic Church in the Diocese of Belleville,” Gary Landoll, diocesan director, said.

Landoll, new to the diocese in the past year, just witnessed the conference for the first time and said he was amazed by the leadership of the youth and young adults on the advisory council. “They take real ownership” in serving the youth that follow them, he said.

As an example of that leadership are two young men from St. Joseph’s in Marion who returned to the conference for the first time since graduating from high school three years ago.

Now juniors at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, they offered to facilitate one of the workshops at the conference: “Keeping the Faith” in college.

They wanted to let young people attending the conference this year know how to find resources and people of like faith after they leave home for the first time.

Again, this was a testament to the faith of diocesan young people and the way they were nurtured, in part, through the Office of Youth Ministry.

Holdener, a high school senior in Mascoutah, said she became a member of DYMAC at the end her sophomore year after attending a youth conference.

“I had attended DYC two times prior and I am always interested in expanding my faith,” she said, and “I love meeting new people especially fellow Catholics — we all have a story to share.”

Holdener sees a great value in the Office of Youth Ministry because of its role in promoting events that bring Catholic youth together like National Catholic Youth Conference held on a national level every two years.

The “Office coordinates all of that,” she said. “Part of me would be missing without the diocesan Office of Youth Ministry because they have brought numerous important people into my life,” she said.

The Office received $54,400 from the CSMA for its 2009-2010 budget, and is expected receive funding from the appeal again this year.

Catholic Social Services of Southern Illinois (CSS)
Children and adults receive services from CSS including foster care, adoption and counseling among others. CSS has offices in Belleville, Carbondale, Mt. Carmel and Mt. Vernon.

Anna (not her real name) has seen Hope Carbonero at CSS in Mt. Vernon for counseling for several years.
Carbonero is supervisor of foster care and counseling in the CSS Mt. Vernon office.

At first, Anna said, she went to see the counselor because she was having trouble communicating with her children. At the time, she worked at a business where Carbonero’s husband was the manager. He happened to ask Anna how she was doing one day, and she said she dissolved into tears.

At that point, Carbonero’s husband told Anna to “hold on” because his wife knew how to help her.
Soon, Anna was meeting with Hope Carbonero on a regular basis to learn how to communicate with her children so there would be less tension in their house.

In the process, Anna said, she discovered that she had some unresolved issues of her own.
Low self-esteem made it difficult for her to deal with everyday problems and challenges in her family. With help and with “Hope” Anna said everything is much better.

Anna isn’t sure what she would have done if she had not found CSS, and through the agency, hope for her future.
Anna’s story is not unlike many of the positive stories that counselors at any of the CSS offices could tell.

Carbonero said she has worked in other settings as a counselor, but the CSS office in Mt. Vernon is a place she loves to work, with people she enjoys supervising and helping.

The main CSS office, located in Belleville, received $60,000 from the diocese for its programs in 2009-2010 and are expected to receive funding from the CSMA again this year.

The money is distributed among the offices in Belleville, Mt. Carmel, Mt. Vernon and Carbondale, a CSS staffer said.

Catholic Urban Programs (CUP)
CUP provides a safety net for people who might otherwise fall through the societal cracks, offering assistance with food, clothing, shelter, utilities, medicines and referrals to other agencies when they don’t have enough funding or space to help someone.

Chris York answers the phones at CUP and greets people on the phone or when they walk through the door.

One of those people who received help from CUP includes a grandmother who is raising four of her grandchildren. Somehow, her daughter is “not in the picture,” York said, and the family has no other help, no food stamps, no medical card, and as a senior citizen, the 65-year-old is living on $674.00 a month of Social Security.

Some of CUP’s clients ride the bus, and they bring in reusable cloth bags to transfer the food allotment into the bag because they can’t carry it onto the bus.

York remembers clearly a telephone call one day for directions to the office, and the next day a woman came to the door in a wheelchair.
“She had no hands and no legs,” York said. The woman had few possessions and needed help. When York was tempted to feel sorry for her, the woman told the CUP staff member: “Honey, that’s just the way I roll,” and filled out her own paperwork. “Her attitude, strength and perseverance wasn’t letting life get her down.”

Young mothers often seek help at CUP as well, York said. They may be going to school, working at low-paying jobs and really trying to make ends meet. They tell York they don’t want this to happen to their children.

Some people who have lost their jobs are coming to CUP for the first time and are embarrassed that they need help.
York said she can tell when people are receiving help for the first time.

Other people seem to be drowning in one problem after another. It doesn’t seem like they can “catch a break.” One family from Belleville found CUP by word of mouth. They received help with medicine and food.

At this point eight people are living in their home — five adults and three children — and the grandmother lost her job recently. She provided the key monetary resource for the family because her husband had been in an auto accident and is unable to work. Now they are trying to manage on her unemployment which will run out soon.

An adult daughter who has graduated from high school is looking for work, and an adult son who has lost his job has recently moved back home with his parents. When asked what this family would do without the food assistance from CUP, the grandfather said: “I guess we’d eat more noodles.”

The people at CUP don’t judge those they assist; they just offer whatever help they can to keep a family afloat.
It is difficult for many people to ask for help. In one case a woman who used to donate to CUP now has a son who must call on the agency for help.

It is remarkable if not miraculous that CUP is able to assist as many people as they do.
In the 2009-2010 fiscal year, CUP received $212,000 from the CSMA. They are expected receive funding again this year.

These and other diocesan agencies provide, in some cases, life-saving if not life-changing services to people in need in the diocese whether it is food, shelter, clothing, an opportunity to attend Mass or to find a place where Catholic values are expressed and respected.

Giving to the CSMA could make a difference in the life of someone you know, you care about or a perfect stranger.
The CSMA begins on this, the second Sunday of Lent. Don’t miss the opportunity to be part of “making Christ visible in southern Illinois.”

For more information about diocesan services or to make a donation, please call 277-8181, ext. 1141.