Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
I come to you this week with mundane, but important, information regarding our parish. As many of you have commented, it is customary for the parish to put out financial reports in order to maintain a spirit of transparency and allow the entire parish to remain abreast of its temporal health. That report is printed in this bulletin. You will find the financial information from 2018-2019, my first full year, as well as the numbers from 2017-2018, as I failed to print them last year. In summary, we are in great shape! But that is of course a statement that requires a good deal of fleshing out.
Here are some important facts:
- Collections were up about $45,000. Thank you for your generosity. As our costs go up with the times, it is great blessing when parishioners mirror that rise with small increases in offertory. Even a dollar increase each year makes a huge difference.
- We had one large extraordinary expense – an electrical feeder on the school – but we were blessed with a bequest of nearly exactly the same value. Dominus providebit! Remembering the parish in your will is a great gift of gratitude and a way of ensuring the parish continues to serve generations to come.
- In terms of final numbers, in 2017-2018 we had a final deficit of 16,000, due to some extraordinary expens es. In 2018-2019, we had a surplus of roughly 145,000. To speak honestly, with the current state of the Church and the challenging prospects for the future, I believe this is a time of consolidation. We are revisit ing all of our contracts and renegotiating, we have cut a great deal of expenses where we have been able, and we are still looking to economize, so that we can direct our resources towards securing our parish for the future, as well as evangelize in a bolder and more dramatic way.
This is a cursory sketch of major figures, and I do not doubt there is a great deal of information many of you might still be interested in, especially regarding the larger projects and campaign that are being explored. For this reason I urge you to join us this Tuesday, October 22nd, at either 9AM in the Church, or 7:30PM in the auditorium, for a town hall meeting. All of these matters will be discussed, and more importantly we will continue to discuss the spiritual health of the parish and the ways in which we can better serve our mission. Because we must never forget that all of the temporal matters serve one purpose – to preach the Good News of Jesus Christ, and Him Crucified, and build His Kingdom here in New Hyde Park, for His Glory and for the salvation of souls.
Please pray for me that I may be a good steward of this beautiful parish and the resources so generously offered by generations of parishioners, and may we all pray that we be good stewards of the gift of faith we have been given by sharing it with all those we meet.
Yours in Christ,
Father Scolaro
