St. Philip’s newly-expanded Finance Council has been hard at work serving the fiscal and temporal needs of our parish. Increasing its membership to 16, plus a few ex-officio staff members, has allowed the Council to create several sub-committees to further the financial side of the mission of the parish, including:
Working on our annual budget,
Planning for the financial needs of our move and new campus
Providing due diligence concerning the parish Tithe
As you may know, by long-standing custom, the parish reserves 10% of most collections (with the exception of Holy Days, Christmas and Easter) to serve the Church’s mission through charitable works. We do that in two ways:
1. By assisting individuals in need, whose situations are evaluated according to a set of criteria. In addition to financial assistance, our Outreach staff can direct those in need to other resources in our community, or even provide budget and employment assistance.
2. By supporting organizations which serve the goals of the Kingdom of God. These include social service, emergency disaster relief, assistance to parishes in need (such as St. John Paul II University Parish), support for our seminarians, and organizations that directly provide food, clothing and other needs. Your generosity has provided ongoing support to local agencies like Loreto House to help keep them operation, but it has also allowed our parish to respond to disasters like the recent Hurricane in Puerto Rico, when the Finance Council recommended a one-time grant of $25,000 to a rural parish devastated by the storm.
Our Finance Council has recently developed a policy to ensure that all recipient organizations will be carefully evaluated from the perspective both of their financial responsibility and their harmony with the values of our Catholic Faith, particularly the God-given human dignity of all persons and the right to life from conception until natural death. Annual reviews of recipient organizations, including tax and financial statements, will ensure that our Tithe funds continue to be used well and make a lasting impact.
The people of St. Philip’s have a history of generosity. Thanks to the Finance Council, your sacrifices will be put to good use.