Dinners
I am starting to have dinner slots on my calendar that are going unfilled. If you would like me (or any of our priests) over to your house for dinner and a house blessing, please ask! I am also very happy to go out to a restaurant. You can e-mail priests@whatcomcatholic.org.
With the current Mass schedule, I can generally do the following days:
- Bellingham – every other Tuesday, every other Saturday
- Northwest County – Wednesdays, every other Saturday
- North / East County – Wednesdays
First Friday Confessions
I have made the decision to move 1st Friday Confessions back to Assumption year-round, rather than rotating them. We were not seeing the number of people we were expecting, and we suspect that the rotation made the location too unpredictable. On Oct. 03, they will begin at 4:30pm at Assumption and go until we run out of penitents.
Assumption is central to the county, and many people who work in Bellingham will be able to hit confession on their way home. Still, it is hard to find 4 confession stations at that church. We may need a volunteer usher or two to help people know which priest is open. If you want to volunteer, contact Michael Rombaoa (michaelr@assumption.org).
As a reminder, 1st Friday Confessions replace the previous system of Advent and Lent Confession Services. All four priests will be present most months. We are trying to provide more opportunities throughout the year.
Finance Council
I met with our County Finance Council last Saturday to go over final FY25 numbers. There were too many numbers and reports and questions for me to give you major takeaways. Elizabeth Ames, our Regional Director of Finance, is working on a year-end report to publish to the county.
The thing we focused most on was our $115,000 county-wide deficit for FY25. A good amount of that came from increased salaries to staff. When I pushed some staff up to regional positions, those positions were more expensive because they have a significantly higher level of responsibility. And I also needed to even-out salaries across the county, since some churches had been paying certain positions the lowest amount allowed on the pay scale. I knew my salary increases were going to be expensive, but they ended up being more expensive than I anticipated.
For this Fiscal Year, we are projected to have a $130,000 deficit. This is to be expected. Church income has been flat for a very long time relative to inflation, and expenses continue to go up. If we had a $115,000 deficit last year, $130,000 is actually rosier than might be otherwise expected.
The Finance Council looked at our numbers and continues to look at our numbers, but they cannot find anything to cut. We have been cutting and cutting for a decade or more, and we are pretty bare bones at this point. We either need to find a way to operate with fewer staff; or we need to decrease building maintenance; or, as the Finance Council recommended, we need to focus on revenue increase rather than cutting.
This deficit number has been giving me anxiety since the meeting, but then I did some math. $130,000 divided by 2,900 people at Mass each weekend comes out to $44.83 per person in the pews. So if every family of 2 gave $200 more over the year, or every family of 4 an additional $400, then we are balanced. If we spread those numbers over a year, that equates to $0.86 per person per week, or $3.45 per family of 4 per week. That seems doable.
We generally talk about Stewardship in October, so we will make sure you have year-end financial reports in time for those discussions.
Fr. Moore 