Listening Sessions
I attended the Listening Session at Sacred Heart last Sunday and hope to attend at least three more. (Thank you to everyone, especially the PFAC, who have done such incredible work to make these successful.)
As with the many Listening Sessions I attended at Assumption (for the Archdiocesan Pastoral Plan, the Synod on Synodality, and pre-Partners), I am always impressed by how positive people find the experience. Yes, it seems very artificial to go around in a circle with 2.5 minutes each; and yes, many of us far prefer the dynamics of a back-and-forth dialogue; and yes, something the questions seems a little off the nose – BUT, when I talk to people afterwards, they always seem so thankful to be able to speak deeply and openly with their fellow parishioners on important topics.
It is not too late to attend a Listening Session this round: https://www.whatcomcatholic.org/sessions
Confirmations
We hosted our first of two Confirmation Masses with Bishop Elizondo last Thursday. This one was in Spanish. I am told around 80 people received the sacrament. That is a lot of extra Holy Spirit in Whatcom County, praise God!
Faith Community Scholarships
I want to explain again (as I did in 2025, 2024, and 2023) how our parishes support our Catholic elementary school.
The Catholic school is often the largest and most expensive ministry of a parish (meaning it ought also to be the most impactful, something I continually have front of mind). Because it is a ministry, the parish uses some of its collection money to fund that ministry, just as we fund non-school faith formation programs, prayer groups, retreats, and the like.
Most parishes across the Archdiocese simply write the school a large check each year which gets deposited into the school’s general operations account. In return, parish families get a slight discount (~15% off tuition), as a recognition that their church (and presumably their tithe) was partially funding the school. Until the early 2000s, only Assumption Parish was funding Assumption School, so only Assumption families got this “in-parish” rate; but as the Archdiocese began requiring parishes without a school to contribute to their local Catholic schools, that “in-parish” tuition rate transformed into a “Catholic” tuition rate.
When I became Pastor of Assumption, I had a few objections to this common system. First, I could see that the school was long-term more financially viable than the church, so we needed a system whereby the school budget was independent of parish support, in case the parish had to reduce or end its funding. Second, I see the Catholic school as FIRST a ministry to Catholic families and only SECOND a ministry to non-Catholic families. The “write a big check” model, even paired with the Catholic discount, still saw the church funding the education of many families who did not participate in Catholicism or parish life.
To that end, I switched Assumption School to a scholarship model for the 2023-2024 School Year. Now, Catholic and non-Catholic families all pay exactly the same tuition (which is tied directly to the cost to educate each student), and the churches “fund” the school by providing scholarships to Catholic families to make the school more affordable for them. (These are called “Faith Community Scholarships” because, theoretically, the local Orthodox or Lutheran church could provide a similar scholarship to their families to attend our school, though no other local church has jumped on board yet.)
I really like this new system, for a host of reasons. My favorite reason, though, is that it allows me to directly recruit families from our pews to our school, using money that I approve directly. I can think of at least 7 families I have recruited this way (most from our Spanish Masses), who were super involved in our churches but who thought they could never afford Catholic school. The school exists especially for them and I am thankful that we can ensure the school lives up to that mission. A solid, Catholic education for our most involved parishioners is the surest and most impactful way to raise the next generation of Catholic leaders for our world and our Church, and this is especially true for our immigrant communities.
Unfortunately, you start using scholarships to recruit families who could not otherwise afford Catholic school, and things start to get expensive. Some of these families require the maximum scholarship (50% tuition) for multiple children, and this adds up. Across our Whatcom County churches, we have budgeted $185,000 for these scholarships, and the asks this year are already at $208,000. Rather than cut everyone’s scholarship amount by 10%, as I did last year, I am wondering if we have any parishioners who might be willing to sponsor our most impacted families? It takes about $4,000 each year in Faith Community Scholarship money to send one child from these recruited families to the school. If you would like to provide that scholarship in place of the church, please let me know and we can follow up with a conversation.
Fr. Moore 