Gift to diocese:
Donor sets example of faithful stewardship

		Stewardship Corner  Jay Conzemius

A recent gift to the Diocese of Madison's "St. Joseph Fund, " established to receive funds for the future educational needs of seminarians, prompted some thoughts I'd like to share with you.

Kathleen Solon, who died in December of 2002, was active in many organizations in our community - especially Catholic ones. I didn't have the pleasure of knowing Kathleen, but people have told me what a wonderful person she was.

Helping others

I understand that for many years she volunteered as a Eucharistic minister at Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish in Monona (even helping to bring the Eucharist to the homebound) and was active with the St. Vincent de Paul Society by giving countless hours serving the poor, including being instrumental in the "Share the Warmth" drive for blankets and in the Luke House meal program.

A nurse whose love of helping those in need was infectious to all who knew her, two of Kathleen's favorite causes were her parish and diocesan Church, and helping provide food for the poor. In short, she was an extraordinary person who served and befriended many and gave so much of herself while doing so.

Faithful stewardship

Yet, she was also very ordinary - ordinary in the sense that many people are involved in their Church and community, as was Kathleen. Many people give a portion of their time, talent, and treasure to help others. Thankfully, many are good stewards of God's gifts.

What was unique about Kathleen was the large portion of her estate that she left to the Church to support the work of the diocese and Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish. The first distributions from her estate were recently made and total $60,000 to the diocese for seminarian education and $100,000 to Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish to support funds for scholarship, building, and endowment. Her will was truly an example of faithful stewardship.

Planning your giving

Sadly, too few of us even have a will and still fewer plan to use our wills to make provisions for the Church or the poor. With a little forethought, we can benefit far beyond our lifetime those people and causes that are dear to us.

So many of us think that our estate is too small to merit the effort of making a will. But we also know that in other areas of giving, even small gifts can make a difference. We might not be able to leave funds to build a church hall for our parish, but we can certainly leave some for new chairs or candles.

A faithful steward understands that one's assets are integral in planning for one's legacy. If we don't plan how our assets will be used after our death, it will be planned by the state.

Using gifts from God

Planning your giving for the Church is based on the principles of Christian stewardship. We believe that God gives us everything we have and everything we are, and calls us to use those gifts of time, talent, and treasure for the building of the Kingdom. Stewardship of treasure involves not only the sharing of a portion of our income but also the sharing of our assets as well.

A will can let you close the books on your earthly stewardship responsibilities. A will can help you express your love and thoughtfulness to others. A will can remind your loved ones of your basic beliefs and commitments.

A will can ensure that your desires are fulfilled. A will can conserve your assets. A will can let you ensure the pattern of lifetime support of your Church. A will can provide peace of mind.

Making a will

First, make a will or meet with a professional estate planner. I especially encourage our clergy to make sure to have a will prepared. We may find all kinds of excuses not to, but there are many reasons to do so.

Your assets will be protected, your children and heirs will be protected, and you will be able to direct the course of your legacy.

Bequest to diocese

Second, make a charitable bequest a part of your will. Truly, this is a gift that will keep on giving.

Use the Diocese of Madison to direct your gift to any number of programs and causes, including seminarian education, priest retirement, Catholic school scholarships and support, communications, parish funds, and outreach to the poor.

A general gift to the diocese is also always appreciated since it allows great freedom in meeting new and emerging needs. Bequests, large and small, to the diocese and your parish are the best way to ensure a faith-filled future for tomorrow.

Contact our Stewardship and Development Office at 608-821-3040 or e-mail dmaier@straphael.org to find out more about leaving a legacy of stewardship and faith.

Jay Conzemius is director of the Stewardship and Development Office of the Diocese of Madison.

The 'naked public square':
Church-state debate 20 years later

		The Catholic  Difference  George Weigel

William F. Buckley, Jr., once wrote that "the moral curiosity of Richard John Neuhaus is one of the country's most important assets."

A lot of the country became aware of that 20 years ago, when Neuhaus' seminal book, The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America, was first published.

The book's title injected an enduring image into our national conversation about church-and-state. Where stands that debate, 20 years on?

'Religion clauses'

The Naked Public Square brilliantly analyzed a discomfort that many Americans felt but couldn't quite identify precisely. Something seemed out-of-kilter in the matter of church-and-state; but what was it?

Neuhaus argued that what the Framers intended as one constitutional "religion clause" -- in order to foster the free exercise of religion in the United States, the federal government will not sponsor a national church-- had gotten divided into two "religion clauses."

Once "no establishment" and "free exercise" were sundered, the organic connection between forbidding an established national church and encouraging the free exercise of religious faith was lost.

Then the "two clauses" were put into competition with each other. And, over the course of several decades of wrong-headed Supreme Court jurisprudence, "no establishment" claims became trumps, in the sense that many "free exercises" of religion, once thought entirely constitutional, were deemed violations of "no establishment."

The annual fracas over crèches in public parks at Christmas is but one of many examples.

Protecting democracy

Father Neuhaus (or Pastor Neuhaus, as the Lutheran-now-become-Catholic then was) thought this was not only wrong as law; he thought it was bad news for democracy.

What would happen to our democracy, he asked, if the most deeply held convictions of the American people -- their religious convictions -- were ruled out-of-bounds in the "public square" where Americans decide how we ought to live together?

Debate would be weakened, even deracinated; democratic commitments would atrophy; believers would become, in time, second-class citizens.

So it was in everyone's interest -- believers and non-believers alike -- to protect the right of all citizens to bring the most profound sources of their moral judgments into public life.

Lack 'public' vocabulary

In a distinguished writing career spanning more than four decades, Richard Neuhaus has been known to wield a sharp pen from time to time. The Naked Public Square, however, was a notably irenic book. It welcomed the courage of evangelical Protestants who had "tripped the alarm" alerting the rest of the country to the encroachments of state-sponsored secularism.

Yet Neuhaus acknowledged that many evangelicals lacked a "public" vocabulary that would translate their convictions into terms that non-evangelical Christians (and non-believers) could understand and engage.

Similarly, Neuhaus recognized that non-believers in America can feel like strangers in a strange land, and that believers are sometimes responsible for that.

At the same time, he urged non-believers, and those members of the Jewish community who had historically supported the "naked public square," to grasp one of the great truths of late modern history -- that the worst regimes of the 20th century were precisely those that had driven biblical religion out of public life in the name of race (Nazism) or class (communism).

Continuing debate

The Naked Public Square reconfigured, and in some sense it reignited, the church-state debate in America. It is less certain that it successfully changed the default secularism of government.

Several commentators have noted that, in dramatizing Franklin D. Roosevelt's war speech to Congress on Dec. 8, 1941, at the new World War II Memorial in Washington, the designers left something out. Just before asking for a declaration of war against Japan, President Roosevelt said, "With confidence in our armed forces -- with the unbounding determination of our people -- we will gain the inevitable triumph. So help us God."

The last four words do not appear on the memorial. Not because there isn't room. And not, I suspect, because somebody forgot.

Rather, God got airbrushed from Roosevelt's speech because, for all its success in clarifying the nature and stakes of the church-state debate for American democracy, The Naked Public Square hasn't -- yet -- changed the default position that tilts toward a genteel establishment of secularism as the official national ideology.

Which suggests that The Naked Public Square will be just as important 20 years from now as it was 20 years ago.

George Weigel is a senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.