Mission

Under the microscope:
What does it mean
for the U.S. today?

Why are some communities considered "mission" in our country? From its founding, Catholic Extension has used two basic criteria: areas that are isolated and/or under-resourced.

Gifts from its many donors currently help about 40% of the 206 dioceses under the American flag with programs that cannot be started without outside assistance or cannot sustain themselves due to a variety of reasons.

While electronic communications have shrunk the world in one sense, topography and sheer distances make Catholic ministry in rural parts of the country a daily test for the priests, religious and laypeople who live there.

Alaska is one obvious example, but there are parishes in the U.S. West that are as large as the states of Rhode Island or Delaware.

And there is another dimension to isolation: that is, Catholics who live in areas where they are only a fraction of the population, or in areas such as the Pacific Northwest, where church affiliation of any kind is among the lowest in the country.

Similarly, "under-resourced" takes in not only the poor, but also those dioceses which find it difficult to cope with new pressures, such as growing numbers of Catholics in areas that historically had not seen them.

The articles that follow look at five factors that make it necessary for the local Church to ask for help from Catholic Extension donors.

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