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Within the month, I will be coming up on the second anniversary of the Holy Father’s call to me to serve you in the Church of Newark. I can say without any hesitation that I am blessed to be here, to know you, to serve you, and to be part of our Archdiocesan family as we strive to live as disciples of our Lord, Jesus Christ. There are many challenges and opportunities that we as Catholics of the Church of Newark face in the years ahead, and I hope to discuss them within my columns in The Catholic Advocate in the coming months Today, I want to bring to your attention some of the challenges that our health care and social services ministries face. I can say unequivocally that the Church of Newark has been both an instrument of help and of change for the people of northern New Jersey. As the second largest social service agency in the state (exceeded only by the State of New Jersey itself), Catholic Community Services assisted 11,000 children and families in 2002 alone. CCS operates homeless shelters and transitional housing, mental health services, skills training, drug rehabilitation, immigration services, refugee resettlement assistance, HIV/AIDS care and housing. Cathedral Health Care, a four-hospital system operating in the greater Newark area, provides a full range of health care – from pre-natal to emergency to acute care – and is one of the most extensively used systems in northern New Jersey. Both agencies have been facing severe strains on their resources in recent years, particularly as state and federal governments seek to redefine their reimbursement policies for the critical and expanding “charity care” health costs. Recent estimates indicate that reimbursement formulas now scheduled for implementation later this year will mean that these agencies will receive tens of millions of dollars less for services they provide to men, women and children who do not have the means to pay for essential medical and other support. The Church will not turn these people away, but the agencies will need to think of new ways in which to assure that they can do what is needed, and do it well. It is likely that in the months and years ahead, our health care and social service outreach will change. Locations, programs, and methods of meeting peoples’ needs will be different. For those of us who have been accustomed to “the old way of doing things,” these changes might seem dramatic. I would prefer to think of them as dynamic. We believe that we must be more adaptable and responsive to meet these ever growing and adapting needs well into this new century, and at the same time continue to use wisely the resources that people like you give us to create these programs. What we may have done before, and how we may have done it, does not appear to be appropriate today. I am grateful that the men and women of CCS and Cathedral Health Care are meeting these challenges with a Gospel vision. Their overriding goal is, and will be, to remain a strong presence in the community. In fact, a key element in their planning is to reach out to the communities they serve and seek cooperative solutions. The recently announced outreach concerning Cathedral Health Care’s Hospital Center of Orange is just one example of this. The Archdiocese of Newark has always been a place of change. It is a part of the history of this state. But who we are as a people of God will not change. We are committed to serving those in need in the name of Jesus Christ.
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