A Letter to Our Friends and Supporters


Dear Friends:
 
Our recent Synod Reports received much praise and attention from you, our readers. Being on the ground in Rome,  I was able to provide something you just couldn’t find in the secular media or even in much of the Catholic press. Judging by the number of hits the reports received (and the private communications I and other staff received), it was well worth the time and effort and expense. 

Some of my correspondents – theologians in particular – have pointed out that the internal workings of the Vatican don’t really matter in the long run. What matters is the truth of the Catholic Faith and the promise that the Gates of Hell shall not prevail. This is, of course, true, truer and more important than many of us may realize. But at the same time there’s a struggle we must be engaged in, and that’s why I have to ask you for your help. 

Much that appears in the media, especially mainstream and social media, is false when it comes to Catholicism and there’s not much we can do directly about that. But we can do what must be our mission in the midst of a corrupt and corrupting society. Our bishops and the larger Catholic hierarchy have had their hands full, as you may have seen in our Synod Reports, struggling to figure out what to say anew about divorce, contraception, gay “marriage,” cohabitation, a loss of a sense of the sacred or of nature as a voice for what constitutes a good human life. They can’t be expected to attend to all that and also effectively promote the message of God’s truth and love. 

And if there’s a vacuum about what’s truly Catholic or the media distort the teaching or actions of the Church, many people can be confused or led astray for a long time. The bishops themselves seem confused. 

That’s where we all come in. You know that I do not send you alarming fundraising letters like so many other groups. We’re all Christian adults here and it’s to adults that I make an appeal to you. 

The Catholic Thing is blessed to have several larger donors and they have continued to support our mission right through the economic turmoil of the past few years. But we rely on you, the readers, for a certain portion of our operating budget. And this year we must find $50,000 before the beginning of 2015 if we are to carry on. 

Based on your past generosity, I authorized a re-design of this site, which you will see in coming days. Don’t worry – it will still feature the daily column and links you’ve come to expect. The readership for that grows by double digits every year, and I want, first, to ask you to recruit a friend or two or ten or twenty. We’re in business to help create informed Catholics who will know they are not alone – or crazy – because they are in touch daily with thousands of others like themselves who love the Catholic Church and the Lord. And who are then equipped to act in the world. 

The redesign will also be a consolidation – some of the videos and other materials from our sister site, Complete Catholicism, will soon be incorporated into TCT’s website. We’re doing this to be both more efficient and more economical. There will be improvements behind the scenes as wall, many of them, that will help us to make it easier to bring you the very best material we can each day and improve our Comment section. 

You’ve seen me say it many times before. Thirty serious columns a month, 12 months in a year, and all 365 days of a year would be a substantial Catholic magazine arriving in your inbox. If we made everyone subscribe at say $35 a year, our financial situation would be assured. But we can’t ask that of everyone since many of our friends here are in circumstances that don’t allow it. Every contribution helps. But I ask those of you who have been specially blessed: Can you donate $50, $100, $500, $1000 to our work? We’re going to need a bunch of larger donations before the end of the year to keep this work going. 

I believe our work speaks for itself so I’m not going to belabor the case. I’ll just ask you to please do your part – without delay – in helping to sustain and to grow one of the few places where you can find solid Catholic commentary on the Church and the World, day by day, everyday.
 
Sincerely,
Robert Royal
 
P.S. 2014 will soon come to an end. We need your help now. If you’d like to assist us in this crucial work – and enable us to plan even more ambitious things for the future – please, make your gift of $50, $100, or $500 or more today

Robert Royal is editor-in-chief of The Catholic Thing and president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. His most recent books are Columbus and the Crisis of the West and A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century.

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