A key to understanding the importance of One Faith, One Hope, One Love is knowing that a parish is a family and a diocese is its extended family. The appeal is about building the Church as a whole.

Holy Trinity parish in Norwood can be called a blended family. It was formed in 1994  through the merger of three Norwood parishes: St. Elizabeth, Sts. Peter and Paul, and St. Matthew, as each of those memberships faced the challenges of unifying.

Barb Moscoe is a member of the Holy Trinity family – an “adopted” member, as she calls herself.  Barb grew up as a member of old St. Matthew’s and attended its school. Soon after the launch of One Faith, One Hope, One Love, Barb became an enthusiastic volunteer.

“I am inspired by many things. I think the question is rather what motivated me to act,” Barb said.

She recalled that in an early meeting with her pastor Father Raymond Kellerman and with campaign consultant Dan Sarell, “my mind continued to latch onto the idea of Catholic Education assistance. I myself have no children but I realize how blessed I have been that my parents believed in a Catholic education for me.

“I know that it was a sacrifice for them that they gladly accepted. I recently came across our church bulletin that my mother had saved from 1957, listing the teams of men that solicited the parishioners in the 1957 High School Fund Campaign. My father was not a ‘joiner’ but there was his name on the list, as well as the names of several of our senior parishioners and fathers of my contemporary parishioners.

“The discovery served as one more reminder of my strong desire for raising future generations in the Catholic faith.”

Even so, Barb didn’t hold much initial optimism about the parish achieving its campaign goal of $520,000. Holy Trinity has a little over 500 parishioners and “a lot of them are elderly,” she said, meaning pledges would be sought from many pensioners and people on fixed incomes.

“When Father Ray told me about our assigned goal, I could feel my chest tighten,” Barb said. “There was no way! I knew our campaign would be successful, but this goal was ambitious.”

“Our parish is small but our parishioners are truly generous. You would realize this if you would see the truckloads of items left under our bi-monthly Giving Country that benefits our community food pantry. But $520,000 – how could we ever hope to achieve this lofty goal?”

Still, this was a parish that had overcome the struggles of a difficult three-way merger. By mid-June Holy Trinity parishioners had pledged nearly $775,000, or almost 150% of that goal.

Barb said critical elements to local campaign successes include a pastor’s commitment and the right campaign team.

“The beginning of our success has to lay with Father Ray,” Barb said.

“His belief in this campaign, his wisdom in selecting a great core group of volunteers and his continued dedication was the source of energy that quickly not only brought us to realize our goal but surpass that goal by almost 50%. From this the core team was also energized and were pulled way out of their comfort level by asking fellow parishioners for a pledge.

“Of course another incentive was the bonus funds to our parish.” she said. “We struggle weekly but with these ‘newly found’ funds we will be able to do much needed items on our to-do list. Raising these bonus funds on our own would have been a monumental task.”

The parish share will go to much-needed electrical work, an upgrade of the parking lot, and other structural necessities, Barb said.

“We had less than 1% refusal,” Barb says. “Our people are generous spirits.”

The way it is with family.