Every day, I wake up mindful of how blessed our Church is. You, your leadership, your expertise, and generosity collectively bring forth so many blessings for the Church. I have never doubted that with sound intentions, exemplary competence, collaboration, and prayerful determination, we can continue to contribute to and bless the Church, allowing her mission to be advanced unencumbered, free to be an instrument in turn to bless and meet the world's own profound human needs. As a staff, as a board, and as a membership, conscientiously we attend to modeling what we advocate.
On July 11th, 2008, this organization of remarkably dedicated laity and clergy will be officially three years old. In three years, so many of our original objectives have been accomplished and advanced. An enormous amount in a short time, often, against obstacles that smart, sophisticated, experienced people told us would be barriers to our good intentions.
Obstacles like fear of change, suspicion of motivations or results, inertia, and above all, the sheer magnitude of very real contemporary challenges, fiscally, demographically, managerially facing the Catholic Church in the U.S. at the beginning of the 21st Century. So, how to account for so much good news to be able to share with you in our first three years of endeavor? The most obviously answer is grace. This is, after all, an organization of people who are faith-filled, devoted Catholics. Grateful for our faith, grateful to the Church for informing so much of who we are professionally and personally. Although we go in with our eyes wide open to the problems at hand, let us remember that it is the Church's mission to which we are committed.
What better instrument to point us to the transcendent nature of life, to bring us into close relationship with Christ, to offer truth and meaning, and to provide a vehicle for carrying out the social mandate to care for others in our midst than the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church to which we belong?
The consequence of succeeding and providing exceptional education to generations of Catholics in the U.S. is that you have before you an extremely well-educated, talented, proficient laity, who know enough about our baptismal rights and responsibilities to know that when our Church, our faith community needs our active participation, and our particular competencies, it is our obligation and also our joy to extend them. Another way to account for the success is that our mission is simple, urgent, and compelling. It makes sense. It makes sense theologically and practically.
Catholics have risen to levels of affluence and influence, and count among the highest echelons of leadership across industry and sector. The good news is that many of these talented men and women ordained and lay care so much about the Church and her mission, that they are committing through the Roundtable their time, expertise, social capital, creativity, and many other resources in service to strengthening the management of human and financial resources.
As you know, we meet annually as a membership body. There are at least two main purposes for this gathering. The first is to take up an aspect of our mission, whether it be Church finances, human resource development, communications, or management, and highlight it thematically for discussion, debate, and creative problem solving. As you are aware, our deliberations are transcribed, edited, and disseminated widely to other Church leaders. We make available all that we produce and do to a wide Church audience through our online clearing house of best practices, ChurchEpedia.
 The second purpose of our gathering is to report to the membership on our activity and programmatic endeavors. This is surely intended to inform and inspire. But above all, we offer it because we sincerely seek your strategic guidance and reaction to the quality of our work. We need your help to ensure that it is disseminated and implemented effectively, and that we are on target in terms of identifying and meeting the most pressing temporal needs of the Church.
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