The National Founder
Paul G. Zurkowski
at the first meeting
On April 30, 1999 in San Francisco
It is my pleasure to invite you to create CBN-SF and in the process to go on a journey to develop your creativity, to pray, to evangelize, all the while building your business through the Catholic Business Network.
I want you to stretch your minds a little. I'm going to take you on a round about journey but I promise I will bring it all together at the end.
Let me suggest some starting points.
Starting point No. 1. In my bio you saw that for 21 years I was president of the Information Industry Association. No one really knew what the information industry was when we started (they know now it was the forerunner of the internet and the web). As early as 1970 I was explaining that the information industry is made up of people and businesses engaged in creating a machine-readable equivalent or counterpart of people, events and artifacts. For now I ask only that you hold that thought in your mind.
Starting Point No. 2. When I created Our Parish Times, a monthly community newspaper now serving Montgomery County Maryland parishes and schools, I named my business Parish Community Services. I wanted to provide services to the parish that it did not or could not presently provide itself. Parish priests can no longer act like precinct captains knowing everything and everybody in their parish, finding jobs for people, sending business to parishioner-owned companies, etc. They just don't have time today. The fact is that some parishes are virtual communities, no sidewalks, no networks, no intimacy - no real community.
Starting Point No. 3. Two years after I started the newspaper in September 1990 I created a monthly luncheon in 1992 to get my advertisers together. I called it the Catholic Business Alliance because I thought Catholic businesses needed to band together to get the respect due them and to begin doing more business will the person in the pew next to them.
Starting Point No. 4. As I kept pushing to get Catholics to do business with Catholics, I spoke with my parish pastors. One told me how he felt about Catholic businesses when he told me about a Catholic grocer on one corner and a Jewish grocer on the other. When the Catholic went out of business the Jewish grocer was asked why. He said, "Well we all put a thumb on the scale now and then but he used to put two." I couldn't help but think how far we had come since Jesus selected the business people of his time to be his Apostles. What has happened in between?
Starting Point No. 5. When the Catholic Business Alliance had been operating for a year or more and attendance at the monthly luncheon regularly exceeded 50, a Pentacostal event took place. The participants rose up and we converted it to the Catholic Business Network, obtained a spiritual adviser from the archdiocese and converted it to a breakfast event. All I could think was that "Where two or three are gather in my name, there I am."
In the intervening months and years CBN has come to have a mission.
It is not easy to fulfill. As to Catholic businesses, we seek to change the culture, to embrace Catholic business as the back bone of the parish, of the Church. We seek to change habits of thought. These are tasks which won't be completed in our lifetimes so we need patience. We may make mistakes, so we must love each other and persist, not aggressively but persistently.
We must rehabilitate Catholic business, its reputation and its standing with fellow Catholics. We must be proud of our faith and our business ministry. Catholics should come to be comfortable with doing business with fellow Catholics. If that takes making Jews and Mormons out of Catholics, at least in the approach to promoting Catholic to Catholic business, so be it. This is true because on your success in business depends the success of your parish and of the Church. . Or maybe we just need to take lessons from our Chinese parishioners.
We must help each other apply our faith in the marketplace. A compelling case can be made that the Holy Spirit is the force driving the business ministries in our community. This immediately benefits family, church, community and business.
So what am I doing here in San Francisco, having flown in yesterday from Chevy Chase, Maryland?
I believe the Holy Spirit is calling us to organize CBN on a national level. We have called it Catholic Business Network USA. It will be a national business league with local CBNs as its members. CBNUSA will provide services to each CBN to start and grow their groups and to play a constructive role in their community. One of the features of CBNUSA is the fact that it will have a sister group, the CBNUSA foundation which will help each CBN raise tax deductible contributions. There is a flyer on each table explaining the services that will be provided. My participation with you today is evidence of our support for CBNs. CBN USA is a non-profit and I plan to help bring it to life this year. Our goal is to have 40 CBNs in operation or at least in the development stage by the end of the year. This will be a great start on a national network of Catholic businesses.
Let me return to the information industry for a moment. One of the key ways CBN can help rehabilitate the Catholic business reputation, is offered by the world wide web. Each CBN web page can help fill in some of the blank places in the life of the parish community. It can serve as a lens focussing attention on all sorts of local Catholic information. Parish School luncheon menus, CYO sports, H&SA meeting schedule, Catholic School annual calendar, vacation dates, etc., school fund drives, teacher resumes, business speaker resumes for speakers bureau, Job openings in local businesses, school web pages.
By doing our part in creating information equivalents of the Catholic culture in your local area you will be performing a service to your fellow parishioners in a very public and respected way. By focussing your fellow Catholics' attention on the Catholic community you are recognized as the backbone or key element in your Catholic community.