Parish sharing means more than a second collection.

While it's nice that wealthier parishes reach out to poorer ones with monetary resources, the mere one-way sharing of gifts impoverishes both the giver and receiver. An important Christian obligation--and opportunity--is being missed.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN THAT WE ARE CATHOLIC?" asks my 5-year-old in the car while we are driving to Sunday Mass. Even though I regularly encounter hundreds of committed Catholics each week in my work for the Archdiocese of Chicago, I often find it is my oldest son who helps me to keep my spiritual life in line.

And usually the best answers to my child's provocative questions emerge from our family's experiences in the local parish. For me, to be Catholic means carrying our beliefs in Jesus with us as we leave the church building. As Catholics, I believe, we are called to be charitable with our resources, not only by giving from our surplus, but also by building relationships with others through sharing our time and talents.

That's what my parents taught me when they taught me to form a relationship with God by forming relationships with people in our neighborhoods. It's also what our bishops teach. In Everyday Christianity: To Hunger and Thirst for Justice, the U.S. bishops urge all Catholics to use their talents and resources to build institutions that protect human dignity and promote justice.

That's why I'm a big believer in parish sharing programs, which typically partner one congregation (often poorer) with another (often wealthier). It's also why I'm disappointed whenever parish sharing programs get reduced to special collections and clothing drives--what's essentially a mere funneling of material wealth from richer parish to poorer parish. Even if well-intentioned, this is a one-way relationship that does little more than perpetuate itself.

Pope John Paul II has continually called Catholics to build solidarity by building a community of relationships. In community we realize the fulfillment of our human dignity and rights in relationship with others. We experience the human person as both sacred and social. Hence I think we need to make our parishes into places that empower people to reach their full God-given potential. But if our parish sharing programs are limited to throwing money into the collection basket, we allow our own stereotypes and ignorance to go unchallenged. We fall short of our own human dignity and potential, even as our charity is meant to help our more impoverished brothers and sisters to build theirs.

If we rub shoulders with folks, on the other hand--contribute to relationships with impoverished communities as well as to collections on their behalf--we foster a more informed understanding and awareness. By sharing in the life of other parishes, we are better equipped to build the Body of Christ and work for justice.

PARISH SHARING PROGRAMS ARE FIRST AND FOREMOST A Pragmatic way of building community. Officially, for over 25 years, the Parish Sharing Program in the Archdiocese of Chicago has built bridges between parish communities that would otherwise be separated by racism, classism, culture, and economic disparity. Cardinal Joseph Bernardin stated it clearly in a 1996 pastoral statement: "Parish Sharing ... creates opportunities to nurture solidarity among people in the archdiocese. The bond of a common faith provides an essential foundation upon which strong relationships can be built. The unity we find through Jesus Christ brings us together despite the diversity of race, ethnicity, culture, and economic disparity."

Parish sharing in Chicago began in 1969 when the West Side parish of Presentation B.V.M., where Msgr. Jack Egan was pastor, connected with St. Joseph's in suburban Libertyville through Egan's friend, Msgr. Harry Koenig. These two friends were creatively trying to overcome the larger backdrop of racial violence and misunderstanding at the time.

"It was all about getting people in a black, poor community to know people from a white, suburban community, and to exchange everything we could possibly exchange," recalls Egan. Bishops Michael Dempsey and William McManus further spread the twinning idea in the early `70s through Chicago's Operation Friendship. Based on some of these early models, area parishioners have shared their faith and spirituality through dinners, Masses, pulpit exchanges, and parish visits. Presentation and St. Joseph parishes enlivened their faith by developing events for their congregations' children, such as parish picnics and a fishing trip to the lake at Mundelein Seminary.

As time has taught those of us who do this type of work, money is not enough for building a more viable community. What remains essential is the sharing of faith for a deeper understanding and connectedness as the People of God. Indeed, by bringing people together through friendships that began in experiences of faith, much deeper relationships are formed. A parishioner from St. Joseph says that when her husband died, for example, a friend they made through parish sharing with Presentation was so significant to them that he was one of the pallbearers.

But some Catholic parishes don't engage in sharing at all--not even the one-way kind driven by charity. When I traveled around dioceses in my former position at the U.S. Catholic Conference, I saw many parishes falling short of this goal. It's as if they had overlooked the fact that being Catholic means being "universal." When Cardinal Hickey of Washington was criticized once for Catholic institutions serving non-Catholics, he responded that we do it not because they but because we are Catholic. It's our inheritance to be universal.

As a society, North Americans have moved from a culture of front porches to back decks. So, too, our parishes too easily succumb to the "congregationalist temptation" to see themselves as self-contained, self-sufficient units in isolation from other congregations.

Such personal and parish isolation is ironic when one considers the popularity of current TV shows such as Survivor and Big Brother. We love to see and hear people's stories, it seems; we want exposure to people's lives that are different from our own. But we want these experiences of connection and community only insofar as they don't threaten our ability to own three TV sets and two cars without feeling guilty about those who can't. What is needed in our churches is greater creativity in connecting parishes--and connecting them across economic and ethnic ghettoes so that twinning amounts to a truly mutual sharing.

SADLY, IN MANY DIOCESES, PARISH TWINNING HAS NEVER moved beyond the monetary exchange. And to promote outreach, many parishes around the U.S. now offer financial assistance to sister parishes in other countries. But, without relationship-building through a reciprocal visitation--which some parishes such as St. Peter's in Charlotte, North Carolina do--the exchange frequently remains limited to charity instead of evolving into a relationship that encourages the kind of justice and global solidarity that befits our Catholic inheritance of universalism.

Opportunities for real parish sharing are endless. Along with material support, sharing through worship and prayer--including joint liturgies and retreats--is invaluable. Many congregations form parish sharing committees that work on events linking youth and senior groups, legal assistance, parish sharing gardens, and joint Sunday schools on a regular basis. Some suggestions, based on what we've done in Chicago:

* Strengthen the diocesan parish sharing commission through the recruitment of more people of color.

* Develop a "Parish Sharing Ideabook," a resource to help parishes make sharing an integral part of the faith life of their communities.

* Create a parish sharing video to promote the concept.

* Hold an annual diocesan parish sharing Mass to witness to the unity in diversity and the spirituality behind real parish sharing.

* Integrate workshops on the best practices of parish sharing into the annual leadership conference of the diocese so that new leaders are always developed and the program doesn't stagnate.

The chairman of our own archdiocesan parish sharing commission recently told a story that reveals the essence of what it means to practice being Catholic through parish sharing. He pointed out how two communities that would otherwise be separate came together following the tragic 1994 murder of 14-year-old Terrell Collins, a student at Chicago's St. Malachy School. Parishioners from St. Malachy's partner, Holy Cross Parish in suburban Deerfield, were scheduled to come for Mass at St. Malachy the Sunday after Terrell's murder.

"They did not cancel their trip, because they shared the pain of the tragedy and wanted to be with the parishioners of St. Malachy in their time of sorrow," the commission chairman says. "We celebrate how the Spirit, through parish sharing, builds bridges bringing people together so that we can more fully be the Body of Christ with all its diverse and equally blessed parts."

True parish sharing is about bringing people together to break down walls so that people can live in communion. Fortunately for me, when I get asked by my children what it means to be Catholic, I can point to parish sharing as an honest attempt to try to live it out.

BILL APPLEBY PURCELL, director of the Office for Peace and justice for the Archdiocese of Chicago.