Walking with Moms in Need process helps parishes support moms through local resources
The Sanctity for Life committee of St. John the Evangelist Parish in Indianapolis places stickers with the above image on mirrors in bathrooms at the church and the surrounding area to share a list of local resources for pregnant and parenting moms that the team created through the Walking with Moms in Need process. (Submitted photo)
By Natalie Hoefer
When it comes to pregnant and parenting mothers seeking help, the assistance most often sought is not surprising.
“A lot of the time it’s diapers,” Brie Anne Varick admits with a smile.
“But it’s not always diapers,” she adds in a more serious tone. “Maybe it’s transportation, or shelter, or food. It could be pre-natal care, post-natal care, child care, mental health support, help paying rent, clothes, furniture.”
Finding and contacting different agencies to meet these various needs can be difficult and time-consuming for these moms in need, says Varick, director of the archdiocesan Office of Human Life and Dignity.
But she has a vision, a hope: that any mother in need “could walk into their local parish, and everyone would know at least where in the community to meet her needs.”
That vision is the goal of the Walking with Moms in Need initiative launched by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in March of 2020.
The initiative involves three primary steps for parishes or groups of parishes.
First is to compile what Varick calls a “wholistic” inventory of resources for pregnant and parenting moms local to the parish, using a downloadable chart with three categories: pregnancy help-related resources, general help-related resources and help available from the parish.
“If there are any gaps in local resources, parishes should ask, ‘Are we a parish that has the people and resources to fill in the gap?’ ” Varick notes. “This [process] is a great first step for a parish to discern if there’s anything more they can do.”
Next, the parish creates a way to make the list available, such as on a website or flyer.
Finally, the parish communicates with parishioners and the community to raise awareness of the list and how to access it.
The USCCB created a website with helpful tools to walk parishes through the process, including a webinar, a comprehensive Parish Action Guide, the previously mentioned inventory chart, sample timelines and a series of 12 videos to form parishioners, as the USCCB site says, on “what it truly means to walk with a woman through an unexpected pregnancy.”
Varick worked with the archdiocesan Catholic Charities-Social Concerns ministry to complete a Walking with Moms resource inventory for central and southern Indiana. The list can be found at www.walkingwithmomsindy.org.
“I wanted to model at the archdiocesan level what a parish pro-life ministry could do to adopt” the Walking with Moms process, she says.
The Sanctity of Life committee at St. John the Evangelist Parish in Indianapolis completed the process about four years ago.
“We started pretty much when [the initiative] started,” says Sheryl Dye, a member of the committee.
Members were assigned different sections of the inventory to research local resources for moms.
“It was time-consuming, but Indianapolis is big and is very blessed with so many resources,” says Dye. “We didn’t just look at Catholic resources, but we only included resources that aligned with Catholic teaching.”
Once the list was complete, the parish’s director of communications and special events, Megan Fish, created a database.
“We plugged the list in, then she created a page that can be accessed on St. John’s website,” says Dye. “I go through it periodically to keep it up to date.”
Fish created stickers with a message and a QR code as an easy way to access the online list. The team placed stickers on mirrors in bathrooms at the church and in the local community.
“We put them in men’s bathrooms, too, not just women’s, because a man might know someone who needs that kind of help,” says Dye.
The Respect Life committee at St. Matthew the Apostle Parish in Indianapolis also utilized QR code technology, creating business cards and index cards with the code on one side and a pro-life prayer on the other to distribute at the parish’s ministry fair.
“We also have an enlarged picture of the QR code on a bulletin board at the back of church, and sometimes we put it in the parish bulletin,” says Margaret Stempky, head of the committee. “We want parishioners to know, ‘If you know someone in need, you can scan this [QR code] with your phone and get the information.’ I think people are so willing to help if they just know how.”
The Walking with Moms in Need initiative does more than help parishes in assisting pregnant and parenting mothers.
“It shows that the Church is for the baby in the womb and also for the mom, that we love them both,” says Varick. “That we want to help the mom choose life, but we also want to help her and her family after the baby is born. Helping them both has always been the Church’s pro-life mission.”
Stempky appreciates the dual focus.
“That’s probably one of the big misconceptions, that people don’t understand how very much the Catholic Church does for moms,” she says.
“For so long, pro-life messaging was all about the [unborn] baby, which is true. But we need to continue the message that we’re here for the moms.”
(For more information about the Walking with Moms in Need initiative and for parish resources on how to implement the process, go to www.walkingwithmoms.com. For further questions or help in starting the parish process, contact Brie Anne Varick at bvarick@archindy.org or 317-236-1543.) †
