The "Prop": Then and Now
Over 80 Years of Growth for the Gospel

Grand Total of Financial Contributions
to Mission Societies
Then...         $   100,000
Now...         $4,916,574

Lead Contributing Parish

Then...	The Nativity Parish	$2,000
Now...	Banner Parishes:
	St. Luke, Queens County	$146,882
	St. Thomas Aquinas-Flatlands, Kings County	$48,422

Diocesan Director
Then...
Now...  Rev. John Brogan

Opening Comments from the
Propagation Society's Annual Report

Then... The Tablet, February 21,1920

"The Diocesan Director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith has filed for the attention of the Catholics of the diocese the first of his proposed annual reports...The report commands the close attention of every real Catholic who values the dignity that lies in his name. It speaks of an interest on the part of us at home in the noble sacrifices that are being made for our common faith by Bishops, priests, and religious of both sexes in the lands of the uncivilized. Death and other perils are constantly before them....

The blessing of Heaven has fallen on us and our generosity to the mission movement has certainly been one of the reasons. Our people have been trained in giving. They have not stopped at the Catholic works abroad, they have given generously at home. There is no blindess more pitiable than the blindness of the congregation which begrudges funds for any cause other than those which are parochial. Christ did not establish His Church on parish lines; its vitality is for expansion throughout the entire world....God honors a diocese when He summons from it men and women to leave their homes and go to distant shores to bring the Gospel of salvation to humans, living apart even from the refinements of life. Brooklyn has but taken a first step in the work for the missions of the faith which it has been called upon by Heaven to do. We are at last entering into our own."

Now... Introduction to the 2000 Annual Report 

"At the close of the Great Jubilee, the Holy Father recalled the words of Jesus when one day, after speaking to the crowds from Simon's boat, he invited the Apostle to "put out into the deep" for a catch: "Duc in altum" (Lk 5:4). This annual report helps recall some of the many graces experienced during the year 2000, always with the desire to go further, to set out for greater missionary work. Just as Jubilee 2000 could be alternately understood as the last year of one millennium or the first of another, so also in the Pontifical Missions Office there is a mixture of endings and beginnings. 

Just as these changes occurred on the different level of mission offices per se, so there have been changes in parish staffs: pastors, principals, directors of religious education and the like.  How wonderful to see amidst the changes the constancy of the missionary animation and collaboration!  Thanks must be given not only to those who have gone before us, but as well to those who have remained at their work and have called others to join them. So it is that as a Diocese, as the Church in this country and as a universal Church we continue to fulfill the Savior's command to preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth."