If our Annual Fund Drive mailer isn’t in your hands yet, it soon will be. I hope and pray you’ll pause from your busy day to spend a few minutes reading it through.

The theme of this year’s appeal is “Great Catholic communications can help the Church save the world. You can help the Church provide great Catholic communications.”

The tri-fold brochure, easily read all the way through in just a few minutes, backs up the claim.

It also lays out the reasons for our asking our readers to financially partner with us even in a tough economy, when many readers are stretched too thin to help and others are weary of fundraising requests.

The Register has always relied on donors to meet its operating expenses and to expand its impact. Even so, years back, no one producing newspapers and magazines foresaw the day when soaring production and postal prices would combine with the mushrooming of the Internet, with its limitless universe of free (and often low-value) content, to create a perfect storm threatening an entire industry.

Some publications have folded. Others have scaled way back. The Register has a workable plan to not only survive this present challenge but to thrive for years to come. God willing, our plan will succeed. (“If God is for us, who can be against us?” — Romans 8:31.)

The plan depends on you. Will you help us help build an authentically Catholic culture in the midst of secular aggression, governmental overreach and cultural erosion?

I’m hoping you’ll consider our Annual Fund Drive appeal with prayerful discernment. And, as you do, please remember: The Catholic Church in America needs the National Catholic Register. And the National Catholic Register needs you.

God bless you.