“I
was interested in working part-time and asked her
to give my phone number to Larry McGovern, OmniData’s
president,” she said. “As a parishioner
of St. Bernardine of Sienna in Woodland Hills, Calif.,
I already knew first-hand how effective PCS was at
my home church.”
PCS, a computer management system created at the request
of Cardinal Roger Mahoney, archbishop of the Los Angeles
Diocese, has been implemented in over many parishes
throughout California and Hawaii since 1997. For almost
three years, Gordon has served on the PCS technical
support team assisting these churches with everything
from initial setup and on-site training to programming
and writing how-to articles for users.
“There
are two primary benefits to our system. First, it
is written in Microsoft Office, the software program
used by most parishes and religious schools Secondly,
PCS is designed to support the entire church—the
administrative, parish school, religious education
offices—as opposed to having separate databases,”
said McGovern.
Gordon
agrees with McGovern. According to her, this unifying
aspect of PCS is a major advantage to parishes. “Utilizing
a central database is a good idea. Catholic organizations
within a single parish will have greater data accuracy
when it can be updated from one main source that each
group has access to. For example, when parents provide
a change of address to the school, it is automatically
communicated to the church and other parish ministries
as well,” she explained.
“The
other benefits of PCS include making the scheduling
of various church staff and volunteers more efficient;
providing a user-friendly program to create mailers
and e-communications to specific groups; allowing
parishioners to make their contributions and pledges
via a secure, online credit card system; and managing
fees and obligations for the school,” Gordon
continued.
Gordon’s
work with PCS has allowed her to assist her fellow
parishioners at St. Bernadine’s. During her
“typical day” of trouble-shooting any
system issues that arise, scheduling on-site education
sessions and doing various telephone training sessions,
Gordon keeps regular contact with her church. “I
am very active in helping my parish and school with
PCS issues. St. Bernardine’s has been using
the system for several years, and the school adopted
it in September 2004.”
This
idea of Catholics helping Catholics was just what
Thomas Pereira had in mind when he joined McGovern
in marketing the system to parishes outside of California.
Since 2001, Pereira, president of Cosmo Enterprises,
a technology company headquartered in Honolulu, has
served as the main PCS contact throughout Hawaii and
the Pacific Rim. “PCS has already proven its
reliability for helping Catholic parishes to expand
into the internet age,” said Pereira. “We
continue to assist churches to upgrade by providing
quality software and training. We are always looking
for media-savvy individuals like Gordon to help their
churches make the transition to a more effective communication
system.”
To
Pereira, her work clearly reflects what the late Pope
John Paul II said in his 2002 World Communications
Day address: “For the
Church, the new world of cyberspace is a summons to
the great adventure of using its potential to proclaim
the Gospel message.”
“PCS
allows a parish to build a strong, visible presence
on the internet, which many Catholics today use as
their main source of information, entertainment and
communication,” Pereira added. “John Paul
II always encouraged the Church on numerous occasions
to use the web as a means of evangelization during
his pontificate. PCS is a great way to accomplish
this.”
