Join Us
________________________________________________________________________________
The Catholic Daughters of the Americas is one of the oldest and largest organizations of Catholic women in the Americas. They donate to charities, administer scholarship programs and strive “to be helping hands where there is pain, poverty, sorrow or sickness.” The CDA motto is “Unity and Charity.”
In addition to opportunities at the local and national level for fellowship with other Daughters who pursue our mission of faith working through love in the promotion of justice, equality, and the advancement of human rights and dignity for all, Daughters experience the opportunity to give and receive. By giving of your time, talent, ideas, knowledge, dedication, and enthusiasm, you’ll receive spiritual enrichment, leadership skills, affirmation, community, broadened horizons, and a marked sense of accomplishment. Daughters also receive SHARE, the award-winning, quarterly magazine of the Catholic Daughters of the Americas.
Who can be a member?
Active Catholic lay and religious women of Council Bluffs and Carter Lake, 18 years of age or older, who love and support the Church and wish to participate in social and charitable activities
Why should you join?
Spiritual Benefits of Membership in Catholic Daughters
CDA gives us the opportunity to come together with other women who share our faith and our call to service. Membership in a court allows us to have sisters who will pray with us and for us. They are there in happiness and in sorrow. They help us to hear God’s voice as He gives us His counsel and His consolation. Court members who pray together are powerful intercessors. Christ says to us in Scripture, “Where two or more are gathered in my name, I am in their midst.” Belonging to a court ensures that that we are never alone; as we pray together, God is with us, and with Him, “All things are possible.”
CDA gives us the ability to answer God’s call to service. As you may know from our old Baltimore Catechism days (if you are very young, this may be before your time), we were created to know, to love, and to serve God. CDA retreats, days of recollection, corporate Communions, and private and collective prayer, all help us to come to know God so that our love for Him grows. It is that love of God that calls us to service. The fact that we belong to a CDA court then allows us to use our gifts to answer that call to service. As court members, we live out the corporal and spiritual works of mercy by praying for and taking care of God’s people. When we feed the hungry, build Habitat Houses, visit the sick, pray for those in need, teach children, support our clergy, all of that is part of living a life of service.
Even when we raise money, we are serving. Where will the money for our seminarians come from? How will we buy rosaries so that we can teach children to pray? How will the local women’s shelter get money for school supplies or clothing for battered women? Some of it will come from our bake sales and Christmas raffles, and chicken dinners. Even when we raise money, we serve and answer God’s call.
In the end, we become CDA and CDA becomes who we are. We live out our lives praying and serving God’s people, and when the time comes, it is our CDA sisters who will be there to pray for us as we pass from this life into the next.
from Olga Samaniego
National CDA Spiritual Enhancement Chair 2011
If you are interested in joining this Catholic Daughters of the Americas® court or would like more information, please contact: