"If you can dream it, you can do it" -- that is the theme of the Archdiocesan Pastoral Council's ambitious priority program to be kicked off Saturday, September 25.

After months of planning and coordinating, the Council will publicly present the action components developed to carry out the overall program.

These projects have been designed with the help of resource personnel from the state and local level as well as from Atlanta's academic community both black and white. The projects themselves are aimed at securing parish-level participation from all age groups.

One spokesman for the Council said that the effort thus far had been in developing workable projects and activities which could be easily picked up by a parish and centered on. He added that what faced the Council at this point was to sell the projects and sustain enthusiasm for them.

The Sept. 25 meeting will be followed up by two sessions in each of the three Deaneries of the program's informational and motivational component Operation Eye Opener.

The whole archdiocesan Pastoral Council effort came in response to Archbishop Thomas A. Donnellan's challenge to the delegates to develop priorities to which the whole Church of North Georgia could address itself.

Father Jerry E. Hardy, Priest-Secretary to the Council, said the overall program is both practical and imaginative. In a letter to Council delegates, he pointed out that the thinking behind the program was to attack poverty at the cause level, not the symptom level. He went on to add that it would be unrealistic to suspect the program could eradicate poverty.

"We know we can't wipe out the problem with this program. But I do believe we can cut it back, provided people in the archdiocese believe in the value of concerted effort no matter how small," he said.

In a recent letter to the sisters of the archdiocese, encouraging their participation and support, Father Hardy mentioned some of his personal hopes: "I think this program can give us a new awareness, a heightened consciousness of ourselves as a Church by all of us pulling together around a single priority."

The action components will cover a broad range of cause-level approaches to the problem. Day Care Centers, domestic workers, open and low-income housing, rural food, and equal job opportunity are the titles. Suggested action in each of these areas will be presented in Saturday's Kick-Off session.

Sister Janet Valente, GNSH, director of the Office or Urban Affairs for the archdiocese has been responsible for securing top local and regional resource personnel for this program. "I feel we have been able to benefit from the best experience and expertise around here," she said. "Men of the caliber of Jim Parham (director, State Dept. of Family and Children's Services), Lyndon Wade (director of the Atlanta Urban League), and Bob Weimer (assistant director of the Georgia Narcotics Treatment Program) are really outstanding in this whole area and have been tremendously helpful," she added.

All of those mentioned will be on hand for the Sept. 25 meeting as well as the first Deanery Session for Operation Eye Opener.