David DeLambo of the Diocese of Cleveland asked on June 1, 2010:

“Do official church documents directly equate the work of pastoral councils with pastoral planning?”

Mark F. Fischer replied:

It is common today to speak of pastoral planning as the work of the pastoral council.  But is “pastoral planning” the way the Church describes the work of councils?

Clearly, the Church lauds the work of pastoral planning.  Pope John Paul II, in his Apostolic Letter of 2001, Novo millennio ineunte, had this to say:

“It is in the local churches that the specific features of a detailed pastoral plan can be identified — goals and methods, formation and enrichment of the people involved, the search for the necessary resources — which will enable the proclamation of Christ to reach people, mould communities, and have a deep and incisive influence in bringing Gospel values to bear in society and culture.” (no. 29)

Elsewhere in his letter, Pope John Paul lauded the pastoral council as an instrument of communion.  He wrote:

“To this end [the achievement of communion], the structures of participation envisaged by Canon Law, such as the Council of Priests and the Pastoral Council, must be ever more highly valued.” (no. 45)

But the Apostolic Letter does not say that the pastoral planning is the work of the pastoral council.  Vatican II’s Decree on the Apostolate of Bishops first recommended pastoral councils.  It said that they are to “investigate and consider matters relating to pastoral activity and to formulate practical conclusions concerning them” (no. 27).  This threefold task – investigating, considering, and formulating conclusions – can be considered a synonym for pastoral planning, but the actual term “pastoral planning” is not used.

A More Direct Connection

In his Apostolic Exhortation of 1999 to the Bishops of Asia, entitled Ecclesia in Asia, Pope John Paul II made a direct connection between pastoral planning and pastoral councils.  The Holy Father said:

In particular there is a need to foster greater involvement of the laity and consecrated men and women in pastoral planning and decision making through such participatory structures as pastoral councils and parish assemblies. (no. 25)

Pope John Paul here makes an unambiguous connection between pastoral councils and planning.  It is worth remembering, however, that the pope’s letter is to merely a segment of the Church – the Church in Asia.  Since it is not directed to the USA, we cannot say that the pope’s words were directed to us.  Ecclesia in Asia states an important principle, but it did not exhort Americans to equate pastoral planning with councils.

The Clearest Examples

The clearest examples of Church teaching about councils and planning come from the Congregation for Bishops.  In its “Directory on the Pastoral Ministry of Bishops” (Ecclesiae imago, May 31, 1973), the congregation had this to say about the pastoral council:

By its study and reflection, the council furnishes the judgments necessary to enable the diocesan community to plan its pastoral program systematically and to fulfill it effectively. (no. 204).

The 1973 Directory for Bishops is almost forty years old and no longer has canonical force, because it was replaced by the 2004 Directory for Bishops (Apostolorum successores, Feb. 22, 2004).  In the new Directory, the congregation had this to say about pastoral councils and planning:

The Bishop may propose themes for the council to discuss in connection with the pastoral activity of the diocese: these include the pastoral plan, various catechetical, missionary and apostolic initiatives, ways of improving the doctrinal formation and sacramental life of the faithful, assistance for the pastoral ministry of the clergy, and various means of raising public awareness regarding concerns of the Church. (no. 184)

The 1973 Directory is useful, however, because it shows a continuity with the 2004 Directory.  That is significant.  The link between pastoral councils and planning was forged in 1973, and it remained strong in 2004.

Conclusion

Official church documents do not directly equate the work of pastoral councils with pastoral planning.  They state, however, that councils have a role to play in such planning.  Councils are not simply planning bodies.  They can do much more than plan.  Their task is to participate in the pastor’s mission of shepherding the flock.  They do so in a threefold way, that is, by investigating, reflecting, and recommending their conclusions.  This is a broad definition.  It is broader than pastoral planning, but certainly may include it.

"Making Parish Councils Pastoral" compares what experts recommend for councils with what the church teaches.

Comment by Charles E. Zech

Director, Villanova University Center for the Study of Church Management

With the publication of Making Pastoral Councils PASTORAL, Mark F. Fischer has secured his legacy as the preeminent authority on parish pastoral councils of his generation. Fischer has written a book that, while supported by first-rate scholarship, is easily readable and practical. By tracing the origins of pastoral councils, Fischer is able to answer the question on the mind of many parishioners (and pastoral council members): what are pastoral councils supposed to do? The answer: they serve the apostolate of the pastor, helping the pastor to exercise the ministry of parish leadership. Every Catholic parish, even those with long-established parish pastoral councils, will find ideas in this book that will enhance their pastoral council’s effectiveness and enrich their parish.

Comment by Patricia Sullivan Vanni

Project Director, Emerging Models of Pastoral Leadership

This book will be profoundly relevant to priest pastors, parish life coordinators, parish councillors, and anyone interested in effective pastoral leadership. Practical, clear, and easy to understand, Making Parish Councils PASTORAL offers wisdom on the role, tasks, and qualities of council members, and the deliberative and consultative contributions they make to parish health through their participation in the pastor’s leadership.  In a time where parishes are being structured in novel and sometimes challenging ways, Fischer’s latest contribution is invaluable, empowering even more meaningful participation in by the faithful in the life of the Church.

[Click here to return to the book page.]

The council's primary focus, say Hermann and Gaston, should be the laity's daily life concerns.

.

Reviewed by Mark F. Fischer

Build a Life-Giving Parish, a new book by council veterans Sr. Brenda Hermann and Msgr. James Gaston, promises a return to fundamentals. The pastoral council, they say, is about providing “counsel.” Its purpose is “taking counsel in council” (3), defined as “the deliberate process of listening, dialogue, deciding, and implementing pastoral responses for God’s people” (4). The book holds out the promise of making the parish pastoral council the place of “the pastoral reflection and the strategic thinking that must precede planning” (38).

The authors’ teaching about pastoral planning is the most controversial part of the book. Msgr. Gaston, the book’s co-author, “oversaw and participated in the development of pastoral council guidelines for the Diocese of Greensburg” (102). The guidelines were published by the Paulist Press in 2001 as Revisioning the Parish Pastoral Council: A Workbook. The Greensburg guidelines confidently asserted, “The primary responsibility of the parish pastoral council is pastoral planning” (Revisioning, p. 97). However the new book puts this thesis in question. “Is planning the fundamental purpose of the council?”  Hermann and Gaston answer: “Our experiences suggest that it is not” (p. 2).

Mind-Changing Experiences?

What are the experiences that changed their minds? The authors neither point to any one series of events nor argue their case systematically. But in the book’s “Appendix B,” Msgr. Gaston provides an insight. He says that there is something more important than planning, namely, giving due reflection to Church and society. He writes:

We no longer view pastoral councils as the primary planning body in a parish. Planning is not an essential council function; it can be delegated to a staff or to another parish group. In addition, the planning model focuses primarily on the parish, its programs and its activities. Too often this is done while neglecting to ponder the massive changes occurring in the lives of the people, churched and unchurched. (p. 103)

In Msgr. Gaston’s mind, planning is not something that the pastoral council needs to do. Planning or coordinating programs can be left to others. The pastoral council’s proper role is giving counsel about wider issues, such as the “massive changes” in society. Hermann and Gaston are convinced that the PPC should focus on broader matters than the parish or its activities and programs.

The council can supply this broader focus the book states, when the pastor and the lay councillors together seek God’s will for the community. “The daily life concerns of the laity are indeed the primary pastoral concerns of the Church,” the authors write. “As such, these concerns must be the subject of the work of pastoral councils” (4). When councillors are less concerned about parish activities and programs than about the “daily life concerns of the laity,” the book suggests, there we find real “counsel in council.” The laity’s concerns – the lay apostolate of being a Christian in the world – are the essential field (the authors suggest) of the pastoral council. By contrast, the pastor’s apostolate (the apostolate of leading the parish), is – considered by itself – less important.

Implicit Critique

Build a Life-Giving Parish illustrates “counsel in council” by means of the book’s Foreword, written by Jean Vanier, the Canadian pioneer of “L’Arche” communities for disabled people. When he began in 1964, writes Vanier, he discovered that he needed help:

I was astonished [he writes] to find out all that was going wrong in my community . . . . So we had to reorganize things. We created a community council which would meet every Thursday. I could not run things on my own; I needed counsel from others. (page x).

Vanier’s text illustrates what Hermann and Gaston hope to achieve in parish pastoral councils. The community leader – Vanier, or any genuine pastor – has important questions. He should call upon the members of the community to help him find answers.

Ironically, the testimony of Vanier undermines or implicitly critiques two of the claims of Hermann and Gaston. First of all, it undermines the claim that the primary responsibility of the pastoral council is not pastoral planning. Hermann and Gaston appear to reduce pastoral planning to minor concerns about parish programs and activities. Yet it is precisely the programs and activities of the L’Arche communities that Vanier was seeking counsel about. The Vatican II Decree on Bishops (no. 27) defines the role of the “pastoral” council as investigating some aspect of the Church’s reality, pondering it, and recommending to the pastor its conclusions. That is pastoral planning – and L’Arche was and is deeply engaged in something that closely resembles it.

Vanier’s Foreword also undermines indirectly a second claim that the proper field of the pastoral council is “the daily life concerns of the laity” (in contrast to the pastor’s concerns with parish life). Vanier, as the “pastor” of L’Arche, was consulting his council precisely so that he could be a better pastor or community leader. “Pastoral” does not mean “having to do with minor parish matters, as opposed to the real concerns of the laity.” No, the Church’s documents suggest that it means pertaining to the pastor’s apostolate of community leadership. The good pastor cannot help parishioners to achieve their lay apostolate if his own mission of leading the parish is unsuccessful and ill-informed.

What “Planning” Means

Build a Life-Giving Parish advances our understanding of pastoral councils by critically reflecting on the concept of “pastoral planning.” To my mind, that phrase is the American translation of the threefold task of pastoral councils as expressed in the Decree on Bishops. They investigate and reflect on church matters and recommend conclusions to their pastors.  This differs from what Hermann and Gaston call pastoral planning, an apparently less important work.

Councils may attempt pastoral planning, say the authors, but it “is not their unique competency or role” (38) and may be unsuccessful.  Their true role is “pastoral reflection.”  This role is far more limited than what the Greensburg guidelines prescribed.   “Planning, decision making, and implementation are necessary steps in a process,” state Hermann and Gaston, “but they are not the work of council” (38).

Experienced councillors will welcome the authors’ efforts to clearly focus pastoral councils by trying to describe their purpose with precision. These efforts would be more successful, however, if they retraced the steps of the Vatican II Decree on Bishops with its threefold definition of the council’s role, and recognized that the pastoral council serves the pastor’s apostolate, not the laity’s.

The book compares what experts recommend for councils with what the church teaches.

Making Parish Councils Pastoral, to be published in October of 2010 by the Paulist Press, defines the “pastoral” council as the participation of councillors in the apostolate or mission of the Catholic pastor, namely, the apostolate of parish leadership.  For comments about the book, click here.

Bishops entrust parishes to pastors, and councillors share in the pastor’s ministry by investigating some aspect of church life, reflecting on it, and recommending their conclusions.  The first half of Mark F. Fischer’s book (chapters 1-7) contains success stories from actual councils that have genuinely achieved the “pastoral” ideal.

The second half of the book (chapter 8-13) analyzes Vatican documents that spell out the church’s “pastoral” vision for councils, starting with Vatican II’s Decree on the Apostolate of Bishops (no. 27).  The book argues that “pastoral” councils do not exist as an expression of the laity’s mission of bringing the gospel to the world, but rather express the pastor’s mission of providing wise leadership to the parish.

The book includes a chapter on how good pastors draw councillors into their own priestly spirituality.  The ordained priest serves the priesthood of the laity by helping Christians unite the gift of their own lives with that of Jesus Christ, the leader and pioneer of faith (Heb. 12.2).  The book concludes with a chapter on how parish councils can become more pastoral.

Making Parish Councils Pastoral clarifies the role of the pastoral council as a  planning body that helps pastors make wise decisions on behalf of the parish — not as an executive body that coordinates a system of committees or commissions.  The book sharpens the focus of councils and makes their goal more specific, giving them a greater chance of  success.

Table of Contents

• Introduction.  Why “pastoral” councils should not coordinate parish committees.
• Chapter 1: Introduction to Pastoral Councils and Pre-Test.  This chapter includes a 10-question true-or-false quiz by which you can test your pastoral council IQ.
• Chapter 2: What Councils Do.  How a council helped a pastor avoid embarrassing himself by starting an unnecessary new ministry.
• Chapter 3: Councils and Committees.  A  committee advised a pastor how the parish could extend its outreach to Buseesa, Uganda.
• Chapter 4: Pastoral Council and Parish Staff.  A bishop challenged a pastor to change the parish’s plans, and the council helped the pastor win over the bishop and stay on course.
• Chapter 5: Pastoral and Finance Council.  What happened when the pastoral council wanted to change parish income estimates and the finance council wanted to exclude it from administrative decisions.
• Chapter 6: Selecting Pastoral Council Members.  How a pastor attracted new members to the council by advertising in advance what he wanted to consult the council about.
• Chapter 7: Pastoral Council Spirituality.  Pastors invite councillors to share in their own priestly spirituality by consulting them about how to meet significant parish challenges.
• Chapter 8: How “Pastoral” Are Councils?  By precisely defining councils in terms of the threefold mission of the Vatican II Decree on Bishops — investigating, reflecting, and recommending conclusions — the book suggests that many councils fall short of the pastoral ideal.
• Chapter 9: Origins of the Pastoral Council.  Although the Vatican II Bishops Decree did not mention “pastoral” councils at the parish level, Vatican documents extended the “pastoral” ideal to parishes in 1973 and 1983.
• Chapter 10: What “Pastoral” Means.  The council is not pastoral because it prays, uses consensus, or avoids administration.  It is pastoral because it helps the pastor by its study, reflection, and recommended conclusions.
• Chapter 11: Canon 536 and Pastoral Activity.  Canon 536 did not define “pastoral activity” in terms of the pastor’s work.  It selectively ignored the language of the Bishops Decree, and vaguely defined the council’s role by saying that it “gave its help in fostering pastoral activity.”
• Chapter 12: The Uneven Documents from 1987-2001.  The Vatican documents Christifideles laici (1987), Ecclesiae de mysterio (1997),  Ecclesia in Asia (1999), and Novo millennio ineunte (2001) appeared to broaden the pastoral council’s role by defining it as a “participative structure” and a  means for “collaboration, dialogue, and discernment,” but added nothing to the fundamental definition.
• Chapter 13: The Documents of 2002 and 2004.  The Vatican documents entitled “The Priest, Pastor and Leader” (2002) and Apostolorum successores (2004) reaffirm the definition of the pastoral council as a body that helps the pastor by pastoral planning.
• Chapter 14: How to Make a Council More Pastoral.  The final chapter shows how councils can achieve greater success by concentrating on their explicit task of study, reflection, and planning.

Elizabeth Driscoll from St. Mary Magdalen Church in South Carolina wrote on May 8, 2010:

Laurie Hoefling of the Diocese of Davenport asked on May 7, 2010:

“What kind of leadership would be most appropriate for parish council leadership?”

Mark F. Fischer replied:

Best Practices of Catholic Pastoral and Finance Councils was published in 2010 by Our Sunday Visitor.

Review by Mark F. Fischer

For many years, students of parish pastoral and finance councils could only generalize about them by inference.  We could infer what councils in general do by reflecting on our individual experience or by studying pastoral and finance council guidelines published by dioceses.  These guidelines admittedly did not describe actual councils.  Rather they expressed what diocesan officials hoped that councils were doing.  But by studying the guidelines, we could gain an overview of a large body of council thinking.  We hoped that this might actually correspond to what real councils do.

With the appearance in April 2010 of Best Practices of Catholic Pastoral and Finance Councils (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor), the study of councils stands on firmer ground.  The book is based on a survey of 661 parishes selected by CARA, the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate.  The 661 parishes responded to at least one of three surveys sent in 2007 to a random sample of 3,076 parishes.  The responses allow us to generalize about effective group processes in Catholic pastoral and finance councils – the “best practices” identified by authors Charles E. Zech, Mary L. Gautier, Robert J. Miller, and Mary E. Bendyna, RSM.

Seven Chapters

Best Practices begins with an introductory chapter that lays out the goals of the book.  The Church is committed to creating better structures of participation, consultation, and shared responsibility, say the authors (19).  In order to improve these consultative structures, the book examines their reality, considering how councils function in accord with the Church’s teaching, and measuring how well they contribute to the Christian mission.

Chapter Two presents “What We Already Know about Parish Pastoral Councils and Parish Finance Councils.”  The truth, according to the authors, is that “We actually know surprisingly little” (45).  One area of obscurity concerns the basic purpose of pastoral councils.  The authors summarize the tension between those who champion Vatican II’s Decree on Bishops (no. 27) and Vatican II’s Decree on the Laity (no. 26) as the source of the pastoral council.  The Bishops Decree first described the “pastoral” council as supporting the pastor’s apostolate through consultative planning.  The Laity Decree first described councils at the parish level to coordinate the lay apostolate.  Many identify the Laity Decree as the charter for councils that coordinate parish committees.  Best Practices illuminates the tension between the two versions of the pastoral council – the “planning” v. the “coordinating” version – by studying what they actually do.  The authors return to this important issue in Chapter Six.

Chapter Three outlines the method of the study, generalizing about the 661 parishes that completed at least one survey instrument.  93 percent of responding parishes have both pastoral and finance councils (50).  These 661 parishes are larger and with a bigger staff than the typical parish.  The average responding parish had a little over 1,000 registered households and an approximate annual budget of just under $700,000 (48).  The chapter examines the characteristics of pastoral councils in terms of five dimensions: (1) purpose and function, (2) organizational structure, (3) membership, (4) meeting procedures, and (5) decision-making processes.  Finance councils are characterized in terms of membership, frequency and length of meetings, and responsibilities.

In Chapter Four of Best Practices, the authors break new ground by examining and recommending “Parish Internal Financial Controls.”  The phrase echoes the title of a 1995 publication by the U.S. Bishops, “Diocesan Internal Controls: a Framework.”  Internal financial controls are the practices of good pastors who are responsible for the Church’s temporal goods.  By putting internal financial controls in place – for example, good personnel policies, the separation of custody of assets from record-keeping, and independent verification of performance by parish business managers – the wise pastor becomes a good steward.  Unfortunately, however, the authors find that “many parishes routinely violate some of these recommendations” (89).

Chapter Five, entitled “Relationships and Communication,” describes the interaction of parish pastoral councils (PPCs) and parish finance councils (PFCs).  The two bodies tend to work independently, say the authors, with an occasional sharing of members.  “It is more common for a member of the parish finance council to sit on the parish pastoral council,” the authors found (108), than for PPC members to sit on PFCs.  Furthermore, “Communication with parishioners tends to be the exception rather than the rule” (109).  Most PPCs have an occasional open meeting, but few PFCs “hold open parish meetings to establish budget priorities” (109).  The two councils could cooperate and communicate better.

“Effective Group Processes in Advisory Councils” is the title of Chapter Six, which emphasizes the importance of councillor training.  The chapter also sheds light on the tension that exists between PPCs as planning bodies and PPCs as coordinators of parish committees (first described in Chapter Four).  The authors report that both types of council are effective.  Councils that plan are more effective than councils that do not, and councils that coordinate are more effective than those not involved in coordinating (131).  Effectiveness has to do with the ways that councils carry out their business.  Effective councils are good at “training and forming members, including faith sharing on the agenda, and generally behaving as a planning (in contrast to a coordinating) council” (141).  So planning councils have a slight edge over coordinating councils, but both are effective.

The final chapter, “Recommendations,” includes seven suggestions for PPCs and seven for PFCs.  Pastoral councils ought to share council leadership, establish bylaws, educate members, incorporate a finance council member in the pastoral council, communicate well with the parish, make decisions appropriately, and invite members to pray and express their faith.  Finance councils should share the burden of leadership, employ guidelines, involve parishioners in budget-making, utilize internal financial controls, review financial data frequently, communicate with parishioners, and cooperate with the pastoral council in goal-setting.

Conclusion

Cynics will occasionally ask whether pastoral and finance councils are in any way effective.  Best Practices answers that question in detail.  661 parishes out of a random sample of 3,076 (22.5 percent) responded to the CARA surveys.  They offer a powerful witness to those aspects of consultation that serve the Church’s mission.

The authors wisely did not try to resolve the question of what type of pastoral council – the “planning” or “coordinating” type – was envisioned at Vatican II.  That question ultimately depends on the history of the Vatican Council and its reception.  The authors did find, however, that of the 661 parishes, “PPCs were more likely to view themselves as planning councils than as coordinating councils” (51).  Best Practices is about how consultative groups view themselves.  That is a distinct question from how the Church, in its official documentation, views them.  But the self-perception of councils is important.  Theorists can argue about what the Church intends.  Best Practices reveals what actual councils are doing, and provides an important window into Church consultation.

"Servant Leadership Models," a new book by Dan Ebener, describes the difference between the "servant" leader and the "pedestal" leader.

Review by Mark F. Fischer

Servant leadership is a term coined by Robert K. Greenleaf in his 1970 essay, “The Servant as Leader.”  Now Dan R. Ebener has showed the continued relevance of the concept for Catholics in Servant Leadership Models for Your Parish.

Ebener contrasts servant leadership with “pedestal” leadership, his term for the behavior of those in positions of authority who understand their role as self-aggrandizement.

The true servant leader, by contrast, serves followers by helping them achieve their goals.  Such a leader presupposes that followers already know in general where they want to go.  The servant leader facilitates their own growth and goal-oriented activity.

Ebener shows the relevance of servant leadership to the Catholic pastor.  His people already know their goal in general — it is union with God.  The pastor who is a servant leader helps his people achieve that goal by clarifying it, focusing his people’s attention on it, and helping them achieve it.

Such leadership offers a powerful and persuasive model to Christians.  As followers of Jesus Christ, they are inspired by his willingness not to be served but to serve.  Servant leadership in the Catholic parish presupposes a congregation that is committed to its goal of union with God.  The congregation will be inspired by a leader whose ministry is to help them achieve their goal.

Tensions

What happens to servant leadership, however, when the congregation loses sight of its goal or does not fully understand it?  In these cases, the servant leader must remind the congregation of the goal and teach them what it means.  Teaching is fundamental to the ministry of the pastor.  Bishops entrust a parish to him because they have confidence in him.

Ebener calls the power of the appointed pastor “positional” power.  The positional leader, he says, has been “placed” into a position of leadership (22).  Such a leader can use his position to great effect.  “Servant leadership that flows out of positions of authority in the church,” Ebener writes (7), “surprises, excites, and inspires church members.”  But the positional leader who does not serve hurts the church.  Ebener puts it this way: “When the person with positional power in the situation is a pedestal leader, it makes it hard for others to practice servant-oriented ministry, whether leadership or followership” (184).

So positional power is not incompatible with servant leadership, but differs from it.  Tension may arise between the positional leader (who sees the Christian goal and understands it) and the congregation (which may not see or understand in the same way).  It is not easy to help people achieve their goal when they lose sight of it or misunderstand it.

Ebener acknowledges the possibility of this tension.  The pastor can be caught between the expectations of the bishop and those of parishioners.  To resolve the tension, he suggests, the servant leader must remember that he comes not to be served but to serve.  Service to the bishop, however, is not always the same as service to the congregation.

Transformational and Transactional Leaders

Ebener expresses another aspect of the tension that pastors feel in terms of a contrast between “transformational” and “transactional” leadership.  The transformational leader, he says, transforms the institution “by focusing on organizational change and a shared vision of the future” (26).  Such a leader inspires, motivates, and stimulates others by presenting a goal that is worth pursuing.  The transactional leader, by contrast, “focuses more on the day-to-day transactions between leader and follower, particularly the system of rewards and consequences needed to motivate others toward the common goal” (28).  In the Catholic parish, Ebener acknowledges, both are important.  Pastors have to perform their management duties as well as steering the congregation toward its long term goals (172).

Ebener clearly believes, however, that the pastor who is a true servant leader should be more concerned with transformational than transactional leadership.  Quoting John Kotter, Ebener suggests that Catholic parishes, like most organizations today, are “over-managed and under-led” (28).  Too many pastors are transactional leaders or managers.  Ebener would prefer to see pastors embrace the role of the servant leader and delegate management duties to others (172-3).  He wants them to transform the parish, not simply ensure that it is smoothly managed.

For those of us who are committed to the well-being of Catholic communities, Servant Leadership Models updates the concept of servant leadership and shows its continued relevance.  The servant leader will always experience the tension that exists between meeting the needs of Christians as they understand their needs and calling them to a deeper vision and greater discipleship.  Such a leader will also have to negotiate the tension between the obligations of day-to-day parish management  and the longing to guide a flock to green pastures beside still waters.  Not every transaction will transform the community into what God wants it to become, but transactions remain important.  Even the pastor who wants to be a servant leader cannot escape management responsibilities.

To order a copy of Servant Leadership Models for Your Parish, click on the Ebener Flyer 2-27-10.

Peter Denio of the National Leadership Roundtable

on Church Management wrote on March 25, 2010:

Official Church documents state that the Pastoral Councils are to represent the people of God, but not in the legal sense. Rather, council members are representative in that they are a witness or a sign of the whole community. They make its wisdom present. (Sacred Congregation for the Clergy, Private letter on Pastoral Councils, # 7).

The Pastoral Council is a representative body rather than a body of representatives. A council member is not a representative for a particular neighborhood, age bracket, special interest group or organization. However, in the spirit of the diocesan Synod, due regard is to be given to the cultural, ethnic and gender diversity of the community, social conditions, professions, gifts and roles when choosing council members. (Synod Initiative #8, Objective 6.)

Is this an accurate reflection of what is intended for council composition?

• Guidelines. Do you have a version of guidelines from a diocese, or a version that you have created that you would think is a model for other dioceses/parishes?

.

Mark F. Fischer replied:

1. Representation. You asked about how dioceses treat the topic of representation. It is important to distinguish between representation in the ordinary political sense and representation as “making present” the wisdom of the community. Pastoral councils represent, not by becoming advocates for this or that parish bloc, but by seeking the entire parish’s good. The art of building up the Christian community is synonymous with the word “pastoral.” Click here for a discussion of “representation.”

2. Cultural Competency. Your second question was about “cultural competency” in regard to PPC composition and leadership. Wise pastors certainly want councillors who make present the wisdom of every part of the parish and its cultural groups. At the same time, however, it would be foolish to see membership on the pastoral council in terms of filling quotas. In 2002, Maria Elena Uribe and I published an article about different cultures in the pastoral council.

3. Guidelines. In your third question, you asked about model guidelines for other dioceses and parishes. Regarding diocesan guidelines for parish pastoral councils, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles has a good one.

You may suspect that I am unduly partisan because I live in LA. But the guidelines have been adopted almost word for word by our rival to the north, the Archdiocese of San Francisco.

You also asked about models for parishes. In the year 2000 I tried my hand at writing a parish pastoral council “foundation document”.

You asked about guidelines for diocesan pastoral councils. I’m less knowledgeable about them, because most of my work has been on parish pastoral councils. It is safe to assume that the “pastoral” council (whether on the diocesan or on the parish level) is a council that serves the apostolate of pastors . This is the basic teaching of “Apostolorum successores,” the 2004 “Directory” on the pastoral office of bishops by the Vatican Congregation for Bishops.

Sr. Antoine T. Lawlor, IHM, D. Min. wrote on March 15, 2010:

“Where can I find documentation regarding pastoral councils and their status when there is no longer a pastor in the parish? I know that there is little in canon law. We have not put anything in our working draft of pastoral council guidelines – but I have seen in those of other dioceses that “no pastor = no parish pastoral council.

Mark F. Fischer replied:

You ask whether pastoral councils go out of existence when the pastor changes? In 1973, the Congregation for the Clergy published a Circular Letter to the bishops of the world. It has the distinction of being the only Vatican document entirely devoted to pastoral councils, which in 1973 were mainly envisioned at the diocesan level. It said, “When a See is vacant, the pastoral council ceases. However, nothing prevents the Ordinary, if the case warrants it, during the vacancy of the See, to call upon the members of the council for their advice” (no. 11).   This point of view was reinforced in the 1983 Code of Canon Law. “When the see is vacant the pastoral council ceases to exist” (Canon 513, §2). In 2004, this teaching was repeated in the Congregation for Bishops’ “Directory on the Pastoral Office of Bishops” (Apostolorum successores).   So the Diocese of Camden would have some precedent for telling present parish pastoral council members that, in the diocese’s view, the PPC ceases to be a “pastoral” council when the pastor leaves. Some people, however, may not regard the Vatican documents about the diocesan pastoral council as pertaining to the parish pastoral council. There are very few references in Vatican documents to parish pastoral councils. My point of view is that the PPC is a “pastoral” council at the parish level, just as the DPC is a “pastoral” council at the diocesan level. But one could conceivably argue that the rules for diocesan councils do not apply to parish councils.