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Pastoral Councils in Today's Catholic Parish

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Pastoral Councils in Today's Catholic Parish MARK F. FISCHER Pastoral COUNCILS in Today’s CATHOLIC PARISH Twenty-Third Publications A Division of Bayard 185 Willow Street P.O. Box 180 Mystic, CT 06355 (860) 536-2611 (800) 321-0411 www.twentythirdpublications.com Copyright © 2001 Mark F. Fischer. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission of the publisher. Write to the Permissions Editor. ISBN:1-58595-168-4 Printed in the U.S.A. Table of Contents Introduction 1 Part 1 A Look at Councils Today: An Empirical Portrait 9 CHAPTER ONE The Number of Councils 11 CHAPTER TWO Support by the Bishops 17 CHAPTER THREE The Purpose of Councils 24 CHAPTER FOUR Committees and the Council 33 CHAPTER FIVE Five Types of Consultation 39 CHAPTER SIX Leadership in the Council 48 CHAPTER SEVEN The Selection of Council Members 57 Part 2 Where We Came From: A History of Parish Pastoral Councils 65 CHAPTER EIGHT The Earliest Parish Councils 68 CHAPTER NINE American Missteps 79 CHAPTER TEN The Circular Letter 87 CHAPTER ELEVEN The Growth of Councils in the 1970s 97 CHAPTER TWELVE The New Code 107 CHAPTER THIRTEEN Popular Meanings of the Word “Pastoral” 115 Part 3 Building an Effective Council: Representation, Purpose, Consultation 127 CHAPTER FOURTEEN Problems with Selecting Councillors 130 CHAPTER FIFTEEN Ecclesial Representation 139 CHAPTER SIXTEEN Discerning Councillors 151 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Misunderstandings about Coordination 163 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN The Main Purpose of the Council 173 CHAPTER NINETEEN The Meaning of Consultation 184 CHAPTER TWENTY The Motive for Consultation 197 CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE A Foundation Document 209 Notes 221 Pastoral Council Bibliography 254 A Partial Bibliography of Pastoral Council Guidelines 269 Index 281 Acknowledgments Of the many people who contributed to this book, the first I want to acknowledge are my former colleagues at the Diocese of Oakland. Bishop John S. Cummins introduced me to church consultation through Father Joseph Carroll, SJ, Sister Marcia Frideger, SNJM, and above all, Father George E. Crespin. In 1995, the Conference for Pastoral Planning and Council Development began to develop a monograph entitled Parish, Laity and Ministry , to which my contribution eventually became Chapters One to Two of the present book. Many thanks to CPPCD members Robert J. Burke, Rev. Eugene Costa, Ruth N. Doyle, John P. Flaherty, Jeff Rexhausen, and Rev. Francis Kelly Scheets, OSC, for their criticism and advice. Thanks are due as well to the 98 members of the CPPCD who completed my questionnaire about the numbers of and support for pastoral councils. Also in 1995 I completed an essay comparing the pastoral council guidelines published by thirteen different dioceses. This became the basis for Chapters Three to Seven, and prompted written reflections from Mary E. Gindhart of Philadelphia, Sr. Joanne Graham, OSB, JCL of Bismarck, and Rev. Kenneth P. Lohrmeyer of Salina. The late Father James H. Provost also commented on this empirical survey and on Chapter Twelve in letters from 1995, 1996, and 1997. Chapter Eight’s history of the earliest parish councils benefited from the correspondence I had in 1996, 1997, and 1998 with Charles A. Fecher of Baltimore, Rev. Robert G. Howes of Worcester, and William J. Rademacher of Las Cruces. James F. Walsh, Jr. helped me to understand Chapter Nine’s history of the National Council of Catholic Laity. Rev. John A. Coleman, SJ, who introduced me to Catholic social theory when I was a student at Berkeley’s Graduate Theological Union, and Rev. Robert J. Ahlin of Pittsburgh, clarified Chapter Ten’s treatment of the Circular Letter on Pastoral Councils by the Congregation for the Clergy. Rev. James ix x Acknowledgments A. Coriden contributed insights to Chapters Nine, Ten, and Twelve. The growth in pastoral council in the 1970s is linked to the creation of the National Pastoral Planning Conference and the Parish and Diocesan Council Network, described in Chapter Eleven. In 1991 I corresponded with many of the founders of the NPPC and PADICON. Written memo- ries of these years were sent by Father Howes and other early leaders: Gerald Blake, Rev. Msgr. Frank E. Bognanno, Rev. Richard Conboy, Rev. Canice Connors, OFM Conv, Rev. John Dreher, Rev. Charles J. Giglio, Rev. Roger E. McGrath, Mary Ann Pobicki, Rev. Bernard Quinn, Rev. Richard M. Reis, Sr. Judy Shanahan, SP, Cynthia S. Thero, and Joseph Vancio. The effort to re-write the history of parish councils after the publica- tion of the Code of Canon Law is the topic of Chapter Twelve. Rev. Peter Kim Se-Mang, SJ (whom I knew in the Diocese of Oakland) provided an early impetus, and Rev. Msgr. Helmut Hefner (now Rector of St. John’s Seminary, Camarillo) commented on a draft in 1998. Rev. Roch Pagé and Prof. Michel Thériault of the University of St. Paul in Ottawa arranged in 1999 for a version to be published in Studia Canonica . The popular development of the parish “pastoral” council (Chapter Thirteen) coincided with the origin of the Conference for Pastoral Planning and Council Development, many of whose leaders in 1999 offered written comments: Rev. Msgr. William C. Harms, Richard Krivanka, Rev. Msgr. John F. Murphy, Dennis J. O’Leary, Rev. Msgr. James Picton, Marliss A. Rogers, Eileen Tabert, and especially Arthur X. Deegan, II and Sr. Rosalie Murphy, SND. St. John’s Seminary granted me a sabbatical in the fall semester of 2000. I am grateful to Rev. Msgr. Jeremiah J. McCarthy (recently retired as Rector), and to Rev. Richard Benson, CM, the Academic Dean, for their support. I was able to complete Chapters Fourteen through Twenty in the peaceful home of Maria Isabel Rodriguez in Salamanca. Siobhan Marie Verbeek of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops offered valuable criticisms of the way that I have expressed (in Chapter Eighteen) the pur- pose of councils. Daniel Connors has edited this book with intelligence and good sense. He has advised me well over the ten years in which I have con- tributed to Today’s Parish magazine. I thank my oldest son, Carl, for cre- ating the index, and my other sons, David and Paul, for their help in proofreading. Finally, I dedicate this book to my wife, Bridget Lynch Fischer. Pastoral Councils in Today’s Catholic Parish Introduction n March 14, 1992, I visited the University of Dallas to partici- pate in a diocesan-sponsored workshop on parish councils and Opastoral planning. At the end of my presentation a man from a rural parish spoke to me. He said it bothered him to hear me speak about “parish” councils. His parish had a better council, a “pastoral” council. He asked whether I knew the difference. My answer was that a “pastoral” council is a “parish” council doing what it is supposed to be doing—namely, studying pastoral problems, considering them, and proposing practical recommendations. But this answer did not satisfy him. He told me that his “pastoral” council dif- fered from a mere “parish” council. It was more focused on the future, more discerning in style, and more spiritual in orientation than what I had said. It was, in a word, more respectful of its members. He would participate in a pastoral council, he concluded, not in a parish council. His comments disturbed me. I thought I knew a lot about councils, 1 2 Introduction “pastoral” councils included. But he had spoken to me with the kind of assurance and conviction usually reserved for speaking to the unin- formed who ought to know better. I had answered with a textbook answer that was couched in the language of the church’s documents. But his question was based on experience. He had had an experience in his local parish, an experience to which my answer did not correspond. Parish experience does not always accord with the church’s official teach- ing. Which is more correct? This book provides an answer. It examines, first of all, the current state of parish pastoral councils in the U.S., showing the wide variety of prac- tices recommended for councils. Second, it sketches their history, narrat- ing the development of U.S. councils in the thirty-five years since the Second Vatican Council. Finally, it presents a theory of councils. It argues for a particular understanding of representation, purpose, and consulta- tion. It synthesizes empirical experience and church doctrine, distin- guishing between the official and popular senses of the word pastoral. This book takes issue with a number of writers, many of whom have made sweeping generalizations based on insufficient evidence. For exam- ple, some advocate a particular style of council without knowing that there are different and competing styles. Others make pronouncements about the church’s intentions, pronouncements ignorant of the Vatican II teaching about councils and its evolution in later documents. Still oth- ers define the purpose of the council so broadly that it resembles the proverbial jack of all trades, master of none. This book aims to sharpen the focus of discussions about councils. It broadens the base of evidence on which we can judge the council movement. Theory and Reality Parish pastoral councils in the United States are one of the great success stories of Vatican II. Thirty-five years after the ecumenical council, they exist in the vast majority of U.S. Catholic parishes. Bishops support them to an extraordinary degree, mandating their existence, publishing guide- lines, hiring support personnel, and establishing diocesan pastoral coun- cils. There is an extensive literature about councils. One would imagine that they are among the best-understood features of the American Catholic Church. One would expect the church’s teaching about councils to be scientific and consistent. But a survey of guidelines for councils published by U.S.
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