What is the work and character of AN effective parish council? Collaborative ministry Rev. fr. Augustine juma, osa, stl. Prelude. M any have written comprehensively about pastoral councils and their role in the church, both from a theorical, as well as, from a pragmatic point of view. At the end of it all, their summations have the 1983 code of the canon Law as their spring board. The 1983 revision of the code of the canon law sought to implement the ecclesiology articulated by Vatican II most especially in Lumen Gentium. For the very first time, canon law addresses the necessity for the work of pastoral councils. “A pastoral council is composed of members of Christ’s faithful who are in full communion with the Catholic Church: clerics, members of the institute of consecrated life, and especially lay people. They are designated in the manner determined by the diocesan Bishop” {Can 512}. Subsequent researches have pointed out the advisability of the use of the pastoral councils to bolster and support the work of the church at all levels. As spelt out categorically by the lexecclesiae{the law of the church}, a pastoral council first and foremost is a group of the faithful that is broadly representative of the faith based community. It investigates and ponders significant pastoral issues and proffers creative and effective responses to those issues. A pastoral council reads the signs of the times and devises the actions of the faith community, the body of Christ, to respond to the discerned pastoral issues and needs. The essential work of a pastoral council is to participate with the pastor or pastoral leader in thinking, praying, about these actions. In précis, the central work of a pastoral council is pastoral planning which I have intently treated in the first chapter of this treatise. In the following sections we will discuss the type of people who will make a pastoral council effective, the relationship between the council and the pastoral leader{Parish priest or his Collaborator}, the authority of a council, and the crucial role of collaboration. Members Characteristics. “Only those members of Christ’s faithful who are outstanding in firm faith, high moral standings and prudence are to be assigned to the pastoral council” Can 512 &3. The membership of a pastoral council should be broadly representative of the community of faith and yet small enough so as to be effective, productive and fruitful. These members as codified in the above canon should be active in the faith community and in good standing. A pastoral council is a team, hence what we know of effective teams necessarily applies to pastoral councils, for team members have personal characteristics that contribute to team effectiveness. First, members should be clearly focused on the mission of the faith community, or at least open to a formation that would create that commitment. It is tantalizingly easy to think or imagine that a pastoral council deals with the same issues as a board of trustees, or directors: balance sheets, facilities, staff evaluations and fund raising. Members of the council must be focused on the purpose of a faith community, not the means –no matter how significant they might be. In other words, members need to both conceptualize and be personally committed to the mission of the being Christ in and to the world, of announcing the good news that the reign of God has come to imbibe all- particularly those whom society ignores and marginalizes. Without that common focus, a pastoral council begins with a cloudy focus and has a difficult time seeing pastoral issues clearly. The second characteristic of effective council members is a highly developed capacity to learn, the docility of heart and the humility of the mind. This capacity is based on the ability to listen to others and to accept information in a way that opens us to changing even our strongly held or professed opinions and positions. A council will typically be constituted of people who have opinions and positions on issues, and if they is always an agreement this entails that it is only one member who does the thinking. The work of a pastoral council is always to devise a means of harmonizing all these issues and proffering solidified and fortified well thought resolutions capable of edifying the faith community. This requires a learning stance towards others, not a stance that focuses on convincing others of our own position. No one has the monopoly of wisdom. It requires us to listen to the small voice in the back of our head that gently whispers, “You might be wrong”. Surely if this is not the work of grace, that precisely I cannot see another inspiration. A council composed of people who are committed to the mission of Jesus Christ {continuous incarnation} and who are open to learning about themselves, others, and the world will have the human resources necessary for effective pastoral planning. Relationship to the Parish Priest and his collaborators. “If, after consulting the council of priests, the diocesan Bishop considers it opportune, a pastoral council is to be established in each parish. In this council which is presided by the parish priest his collaborators, Christ’s faithful, together with those who by virtue of their office are engaged in pastoral care in the parish, give their help in fostering pastoral action” Can 536 &1.“The pastoral council has only a consultative vote and it is regulated by the norm laid down by the local ordinary {diocesan Bishop}”Can 536 &2. The law is explicit. In a real sense, it is the relationship to the pastor that makes a council, pastoral. A pastoral council relates to the pastor {priest, pastoral administrator, bishop}in its work of identifying pastoral issues and recommending creative responses. With the advent of the Vatican II council and its tremendous renewal of the church, many dioceses and parishes created the so called “parish councils”. These were to provide at least one way for the church to exhibit her reclaimed understanding as the people of God in addition to the structure of hierarchical authority. Unfortunately, it sounds sorry to note that, many of these councils were formed before a theology of pastoral councils was worked out. This precisely explains the reason as to why most of them began to look and act like boards of trustees of non-profit organizations and to take decisions that were not theirs, strictly speaking. In addition, they often focused on administrative and coordinating roles rather than on pastoral planning envisioned by the council {lumen Gentium}and articulated in the 1983 revision of the canon law. This situation did not typically develop because councils sought to extend their authority, but rather because pastors sought to expand the role of the laity in the church by delegating authority that canonically belonged to their office, hence redeeming the church from entirely be viewed exclusively as clerical. Councils have a consultative role as codified in the lex ecclesiae, the role of recommending with the actual decision maker being the pastoral leader. As a result there has often beenconfusion, about the role of the pastoral council and its relationship to the pastor. Authority. The Roman Catholic views authority in often ambiguous ways. It combines both the formal authority of its hierarchical structure with the more communitarian authority of the church as the people of God {infallibility of the people of God}. Surely no one more succinctly would take the position that the hierarchy in and of itself constitutes the church; a church without the people of God makes no sense or little if any theological speaking. At the same time, a church without principles of formal authority makes little sense as well. Thus, in the catholic church authority is enfleshed in the hierarchical structure of pope, bishops, and priests. Each of these levels has authority within his milieu or sphere. How then these types of authority – hierarchical and commuitarian – are integrated peacefully and effectively is a central question for the modern ecclesiological scholars. Clearly, the answer is not the affirmation of one and the exclusion of the other, but rather to live flexibly and astutely with both and to seek integration in the mission of Jesus Christ rather than in some final settlement of the “governance question” which quite often than not is looked at with some political overtones. Pastoral councils are part of this tension and integration. Even though the authority of the councils is dependent on the authority and the role of pastor and bishop, they have standing and authority in their own right as expressions of the communion of disciples of Jesus Christ. Collaboration. The key to an effective pastoral council and its integration in the life of the church is a commitment to collaboration and collaborative ministry. Such collaboration is based on a commitment to the mission of Jesus Christ, which is the mission of the church right from the apostles to date. In factusetjuris, the church exists for the mission of Jesus Christ: it is the means to the end but never an end in se. while authority is necessary for concerted human action, it needs to be an authority that serves rather than an authority that is concerned with maintaining and strengthening itself. Church authority must always serve the mission to which Jesus calls his disciples. Some scholars have noted and I tend to cede with them that, collaboration is based on a full and complete reliance on the gifts of the assembly of the faith community and the promise of Jesus that whatever we need will be provided to that assembly. Instead of assuming that the talents and gifts are disproportionately distributed to those in formal positions of authority, collaboration understands that gifts are distributed out of will by the Spirit, without distinction of class and status. Thus, a faith community that assumes greater gifts among those in authority is not open to the full range of the power of the Spirit within it and thus not full open to collaboration. Collaboration begins with the understanding of the gifts of the Spirit but adds three essential elements: discernment, development, and application. An effective pastoral council will be open to the gifts and wisdom of all. It will foster a process by which members of the assembly discern their gifts and the needs of the community. It will likewise foster formal processes for the development of the gifts of the assembly and for the full application of those gifts in service to the faith community and in the mission of Jesus Christ. Summations. Pastoral councils are to be an essential feature of the church at all levels. The proper work or task of pastoral councils is pastoral planning: the process of praying, discerning and thinking together about the actions of the body of Christ in a specific time and place. In collaboration with the pastoral leader, pastoral councils provide the means for the people of God to play their proper role in leadership of edifyingthe community of believers| disciples.
Posted on: Wed, 10 Jul 2013 10:32:54 +0000
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