Parish and Regional Governance
From Archbishop: Inside the Power Structure of the American Catholic Church (San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989) What does it take to keep the Archbishop happy? Wine,
women, and song. Unless the pastor is turned on with something, your
program is going to end up in file thirteen. The ministry of the church is carried out primarily in
parishes, the geographical units into which a diocese is divided./1 Here new members are baptized, and their Christian
life is nurtured and celebrated through the sacraments and other parish programs. This
chapter will look at how archbishops influence parish life. Bishops and chancery officials
often describe their role as supporting and supervising the work that is done in the
parishes. Many also speak of encouraging the parishes to work together. The bishop influences what happens in a parish in a number
of ways. Most importantly, he trains seminarians, ordains priests and appoints pastors, as
will be explained in chapter 6. He also oversees the parishes' financial administration,
as will be explained in chapter 5. He can also set a tone for the archdiocese through
pastoral letters, newspaper columns, sermons, and addresses to parish personnel. He can
exhort and encourage certain activities and discourage others. The bishop can also mandate archdiocesan policies and
procedures that must be followed in the parishes. These policies and procedures can apply
to the spiritual, sacramental, educational, and financial life of the parish. Some
archdioceses, like Philadelphia, have a manual or a collection of policies and procedures
for pastors. "Cardinal Krol loves this book," explains the controller. "He
thinks it is the greatest thing since apple pie. Every time he assigns a new pastor, or
when the newly ordained get assigned, he hand-delivers a copy and says `This is required
reading now. You read this and follow it.'" The establishment of rules and routines that constrain the
actions of subsidiary units in an organization is a normal method of control and
coordination./2 Such standardization requires a
stable environment and a high degree of certainty that the rules and procedures will
result in the desired outcomes. Mandated policies vary greatly from diocese to diocese.
Much of the material will simply repeat the Vatican or national regulations dealing with
issues such as the liturgy and sacramental life of the parish. Some will expand on these
regulations, for example, what music may or may not be used at weddings, or what
preparation is required before someone can receive the sacraments of penance, Communion,
confirmation, or matrimony. Some policies regulate the administration of the parishes.
Most archdioceses, for example, require pastors to have parish councils. Other policies
will apply to church finances or to the parish school. These policies are not usually made in a vacuum. Normally
the policies are developed through a consultative process involving the bishop's cabinet,
priests' council, pastoral council, school board, or other groups. Often they are modeled
on policies developed in other dioceses. But bishops do not establish policies to cover every
contingency. Such an attempt would be counterproductive and would treat priests as
bureaucrats rather than as professionals. Policies dealing with the spiritual life of the
parish are less detailed except when dealing with preparation for and admittance to the
sacraments, especially marriage. Policies tend to be made in response to past problems or
conflicts. They are also written to answer the questions most frequently asked of chancery
officials. The most detailed policies tend to cover finances (budgets, construction,
collections, etc.), personnel (salaries, hiring, firing, etc.) and legal obligations
(contracts, taxes, insurance, etc.). These are all areas with secular parallels. More will
be said in later chapters about diocesan policies and procedures affecting finances,
personnel, education, and social services. More recently, archbishops have attempted to coordinate by
planning, which is a better response to a changing environment than standardized rules and
routines that are adopted for the archdiocese./3 As
will be seen below, through parish visitations they have also encouraged coordination
through mutual adjustment or coordination by feedback. Establishing policies is one thing; getting them
implemented is quite another. Publishing policy statements will not make good parishes.
The bishop must give to the parishes support, encouragement, and correction where needed.
To do this, he must first find out what is going on. Archbishops hear from parishioners. "They have no
hesitation about writing letters," explained Archbishop Donnellan of Atlanta,
"so you get a variety of complaints. There is no problem about things being brought
to your attention." Most bishops pay serious attention to their mail. They like to
see incoming letters before they are routed to the appropriate offices. Most of the mail from parishioners is negative. These
letters have to be kept in perspective by the bishops since "an astonishing 88
percent [of Catholics] approved of the job their priests were doing; only 9 percent
disapproved."/4 "Just like letters to the
editor, they are mostly critical," reports one archbishop. "Those who are
satisfied never bother to write." This same archbishop said, "It used to be that
the left wing of the church were the ones unhappy. I hear nothing from them anymore, it is
the right wing that you hear from most. It is mostly in the way of complaints on
liturgical matters. They are hyper-critical. It is a minority, a vocal minority, and a
very active minority." Some of the right-wing writers send copies of their
letters "to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger [prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith] or Cardinal Augustine Mayer [prefect of the Vatican Congregation
for Divine Worship]," complained one archbishop. "I used to answer those, but
now I don't. If they want to correct something in this diocese, fine, tell me and I will
correct it. Or I will explain that this is an option and that the priest can do
that." Besides complaints about sermons and liturgies, often the
complainant feels he or she was treated unfairly by the pastor. A parish school will also
be a source of complaints. Sometimes the complaints deal with the personal conduct of the
priests. In responding to complaints, most archbishops prefer to
have the problem dealt with at the lowest level possible. A complaint about a pastor might
be passed on to a chancellor, priest personnel director, regional vicar, or dean who would
then investigate the complaint and get the priest's side of the story. Bishop Burst, vicar for clergy in Milwaukee, explains how
he deals with complaints over the phone: The main thing is to listen, to let the person talk. See
what it is. Sometimes it is not serious at all. Sometimes he didn't like what the priest
said in the sermon. A lot of it involves school problems. Some teacher's contract was not
renewed. Great turmoil over that. Sometimes the best thing is to get the person to talk to
the priest directly. And that will handle it. Sometimes the best tactic is to stall a
little bit, and it will all go away by itself. Generally, we call the priest and tell him this has come
to us by phone, just to let him know. Then you always get a different side of the story. The main thing is to pass the buck as much as you can. If
it is a school issue, contact the school office. Otherwise you get swamped under if you
try to handle everything yourself. No use trying to solve all the problems in the world by
ourselves. That would be dumb. Depending on the nature of the accusation and the number
of previous complaints against the pastor, the complaint will be taken more or less
seriously. "If it is a very serious thing, then you have to take more serious
actions," says an archbishop." And if it is something gravely serious that could
cause scandal to the church, then you have to take drastic action. You have to tell them
that I'm not going to allow them to continue until we see a psychologist or whoever in the
community would have to deal with this." Some archbishops, like Donnellan of Atlanta, will not take
the complaint seriously unless the person is willing to put it in a signed letter that can
be shared with the accused to get his side. If the complainant insists on remaining
anonymous, the matter will usually be dropped. Other archbishops prefer not to reveal the
name of the person complaining. One archbishop explains: It might be somebody complaining that a priest was maybe
crude or inconsiderate in a given situation. It might be that somebody thinks that he is
drinking too much. It might be a priest showing some kind of misconduct that others have a
right to complain about in his personal life or in his ministry. Generally, a word to the wise is all that is needed. I
tell the priest that "I don't think I have to reveal the source. I'm telling you what
the complaint is, and I have no way of knowing if it is an objective thing or purely
subjective by way of the complainer. You were reported to have done this or not done that.
I'm not judging you, I don't know how reliable that person is. But you know whether you
did this or not." Sometimes the priest will be noncommittal and not say yes
or no. I am not asking them to say yes or no, I just want to get this information to him.
If this happens again, then I will have to ask him, "Is this true?" and get down
to the nitty-gritty. If he denies it, then, OK, he denies it. But I'm not discounting the
complaint either. Most bishops and chancery officials appear to be biased in
favor of the priests. This reflects their desire for due process (he is innocent until
proven guilty) and their reluctance to take sides against a fellow priest. On the other
hand, serious problems often first surface through complaints addressed to the bishop. Some archdioceses have so many parishes that it is
impossible for the archbishop to supervise and support them directly. Archbishops of
populous archdioceses have responded by dividing their archdioceses into regional
vicariates overseen by episcopal vicars who are usually auxiliary bishops./5 The auxiliaries spend much of their time visiting
parishes. Archbishops recognize advantages and disadvantages to the
vicariate system. The advantage is having someone close to the scene, familiar with the
local situation, who can represent the archbishop. If the vicar is an auxiliary bishop,
his representative value can be very strong. The vicar is also an important communication
channel who can inform the archbishop about the needs and problems of his vicariate. The
disadvantage of the vicariate system is that the priests often see it as another layer of
bureaucracy separating them from the archbishop. In addition, the actual power and
authority of the vicars is frequently limited and ambiguous. Population size is a more important variable than
geographic size in fostering regional vicariates. For example, Newark, the smallest
archdiocese in area but one of the largest in population (1.3 million Catholics), is
divided into four vicariates, each headed by an auxiliary bishop, coinciding with the
counties of Bergen, Essex, Hudson, and Union. Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Detroit,
Dubuque, Los Angeles, St. Paul, and Washington also have regional vicariates overseen by
auxiliaries. The vicariates are often further divided into deaneries. How to divide the diocese geographically is a debated
issue. Often vicariates and deaneries follow city and county boundaries. Most also attempt
to join parishes with similar economic or demographic characteristics, because they share
common interests and problems. When they meet as a unit, they can discuss their common
concerns and develop common policies and programs. In some dioceses, like Detroit, there is an attempt to
construct vicariates that reflect the diocese as a whole. Rather than placing urban
parishes in one, suburban in another, and rural in a third, each vicariate would contain a
mix. This pie-shaped model is defended on the grounds that it forces everyone to remember
that they are one church. It also encourages twinning between rich and poor parishes. On
the other hand, their vicariate meetings are not very productive because the people do not
share common concerns and find it difficult to work on common programs. In Detroit, for
example, the school office tried working with the vicariates, but "it doesn't
work," reports the superintendent of schools. "The city schools have different
needs than the suburban schools." Archdioceses with only one auxiliary usually do not have a
vicariate system because of the fear that the region given to the auxiliary would feel
abandoned by the archbishop. For example, an archdiocese with one major city and a large
rural area could not officially give the rural area to the auxiliary while leaving the
city under the direct supervision of the archbishop. Many rural areas already feel they
don't get enough attention from the archbishop, and leaving them to the auxiliary would
exacerbate things. Unofficially, an archbishop may, in fact, ask the auxiliary to give
more time to places distant from the see city. But even some populous archdioceses, like New York,
Philadelphia, and Hartford, with a number of auxiliary bishops, do not have them acting as
regional vicars. Archbishop Whealon decided against using vicars in Hartford, although he
wondered if he had made the correct decision. He explains: I can see a plus in the vicar system in that it does
permit a close supervision of almost everybody down the line. People reporting to people
who report to the bishop. On the other hand, the drawbacks are that it sets up
middle men between the priest and the bishop; that leads to resentment on the part of
priests. It develops a flood of mimeographed materials sent out to people who have to do
the work anyhow--the parish priests. It can easily establish a person in the middle who
feels supported by neither side. Further, it builds up bureaucracy in a dramatic way. It
builds up expenses. I am going to stay away from it as long as I can, but I am
just not sure that this is the way it should be. I think it is a necessity in New York,
Boston, and Chicago. But is it a necessity in Cleveland, in Erie? I just don't know. What powers a vicar has varies among archdioceses. The
archbishop usually reserves to himself the really important decisions--priest personnel
assignments, large expenditures, the closing or opening of a school or parish, etc.
Normally, the archbishop would consult the vicar before making a major decision affecting
his vicariate. Some vicars have input into these decisions by sitting on the priests'
personnel board, the finance council, the archbishop's cabinet, and/or other advisory
bodies. Often it takes time before the priests and people recognize the vicar's role.
"It took almost two years before people would accept their decisions as
authority," reports Archbishop Borders of Baltimore, where one of the first regional
systems was set up. In addition, if the auxiliary is seen to have no influence in
important matters, the pastors will not take him seriously. Vicars are especially concerned about who will be made
pastors in their vicariate. If they sit on the personnel board, their input is direct.
They will bring to the board the needs of their parishes and the desires of their priests.
If they are not on the board, the priests' personnel director or the archbishop will have
to get their input. Some vicars do have extensive financial jurisdiction over
the parishes. For example, a vicar in Detroit reviews the parish budget and can approve
any project that costs up to $50,000. Even when the vicar does not have the authority to
make the decision, often the archbishop or the vicar for finance will consult him about
the situation in the parish. In Los Angeles, Archbishop Mahony established regional
offices for vicars that included officials from Catholic Charities and other archdiocesan
agencies. How these administrators will relate to their archdiocesan supervisors and to
the vicar is not clear. But most archbishops are opposed to setting up minichanceries in
the vicariates. As a result, the relationship of the vicars to the archdiocesan chancery
is often unclear. He is someone the administrators should listen to respectfully, but the
priests' personnel director, the superintendent of schools, and the director of finances
report to the archbishop not to the vicars. The vicar may see chancery officials
infrequently unless the archbishop has joint meetings of his regional vicars and his
administrative directors. Under these circumstances the vicar's power is often based
on his ability to persuade the archbishop, chancery officials, and pastors to go along
with his proposals. The vicars tend to describe themselves as conveners and coordinators
of pastors or other local groups with common interests and problems. They often act not as
decision makers but as facilitators who help groups work toward consensus. Some
vicariates, for example, have developed common sacramental preparation programs used by
all the parishes in the vicariate. Others have developed joint social or educational
programs. The vicars also act as lines of communication between the
parishes and the chancery, especially the archbishop. They can interpret and explain
policy to pastors and be a channel of feedback to the central administration. Vicars can
also act as ombudsmen by supporting parish interests before archdiocesan agencies. In
addition, many diocesan agencies are finding the vicariate meetings an efficient and
effective way of communicating with parishes. Communication is very important when a
regional organization and an archdiocesan agency are working on the same problem. For
example, school consolidation would normally be worked on by both the school office and a
deanery or vicariate organization. As a result, the regional vicar is often the man in the
middle, which allows him to influence decisions but not make them. Since he would rarely
disagree publicly with his archbishop, he may have to defend policies he disagrees with.
He is often inaccurately seen by the parishioners as a man of immense power (after all he
is a bishop). On the other hand, pastors realize that he can often be circumvented on
important issues. In short, the man is more important than the office. If he is listened
to by the archbishop and respected by the priests, he can be very influential. But if he
fails to persuade others to his point of view, he will be very frustrated because he has
little power to impose his views. The importance of the man in the job became clear in 1985
when the priests' council in the archdiocese of New York considered a proposal to divide
the archdiocese into four vicariates. Under Cardinal Terence Cooke there were 17 vicars
(priests and bishops) who had been given their positions and then told not to do anything.
Cardinal O'Connor found upon his arrival that vicars and priests were very dissatisfied
with this system. The council proposal would have transformed the old vicars into deans
and then established new vicars over larger areas of the archdiocese. This proposal
received wide support in the priests' council until the members began to think about who
would be their vicars. Since in most cases the auxiliary bishop residing in the vicariate
would be the vicar, the members of the council could guess who would be their vicar. This
gave enough priests second thoughts so that the proposal was sent back to committee for
more study. Often the vicariates are further divided into deaneries.
The deans do on a smaller scale what the vicars do in their regions. They act as
facilitators and coordinators in their deaneries. For example, they might help coordinate
Mass schedules and penance services in their deaneries. They often act as consultants and
lines of communication for the vicar. But since the deans are full time pastors, the time
that they can give to being dean is limited. Archbishops do not like simply to sit in their offices
doing paperwork. They believe that visiting parishes is an important part of their
ministry. Some archbishops only visit a parish for a special event like confirmation. They
either have no time for anything else or they feel that it is best to leave the pastors
alone to do their jobs. Other bishops will make a special pastoral visit independently of
confirmation. This practice has been encouraged by the Holy See./6 Such visits provide a bishop with information and
feedback that can improve his supervisory and coordinating activities. When visiting a parish, the archbishop or auxiliary bishop
can be a role model for priests in the way he preaches and celebrates liturgies.
"They have to hear me preach well," explains Archbishop Kelly of Louisville.
"For me to wing it in their presence is to allow them to do the same." In St. Louis, pastors quickly learned that Archbishop May
wanted women to be involved in his liturgies as either eucharistic ministers or lectors
when he visited a parish. He also liked singing and encouraged Communion under both
species. As the priests' underground newsletter put it: "What does it take to keep
the archbishop happy? Wine, women, and song." Even a confirmation visit can tell the bishop a lot about
the parish. The bishop can gain much information about the parish simply by observing how
well the liturgy is prepared: Can the choir sing? Can the readers be understood? Is there
an offertory procession? Are there extraordinary ministers of Communion? If the parish did
not prepare well for the bishop's liturgy, it is likely that they are unprepared for most
of their liturgies. "If you go for a confirmation," Archbishop Donnellan of
Atlanta explained, you have the opportunity to observe how the altar boys
function, what the rectory looks like, how the sacristy is, and so on. You have an
opportunity to observe the parish and to talk to the pastor. Besides liturgical ceremonies, the archbishop can observe
other things about the parish during his visit. How do the people interact with the parish
priests and staff? How well do those confirmed answer his questions? What do people say to
him at the reception? Archbishop Lipscomb of Mobile recalls being approached at a
reception by a young child who had just received confirmation. [She] is in tears not because she has received the Holy
Spirit, but because she cannot serve Mass. Here is her chance to confront the bishop up close. That
is what she has been waiting for all during her confirmation, to ask the bishop about why
she can't be an altar boy. There is somebody who has got the preparation and
instruction of those children all mixed up if they have made this kind of value so
paramount in their lives as to cause drastic warps in their faith life. In an official full-day pastoral visitation, the bishop
will meet with the parish council and the parish staff, especially the pastor and the
associates. If there is a school, he would also meet with the principal and even visit
some of the classes. "The kids go home and tell their parents, `The bishop was there.
He talked to us,'" explains Archbishop Kucera of Dubuque. "It is corny, but I
always tell the little kids, `You go home and hug and kiss your mother and father, and you
tell them: This is from the archbishop. He thanks you for sending you to a Catholic
school.'" After visiting each classroom for five minutes, Archbishop
Pilarczyk of Cincinnati meets with the teachers and the religious education teachers for
forty minutes to an hour. "I ask them what they like about their school, what they
would like to see going on in the next five years or so," he says. "The same
thing about the CCD [religious education] program. [I listen to] whatever they want to
say. I try to encourage them to be teachers because the church needs teachers." Archbishop Pilarczyk also meets with the parish staff,
which could include the principal, director of religious education, youth minister,
liturgy minister, organist, pastoral minister, permanent deacon, and others. I meet with them as a group. I thought of meeting them
individually, but then I decided that wasn't such a good idea because one could be afraid
of what the others are going to say. I ask everybody to tell me what they do, and we just go
around the circle. `I do this and this and this.' But the pastor will say, `Yeah, but you
also do such and such.' It's a nice thing. In the evening, the bishop will usually have dinner with
the priests. "My thinking is that there has to be a time when priests have time with
their bishop," says Archbishop Pilarczyk. Then there would be a liturgy and
afterwards a meeting with the parish council. Archbishop Pilarczyk also asks the council,
"What do you like about your parish and what would you like to see going on in the
next few years?" In such a visit, the archbishop has more time to listen to
people's concerns and ask questions about what they are doing. He also can learn their
reactions to archdiocesan programs and agencies: Are they really serving the parish or
simply getting in its way? But such visits are time consuming. Many archbishops complain
that they do not have enough time to do these visits properly. In bigger archdioceses, the
archbishop cannot make long visits at many parishes; the auxiliaries will have to bear the
brunt of most parish visitations. A serious problem currently faced by archbishops is
population shifts that leave many old inner-city churches empty as Catholics move to the
suburbs. These huge plants are expensive to run for a few families, but closing them is
very controversial. Not only do the parishioners want their parish kept open, former
parishioners who have moved to the suburbs often have sentimental attachments to these
churches. This is especially true of churches built by strong ethnic communities. The
problem is further exacerbated by the fact that the parish may now contain black or
Hispanic Catholics who will feel abandoned by the church if the parish is closed. "We had a nine-month process, working with the
people," recalls the secretary for planning in Baltimore where two parishes with only
seventy-five parishioners were closed. "The end result was still the same, they
believed it was a betrayal." In both cases there were neighboring parishes within
three or four blocks./7 Similarly in Detroit, controversy surrounded the
announcement in October 1988 that forty-three inner city churches, serving 10,000
parishioners, would be closed the following June. The announcement, which affected one
third of the city's parishes, followed a five-year study of the archdiocese. Church
officials noted that there are only 48,800 Catholic households in the city, down from
104,380 in 1976. Over the past seven years, the archdiocese had subsidized urban parishes
and their schools to the tune of $19 million. In 1981, when the archdiocese closed one
parish, parishioners occupied the church and it took 60 police officers to clear the site
for demolition. Rather than stir up a hornet's nest, the archbishop will
usually leave the parish alone as long as it is not a serious drain on archdiocesan
finances. But the decline in the number of priests and the need for them elsewhere puts
additional pressure on the archbishop to act. He will also have to consider closing small
rural parishes. To "take a priest out of a small rural parish that has had one for a
150 years can be devastating," notes the Baltimore secretary for planning, especially
if there is no nearby parish where the people can go. Archbishops have attempted a number of different
strategies to deal with parish closings and priest shortages. Probably the least
successful is the executive fiat from the bishop closing the parish. Many bishops have had
to back down in the face of strong opposition to such announcements. Sometimes the
archbishop will indicate to the parish that when the current pastor retires he will not be
replaced. Where the archdiocese has a number of such parishes, as in
Chicago, Cincinnati, and Detroit, the archbishop will attempt to develop a systematic way
of dealing with the parishes. Often this will involve extensive consultation with priests
and parishioners prior to any decision. Plant surveys will be made to determine which
church buildings are in the best condition. Census data will be used to show historical
trends. Urban planners will be consulted on the future of the neighborhood. Spread sheets
projecting annual income and expenditures will be distributed. Ideally the parishioners will be convinced that they would
be better off consolidating with a neighboring parish. More realistically they will
recognize that the decision was not arbitrary. "There is always going to be
pain," admits the secretary of planning in Baltimore. No matter how careful, how sensitive, how long the
process, how much effort, how many people involved, when the actual closing comes, there
is a lot of hurt. You try to be sensitive and do everything you can and plan, study, get
data, make a case. But ultimately somebody has to say, this is dying. Dying is tough. Some archbishops are trying to get their people ready for
fewer priests. In Chicago, the personnel office projects that the number of priests will
decline from 850 in 1984 to 600 in 1990 for 444 parishes. Places with 2 priests would have
1, and some with 1 would have none. When this information was shared with 24 sample
parishes, the responses were surprising. The director of personnel reports: The most liberal parishes said, "So we may not have
priests. We will be a faith community. We really don't need priests. We will be leaders
ourselves." The most conservative parishes said that "priesthood
is absolutely essential because we have to have Mass. So change the rules about who
becomes priests." Old ethnic Polish parishes said, "Why don't they ordain the
nuns. Then we will have enough." We were not prepared for that kind of response. Cincinnati has a parish-based planning program called,
"For the Harvest," that appears to have been successful./8 Archbishop Pilarczyk describes it: It has three components. One is, What's our parish all
about and what should we be all about? The second component is, What are we going to do
when we don't have as many priests? And the third component is, How can neighboring
parishes work together? The first component is a self-evaluation tool. [The second
is] a fact they're going to have to deal with, and most of the parishes have come to grips
with ways to deal with it. The third is revolutionary because of the mind-set of many
pastors: "I have been sent by God to be pastor here; our parish will do
everything." To depend on another parish for anything was viewed as a failure. In Norwood there are three parishes with a consolidated
school. If we were starting over, we wouldn't have three parishes, we would have one.
Those pastors got together about a year ago, about the time that "For the
Harvest" was just getting underway. They revised their Saturday and Sunday Mass
schedules so that nobody's would conflict with anybody else's. They hired a common
director of religious education for the three parishes. They exchanged bulletins. A
parishioner from any of those three parishes can go to any of the other two, put his
envelope in the basket and the envelope is returned to the home parish. Amazing! Despite all the studies and consultation, closing a parish
remains one of the most difficult things a bishop has to do./9 With the decline in the number of priests, some bishops
are appointing lay administrators to parishes rather than closing them. Seventy of the 167
dioceses responding to a NCCB survey have parishes with nonpriests as administrators.
Fifty-one dioceses said they had parishes with Sunday services conducted without a priest./10 In 1988, the Baltimore archdiocese announced that 9
of its 153 parishes (3 in each of the 3 vicariates) would be headed by pastoral
administrators. In the Portland archdiocese, Archbishop Power appointed lay administrators
to two parishes, both women, one a religious, one a lay catechist./11 This is most common in small towns or rural areas
where the distances are too great for people to drive to another parish. Depending on his
or her abilities, the lay administrator becomes for all practical purposes the pastor. He
or she visits the sick, prepares people for the sacraments, and counsels people in the
parish. Some parishes will be visited once a week by a priest who
says Mass. Others might be visited only once a month. When a priest is not available, the
lay administrator will conduct a service that will include a Liturgy of the Word (prayers,
songs, Scripture readings, and a homily) much like that at a Mass. This will be followed
by a quasi-eucharistic prayer (without the consecration) and a Communion service using
already consecrated bread. At the time of my interviews there was concern that the new
archbishop of Portland, William Levada, would reverse this trend by employing retired
religious and foreign-born priests. Supporters of the program wanted to learn from the
experience of having lay administrators in a few parishes before the inevitable time when
twenty to forty parishes had no priest. The increase in the number and kinds of lay ministries has
resulted, not simply because of the decline in the number of priests and religious, but
also because of the growth in the number of parish programs and an increased awareness of
the role of the laity in the church. Numerous volunteers teach religious education to
children, run social programs, and participate in various parish committees. Eucharistic
ministers, for example, take Communion to the sick and shut ins. A recent phenomenon of parish life is the increasing
number of full-time professionals employed by the parish. Lay people were first hired as
teachers in the parish school and as bookkeepers. But the number of ministries has
expanded tremendously. Many parishes have religious education directors for organizing and
running catechetical programs for both adults and for children not in the parochial
schools. These directors supervise and coordinate the volunteer teachers. Some parishes also have liturgical ministers who train and
coordinate musicians, singers, eucharistic ministers, servers, and lectors. They also plan
and organize weddings, funerals, baptisms, and the Sunday liturgies. Pastoral ministers
are also involved in marriage and baptismal preparation programs, as well as in marriage
counseling. Youth ministers are employed to run programs for young people, and social
ministers run programs to help the poor and underprivileged. Some large parishes have
business or plant managers. The number of lay ministers varies tremendously around the
country. More appear in archdioceses that are feeling the pinch of the clergy shortage. "We have about 185 full-time, full-blown parish
ministers in this diocese, and that's unusual" reports Archbishop Roach of St. Paul
proudly. "We have about 85 full-time youth ministers." At first these ministries developed with little
encouragement or control from the chancery, especially in archdioceses where parishes had
the financial resources and freedom to take the initiative. Later the archbishop and the
chancery began to take notice of these ministries to encourage or control them. Chanceries
also became involved in response to complaints and calls for help. Complaints came that people without training were hired to
do religious education. "You get a mixed bag of very well qualified and not too well
qualified people," explains Archbishop Roach. "We tended to move very quickly to
meet those needs. You spend the first three years hiring and the next three years trying
to clean up your act, getting rid of the people you shouldn't have hired. But for the vast
majority, we've done pretty well." As a result of these complaints, some archdioceses
established guidelines for hiring religious education directors and other lay ministers. Other complaints came from pastors of poor parishes who
had their personnel stolen by richer parishes who could offer higher salaries. Parish
employees would complain that they were fired without cause by a new pastor. The IRS would
complain that taxes were not being withheld. Someone would get injured and sue the parish
and the archdiocese, and the archbishop would find out the employee was not covered by any
insurance. All of this raised questions about how detailed should be diocesan regulations
covering lay ministers and employees in parishes. Pastors also came to the chancery asking for help. Where
do you find a good religious education director, youth minister, etc.? Are there any
sisters looking for work? They also requested legal advice on taxes, contracts, and
insurance. Should you fire someone accused of child abuse if there is no proof? Can the
archdiocese run workshops or training programs for parish ministers? All of this has led to the founding in some archdioceses
(Baltimore, Chicago, Miami, Newark, St. Paul) of an office for lay ministry or a personnel
office. These offices have become resource centers and clearinghouses for job applicants.
Application forms are filled out, transcripts, letters of recommendations, and other
information are collected, and candidates are interviewed. Sometimes diocesan standards
will be set for certain positions, for example, requiring a degree in religious education
for a religious education director. The ministry office will then make available to approved
candidates a list of parishes looking for people. The candidate then approaches the
parish, is interviewed, and ultimately hired or not by the pastor. The ministry or
personnel office might also draft contracts and propose salary scales, but usually the
parish can pay more than the scale if it wants to. The ministry office will also run or
organize workshops and training programs for parish ministers. For many of these ideas, the ministry office did not have
to reinvent the wheel but was able to borrow many policies and procedures from the
archdiocesan department of education, which had many years of experience processing
teachers' applications. Most dioceses also have deacons who are technically
clerics, not laymen. Since most of these deacons are only part-time workers in the parish
where they live, they have not had as much impact as full-time lay ministers. Responding
to complaints that deacons are simply glorified altar boys, the archdiocese of Hartford
now requires that a candidate have a contract with his pastor giving him primary
responsibility for a ministry in the parish before he can be ordained a deacon. Besides working directly with parishes and through his
vicars, the archbishop also oversees numerous agencies that provide programs for the
parishes. Some agency programs are independent of the parishes, but many either serve the
parishes or need their participation to be successful. For example, the liturgy office may
have workshops to train lectors and eucharistic ministers, while the education office
might have workshops for catechists. Or a social justice program may need the
participation of parish volunteers to achieve its goal. The archbishop is often the man in
the middle between the pastors and agency heads. Agencies want to use him to twist arms so
that the parishes participate in their programs. Pastors often give him an earful about
what they think of the programs. Pastors complain that archdiocesan offices often create
more work for them rather than serving them. What they get in the mail from these offices
is a list of things that they are supposed to do or that they are supposed to get their
parishioners to do--parish-based programs to fight abortion, feed the hungry, to dialogue
with other faiths, to improve liturgy, to reach out to the unchurched, to work for peace
and justice, etc. The last thing that the pastors want is something else to do. In addition, bishops are sensitive to the complaints of
pastors about the amount of paper they receive from chancery offices. The pastors are at
the bottom of a paper funnel that collects encyclicals, pastoral letters, reports,
newsletters, and statements from offices in the Vatican, from the National Conference of
Catholic Bishops, and from the local chancery. The more they receive, the less likely they
are to read it. This is a catch-22 problem, however, since the pastors also complain when
something happens and they are not informed or consulted. Chancery officials see pastors as the "narrow neck of
the funnel," explains the director of planning in Louisville. "Unless the pastor
is turned on with something, your program is going to end up in file thirteen." Some
agencies "develop a great program, put it in the mail to all the parishes, and then
go home," he complains. "Until the customer uses it, it isn't a sale. If you
don't get it down to the parishioners, you haven't done anything." Some agency heads
believe that the pastors will use their programs only if the archbishop gets behind it.
But the archbishops realize that they can't push everything without losing credibility.
Other agencies try to bypass the pastors and work directly with lay leaders in the
parishes. This can also lead to angry pastors if they are not consulted or if they do not
like what is going on. A program that has proven very popular with archbishops is
Renew, a parish renewal program originating in Newark. Often it has been the archbishop
who has pushed most strongly for Renew because of the good things he has heard about it
from other bishops. Where the archbishop has not been enthusiastic, Renew has not been
adopted or it has not been implemented. The biggest obstacle to Renew is usually the
pastors who see it as just another program to be added on top of what they are already
doing. Those who see it as an opportunity to develop new leadership in the parish are more
easily won over. Although parishioners rarely see their archbishop, he has
a tremendous impact on the life of their parish. It is impossible for an archbishop to
minister directly to the thousands of people in his archdiocese. These people are reached
primarily by the priests and other ministers in the parishes. The archbishop can exhort
and encourage, he can lay down policy and regulations, and he can visit parishes. But the
ministry must be done by others. In a large archdiocese, even the supervision of the
parishes will have to be done by a vicar. In addition, through various archdiocesan
offices, he can offer programs to the parishes. But he has to be sensitive to the ability
of the parishes to absorb these programs. None of this can happen unless the parishes and the
archdiocese have money to run their programs. The next chapter will examine how an
archbishop supervises parish finances and how he finances archdiocesan operations and
programs. 1. A series of reports on Catholic
parishes has been done by the Notre Dame Study of Catholic Parish Life, University of
Notre Dame, 1201 Memorial Library, Notre Dame, IN 46556. These are summarized in Joseph
Gremillion and Jim Castelli, The Emerging Parish (New York: Harper & Row,
1987). Also see David Byers, ed., The Parish in Transition: Proceedings of a Conference
on the American Catholic Parish (Washington, DC: U.S. Catholic Conference, 1985). Also
see New Catholic World 228 (November-December 1985). 2. James D. Thompson, Organizations
in Action (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976), 56. 4. George Gallup, Jr., and Jim
Castelli, The American Catholic People (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1987), 44.
Also, Dean R. Hoge, "Trends in Catholic Lay Attitudes Since Vatican II on Church Life
and Leadership," Study of Future Church Leadership, Report No. 5 (Washington, DC:
Catholic University of America, May 1986, Mimeographed), 12. No demographic category had
less than 80 percent approving the priests. See Hoge (1986), appendix, p. 4. 5. William Bassett, "The
Office of Episcopal Vicar," Jurist 30 (1970): 285-313; Robert Howes, "The
Episcopal Vicar--Comments of a Pastoral Planner," Jurist 31 (1971): 506-14;
Thomas P. Swift, S.J., "The Pastoral Office of Episcopal Vicars: Changing Roles and
Powers," Jurist 40 (1980): 225-56. 6. Sacred Congregation for
Bishops, Directory on the Pastoral Ministry of Bishops (Ottawa: Canadian Catholic
Conference, 1974), 85-87. 7. For more on planning in
Baltimore, see Dean Hoge, Future of Catholic Leadership: Responses to the Priest
Shortage (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1987), 89-93. 8. For more about Cincinnati, see
Hoge, Future of Catholic Leadership, 93-96. 9. Surprisingly, a Gallup survey
done for Dean Hoge found that merging parishes was more acceptable to Catholics than other
ways of dealing with the priest shortage, such as cutting back on services. One out of
four said that, as a solution to the clergy shortage, a "merger of [their] parish and
another parish" was "very acceptable" and another 51 percent said it was
"somewhat acceptable." This could indicate that closing and merging of parishes
must be clearly seen as resulting from the clergy shortage if they are to be accepted by
the people. On the other hand, Professor Hoge is suspicious of this data since many
respondents might assume that "merger of [their] parish..." means the
respondent's parish will survive and the other will disappear. See Gallup and Castelli, American
Catholic People, 55, and Dean R. Hoge, "Attitudes of Catholic Adults and College
Students about the Priest Shortage and Parish Life," Study of Future Church
Leadership, Report No. 2 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, September 1985,
Mimeographed), table 3. 10. "70 Dioceses Have
Priestless Parishes; 51 Report Priestless Sundays," NC News Service, Sept. 16, 1988.
See also NCCB Committee on the Liturgy Newsletter, July-August 1988. 11. For more about Portland, see
Hoge, Future of Catholic Leadership, 97-99.
By Thomas J. Reese, S.J.
Copyright © 1989 by Thomas J. Reese, S.J.
All rights reserved
For the previous chapter and table of contents, see Chapter 3
and Contents.
Priest, St. Louis
Director of planning, Louisville.Diocesan Policies
Complaints
Regional Governance
Power and Influence
Parish Visitations
Closing Parishes
Lay Ministry
Archdiocesan Programs
Conclusion
Footnotes
See also: