What is a parish? No, not the administrative definition or the civil understanding. Jefferson Parish in Louisiana (the area in the news recently on account of the massive Gulf oil spill) falls under an entirely different category of organizations. I’m talking about the local Church community. I’d like to take a moment to reflect on what it is, and what it is for.
A Catholic parish usually has a parish (pastoral) council, and that presents a problem. Last night was the monthly (soon to be bimonthly!) parish pastoral council meeting at Saint Ignatius. The pastoral council, it has been said, is the body of “dreamers” who develop a plan, a vision, a dream for what the parish (community) should look like. A number of tasks fall to the pastoral council That is a lot of power in the hands of about a dozen people. An interesting thought occurred to me. It goes something like this:
- Jesus Christ founded the Church.
- Jesus Christ ascended to heaven after leaving his apostles in charge of his Church, with Peter as their head.
- The nature of the Church therefore includes an element of hierarchy, with the successor of Peter (the Pope) being responsible for all that happens within the Church, through his delegates, the bishops, and their delegates, priests and deacons.
- But it seems that the hierarchy established by Jesus Christ has given over control of the local communities, where the Church’s most important work happens, to democracy. This implies that the Church has lost her God-given power to teach the Truth and to bring humanity with her to heaven. If this is true, then it is a greater scandal than even the grievous sins of a few deviant ministers!
That’s right, SCANDAL. The Church is not a democracy. The Church absolutely ought not to appear to be a democracy. The Church is governed by shepherds, who stand In Persona Christi Capitis, “In the Person of Christ the Head”. I’m trying not to tip my hand. But maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me define some terms.
“Pastoral” is obviously a reference to the pastor, the priest tasked with leading this particular flock. It literally means “shepherd”. “And I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding…. says the LORD…” (Jeremiah 3:15)
“Parish” includes all baptized Catholics who live in a certain geographical area. It’s not just the people who go to Mass on any given Sunday. This will be important very shortly.
“Hierarchy” doesn’t mean a king, or a monarchy. It means that there is a flow of authority within the Church. It involves the Obedience of Faith, which is the willful submission of mind and heart to God, who is deserving of both. It means that the faithful owe consent to the authentic teachings of the Magisterium: the pope, and bishops in union with him as successors to the apostles. It behooves us to remember, however, that there is such a thing as sensus fidei: the “sense of the faithful”. This refers to those things that the Church has always believed, but has never put into solemnly defined dogmas. The pope takes this into consideration when proposing to make doctrine (believed but not formally defined) into dogma (formally defined, usually as necessitated by opposition). (The topic of Obedience of Faith merits an article all its own.)
Speaking of Christ’s lay faithful, this is exactly where the answer lies. Pope John Paul II, our beloved Holy Father of yesteryears, issued a letter (a post-synodal apostolic exhortation, to be geekily precise) on December 30, 1988 called Christifideles Laici, or “Christ’s Lay Faithful”, in which he told the lay faithful of their mission as baptized Catholic Christians in the world. In November 2009, high school youth from across the diocese attended an event called P2K, which stands for “Priest, Prophet, King”. So what are Christ’s lay faithful for? Why should there be “regular” members of the Church, if it’s such an authoritarian structure? Simply put, because all have a place in that structure, or rather, that body. They are not “required” to be in their places, like numbers in a matrix; they are welcomed. By virtue of their baptism, each baptized person is configured to Christ: each member of Christ’s Body is ipso facto priest, prophet, and king. That’s right: if YOU are baptized, then YOU are a priest, YOU are a prophet, and YOU are a king. You are a priest because you offer sacrifice, both at the Holy Mass and in your daily life; you are a prophet because you proclaim the Word of God always, and when necessary, you use words; you are a king because of the service you render unto God and neighbor.
I have found a very concise answer to this conundrum in the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, or the Compendium for short.
The Apostles entrusted the deposit of faith to the whole of the Church. Thanks to its supernatural sense of faith the people of God as a whole, assisted by the Holy Spirit and guided by the Magisterium of the Church, never ceases to welcome, to penetrate more deeply and to live more fully from the gift of divine revelation.
CCCC Part I, Chapter 2, Question 15
So what does this mean for the problem I opened with? You know, the one about the SCANDAL of the pastoral council? Well, the role of a parish council goes like this: it serves as an advisory body to the pastor. The pastor is still the pastor, and, as it were, stands in for Jesus. The council offers the pastor advice; he’s human, so he might need it. He is free to regard or disregard the council’s advice as he sees fit. (Hopefully, he’ll give them a chance!) The council, together with all of its subcommittees, meetings, agendae and paperwork, is only one of the ways that Christ’s lay faithful can contribute to the advancement of the Church’s mission in the world: evangelization.
D.C.
) with a slingshot.
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