I’ve written a couple of times now on vision and pastoral planning. I believe that we need to adopt good business practices and leadership strategies to make parish operations more efficient. However, we have to remember that Church leadership is not entirely a human endeavor, and that means some big differences in how the Church approaches leadership as compared to secular business. What we don’t need is totally radical changes that undermine the essential structures of the Church.
I was reminded of this recently on reading a quote from Pope Benedict at The Catholic Spirit where he said that “a true renewal of the ecclesial community is not achieved so much with a change in the structures as much as with a sincere spirit of penitence and conversion.” The Pope was speaking in a general audience regarding clergy abuse and referencing St. Hildegard of Bingen, who in her own time dealt with serious clerical abuses and fought calls for inauthentic reform. St. Hildegard said that holiness, from both clergy and laity, was the key to reform.
There’s a passage in The Soul of the Apostolate that speaks to this. It says:
“If the priest is a saint (the saying goes), the people will be fervent; if the priest is fervent, the people will be pious; if the priest is pious, the people will at least be decent. But if the priest is only decent, the people will be godless. The spiritual generation is always one degree less intense in its life than those who beget it in Christ.”
In other words, as the pastor goes, so goes the parish. The priest is the spiritual leader of his parish and as such he is like a channel through which the grace of God flows. Through him it can flow freely to the parishioners or it can get dammed up. It depends on the priest’s holiness and the depth of his interior life.
What is desperately needed for Church reform is holiness. It must come from the laity as well as the clergy. In this we are all joined together. The leadership of the Church must work for the spiritual renewal of parish life before any change can take place. We in parish leadership must do everything humanly possible to set the stage for success by planning our parish processes to work toward the holiness of our members. However, that just builds a foundation for God’s work to take place. He works through us but it is His work.
We don’t need to abolish priestly celibacy. We don’t need to give the leadership of the Church over to the laity or lay councils. We most definitely don’t need our amazing and incredibly holy spiritual father, Pope Benedict, to resign! The answer to clergy abuse and dwindling numbers and spiritual illiteracy among the faithful is a recommitment to God in penance and conversion. That’s how the Saints reformed and renewed the Church in every age and that’s how it will be accomplished today.
(Image courtesy of Elizabeth Porter)
St Seraphim of Sarov echoes these sentiments in his oft-quoted, “Acquire the spirit of holiness that a thousand souls may be saved.”
That is very beautiful. Thanks for sharing that.
Thanks, Marc -rnAlong with holiness, there is also the call to evangelize and serve. Which leads to another big difference between Church and business — when it comes to finances. We are here for spreading the Gospel, helping people to become more holy, and to send them out for service and mission. Money is the means, not the end, which is not being recognized in our diocese by the finance people – who are urging parishes to balance budgets and make cuts in catechetical program support in response to shrinking income. Our reason to be here is not to break even – it is to change hearts and bring the Good News of Jesus Christ to people in ways that engage them and invest them in the life of the Church. When we do that really well, stewardship naturally increases… but right now, it’s a tough sell when business managers are being sent forth with the impression that it is their job to hassel catechetical leaders about tuition collection, or to urge pastors to fire highly paid professionals and replace them with untrained volunteers.
Oh, I’m with you on this one! I butt heads with the bean counters often. I understand as much as the next guy that we can’t spend more than we bring in and that in order to keep the lights on, we need to keep a good control on budgets. But what are the budgets for? They are for catechetical programming! nnThat gets back to the idea of vision, pastoral planning and having a clear idea of what you’re trying to accomplish. If the parish understands what the “win” is, then they’ll know where to put the money. The money should go to the highest priority of the organization, the mission it exists to fulfill. In the Catholic Church, that should be making disciples of Christ and extending the Kingdom. A vision should allow you to prioritize where the money is spent in order to accomplish the mission. Sadly, that often doesn’t happen in our parishes. We are not spending the bulk of our income working to further the catechetical and evangelistic mission of the Church. If we were, every parish would have professional, catechetical leaders that are paid a living wage and have the resources of the parish to organize the appropriate catechetical, pastoral and evangelical programming to carry out that task. Instead, this is one of the worst funded areas of the parish staffing. We need to wake up to this reality because we’ll have a hard time changing things until we do.
This is a great post Marc. You said: “He (God) works through us but it is His work. – Amen to that!
Thanks William! I appreciate that!
Yup, no doubt about it, we have got to be saints if we want to make a difference anywhere. Each one of us, saints. Even if we never have and “St.” in front of our names, it is the journey…
That is the most important and hardest step!
Did you know that Teresa of Avila said really effective apostolate doesn’t even begin until the sixth mansion??? Yikes!