Please remember when lamenting the challenges of pastoring a cluster of parishes that clustering nearly all of the parishes in the archdiocese was not “our” idea. This came from the priests, archbishop, and consulting firm – not the laity.
First, no pastor I know of ever proposed taking over more than one parish. If you actually believe it was priests who wanted this, name them, and I will pay a $100 per name to a charity we both can agree on.
Second, do you suppose Archbishop Schnurr woke up one day, and thought, "Golly, everything seems to be going along so well. I am bored. So I will launch a reorganization drive that will scramble everything..."
My point being, don't you see that what is happening did not come out of the blue? It came as a result of . . . wait for it . . . problems. And not just little or occasional ones. But LOTS of problems. Pause here, please: and contemplate that. What sort of problems, and how many, do you imagine reached the attention of the Archbishop (and others around him), before he took the step of initiating this?
Or, do you suppose the "consulting firm" talked him into it?
You state:
We sympathize with the difficulty of pastoring clusters and would love to have a pastor for each church or two, even if they aren’t “pastor-ready,” because we want fathers that we know and see, not CEO’s that are great at running organizations. If our pastor can be both a loving father and a great CEO, awesome. But if we have to choose, we’ll take the loving father.
I underlined all the "we's" in your comment here, in order to ask: who, precisely, do you mean by "we"? This is a serious question.
Again, I beg of you to consider that the "we" you have in mind is rather smaller than you realize. How do you imagine pastors who were assigned too early (I was one of them, by the way, in 2005) reached that conclusion? How do you suppose the archbishop, and those assisting him (i.e., he doesn't make pastoral assignments all by himself), reached this conclusion?
This, too, is a serious question, which I beg you to think about for a bit.
Do you know how many priests assigned as pastors in this archdiocese have contacted the archbishop in recent years, in order to beg to be released from being pastors? Do you know how many of those didn't just move to another assignment, but left the priesthood altogether? And how many of them needed serious help to recover from the difficulties?
Does it occur to you that perhaps there were others -- besides the "we" you have in mind -- who wanted and expected rather more from their pastors than the "we" you describe?
I am not trying to be difficult, I am trying to illuminate the reality at work here. And what I am suggesting is that while I doubt not at all your sincerity, your account of a "we" that has far fewer expectations of a pastor is far from a complete picture of the reality in parishes.
[Alternative solution:] Make more vicars pastors.
Some of the current vicars would certainly make fine pastors; many of them have been previously. And in the next few years, many of them will be. However...
Many of them are close to retirement. Are you suggesting they not be allowed to retire at 70 from administration?
(For clarity: no priest ever really retires from being a priest. But even my mother, at a certain point, got to "retire" from daily laundry and meal preparation, precisely when I, the youngest, reached high school age, and was mature enough to do for myself, and my mother, in her 60s, wanted to enjoy some time with my father, approaching 70. Were they wrong to "retire"? Are priests not allowed to retire from administration?)
Even if every vicar who has been a pastor, or is otherwise deemed ready to be one, there aren't enough to be pastors if parishes are kept standing alone (as opposed to being grouped into 57 or so "families.") And it's not close. That's today.
Over the next few years, as current pastors retire, and pastors leave for other reasons, the existing "slack" will disappear. The creation of 57 "families" of parishes is based on careful projections of where we'll be circa 2030 or so.
Also -- in part 2 of this Q & A, I talk about the issues involved in assigning priests as pastors too early. And, just in passing, I want to mention that through no fault of their own, not every priest, however good and holy and talented in various ways, is going to be suitable as a pastor, and then you have those who might be suitable here, but not there.
If you were in a position to evaluate all the options and all the details of the priests potentially available, I think you would have a moment where your eyebrows rose, and a lightbulb appeared over your head (not really) and you said, "ohhhhh, now I see..."
I do not prefer the pastor to be an employee of the laity, and I am not sure who is proposing this. Is this a straw man?
Not at all. But your response makes me think you haven't read my other posts here on this subject. Please do so.
I made this observation precisely because this is something that has been proposed, however, those who propose it don't quite realize, I believe, that this is what they are asking for.
Namely: many are suggesting that pastors be "relieved" of administrative or financial responsibilities. That is, in effect, making them employees, because whoever does the hiring and evaluating (and, alas, even firing) of employees, and whoever writes the budget, and whoever oversees administration, whoever leads the long-term planning, is the actual person in charge. When pastors no longer do these things, whoever takes up these tasks in their place, is "in charge," and the "pastor" becomes at best an employee, or perhaps even a "contractor."
Now, you might respond, oh but can't we just make the administrative and leadership tasks of a pastor manageable? Yes! And that's exactly what's being proposed right now!
We have been told that the origin for Beacons was a meeting of the priests who already had clusters and they were unanimous in identifying the challenges in pastoring clusters.
That is true but very incomplete. Your account makes it sound as though, until that meeting, no one had the slightest notion of any problems, which I suspect you didn't mean to suggest. The current Beacons project is the product of far, far, FAR more than one meeting!
So the solution was to make more clusters? And then say it is horrible because now they are all clustered?
NO.
Please stop and re-read that last word. The answer is no!
Beacons of Light is not about more "clusters"! Add 100 more exclamation marks to that last statement!
Of course, you and I may be using this term in different ways, but rather than guess, feel free to come back with a question on precisely this point. But generally, "clusters" -- meaning, a priest was assigned as pastor to two, three or more pastors, and expected to maintain them as essentially stand-alone parishes -- was the attempted solution of the past 20 or so years.
It. Didn't. Work.
The reorg portion of Beacons (which is preparatory for the more important portion, which is evangelization) is not "clustering" but consolidating parishes, combining the legal structures so that the pastor is no longer expected to act as if he were two pastors, three pastors or more.
Maybe this isn't clear? If that is the case, read what else I've written, and then, ask for more information on this. Without understanding this, none of it will make any sense.
No comments:
Post a Comment