TIF, clusters prompt parish council guideline changes
Robert Delaney of The Michigan Catholic
Published December 15, 2006
 Detroit – Because of the Together in Faith process and situations such as parish clusters, guidelines for how parish pastoral councils operate are being revised so lay people can better fulfill their role in parish leadership.
Since the current guidelines were developed a decade-and-a-half ago, greater collaboration between pastors and lay leaders within parishes has developed as lay people assume more duties. There is also greater collaboration among parishes, not only those in clusters, but also among parishes in the same vicariate.
The revised guidelines will address relationships outward and upward – between parish pastoral councils and vicariate pastoral councils, and their relationships to the Archdiocesan Pastoral Council, said Robert McBrayer, moderator of the APC.
Fr. Timothy Babcock, acting as a consultant to the Department of Parish Life and Services on the guidelines revisions, remarked that "there was no concept of parishes working together" when the original guidelines were drawn up.
Furthermore, the new guidelines will seek to clarify the role of parish councils and their commissions and committees.
Suggestions about what needs to be included are still being received by the Office for Leadership Services of the archdiocesan Department of Parish Life and Services, with a goal of having the revision ready to go to the printer by the end of June and presented to parishes in September, said Pamela Beech, director of the office.
Members of the APC – the consultative body that which primarily represents the laity of the archdiocese – got to offer their thoughts at their Dec. 5 meeting at Sacred Heart Major Seminary.
The input of the Council of Vicars — made up of the priests who serve as vicars of each of the 18 vicariates in the archdiocese – will also be sought, and McBrayer said he hopes to see a joint APC-vicars meeting by sometime next spring.
"That whole concept of collaboration has developed in the intervening years. We've got to work together because the priests are all going to kill themselves if they keep trying to do everything they've been doing," he said.
"The reason for doing this is because the document is considerably outdated, particularly in light of Together in Faith," McBrayer said last Friday.
On the one hand, parishioners who take an active role in their parishes by serving on their pastoral councils and other bodies need to understand what their role is and what is expected of them. But there is also "some feeling that some of the pastors haven't really bought into the system yet," McBrayer said.
Fr. Babcock said he was asked to become involved in the process because he was on the committee that drafted the old guidelines and because he had experience working with them as a pastor.
"The goal is to make them a better, more usable tool for the parish councils," he said.
But Fr. Babcock said he envisions the changes as "modifications and refinements – we're not talking about a drastic revision."
Beech said one aspect of the clustered parishes situation that must be addressed is the trend for some clustered parishes to form a joint parish pastoral council, with shared commissions.
While permissible for most purposes, she pointed out that canon law requires the parishes to maintain separate finance committees (sometimes called stewardship committees).
Anyone having suggestions for revisions to the parish council guidelines may mail them to Pamela Beech, Office of Leadership Services, Archdiocese of Detroit, 305 Michigan Ave., Detroit, 48226, or e-mail them to Beech.Pamela@aod.org.
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