“Congress is so strange; a man gets up to speak and says nothing, nobody listens, and then everybody disagrees.” I was recently looking at some quotations by American humorist and commentator Will Rogers concerning politics in his days. Rogers claimed that those in Congress “are all good fellows at heart, and if they wasn’t in Congress, why, they would be doing something else against us that might be even worse.” The truth is that as long as the American government has been going, people have been complaining about it. Yet our political system has worked well (on the whole) for years. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once said, “Democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried.”
Despite the advantages of our form of government, it does not translate over to the running of a parish. About forty years ago, there was a move within the Church to establish Parish Councils in each parish. Most of these bodies were based on a model that is familiar to us through politics. Elections were held, often with the parish boundaries divided up into districts so that each area could have its own representative. Meetings were run by parliamentary procedure, featuring Robert’s Rules of Order, and most decisions were reached by majority vote.
A few years ago, the Diocese of Pittsburgh revamped its policies for such groups. Parish Councils were gone, to be replaced by “Pastoral Councils.” The difference was more than just a few letters. A Pastoral Council was not to be a debating society where each member argued for his own position or that of his constituents. The group was to look at the big picture, to help form a vision for the parish and to help the pastor set goals for the parish and to evaluate the parish’s progress toward those goals. In doing so, they were to work by achieving consensus. While a good Pastoral Council will get involved in certain tasks, theirs is more the task of working from a broader perspective.
Taking a less “political” approach to their business, the Pastoral Council also does not hold elections. Currently, our Council is looking for new members to step in for those whose terms are expiring. We are currently taking suggestions of people whom our parishioners may like to see on the Council. The current members, both those who are leaving and those who will remain, have begun the process and have suggested a number of good names. Now we would like to open it up to others. If you know of someone whom you think would be an asset to the parish in the circumstances I described, please let me know or else contact one of the current members. You can call our current facilitator, Terry Neary, at 412-715-4418.
Father H
