ARTICLES
November 2005 ARTICLES
Contents © 2005
by Jim Holman.
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Revolution
Cardinal Mahony Continues to Push Lay Parish Leadership
BY CHRISTOPHER ZEHNDER
Is it revolution or a rational response to a crisis?
No one doubts the Church through out the world is facing a shortage of priests. Cardinal Roger Mahony, referring to this shortage in a September 4 letter to clergy, religious and "lay leaders" of the archdiocese, says, "from one point of view, we are facing a crisis." But, for the cardinal, if it is a crisis, it is also an epiphany. "The diminishing number of priestly and Religious vocations," writes Mahony, "has brought with it a deeper realization that it is in the nature of the Church to be given diverse gifts, ministries and offices."
Here Cardinal Mahony echoes his 2000 pastoral letter, As I Have Done for You, wherein he says, "what some refer to as a 'vocations crisis' is rather, one of the many fruits of the Second Vatican Council, a sign of God's deep love for the Church and an invitation to a more effective ordering of gifts and energy in the Body of Christ." Since the publication of that pastoral, the cardinal has reiterated again and again that the shortage of priests has made possible a new understanding of not only lay ministry in the Church but of lay leadership in the parishes. It has even contributed, it seems, to a reevaluation of the function of the priesthood itself. In As I Have Done for You, the threefold ministry of the priest has been transformed from "to teach, sanctify, and rule," to "to teach, sanctify, and guide." [Italics added.] For Mahony, the priest is more a manager than a ruler, one who "guides by establishing, cultivating, and sustaining patterns of relationship rooted in equality, interdependence, and mutual service, calling forth and coordinating the gifts of all the baptized."
Such a role could easily be filled by a lay man or woman -- a development the cardinal clearly has in mind. As he notes in his September letter, the archdiocesan synod, which concluded in September 2003, ordained that "the structures of Church life and governance must be renewed, and some new structures established...." And Mahony's letter continues, "at this time we are being called to discern new modes of parish leadership and a more partici patory exercise of ministry in which lay, Religious and ordained together seek to build up the Body of Christ through the charism of leadership."
Because an increasing number of parishes in the future will experience "the absence of a resident priest pastor," Mahony is proposing an increase in the number of non-clerical religious and lay leaders not only to serve in but lead parishes. "Under the direction of Bishop Gerald Wilkerson," says Mahony 's letter, "a Task Force has been hard at work to assure that our parishes are provided with good leadership by competent laypersons and Religious who have the charism to serve as Parish Life Directors, that is, those who are responsible for the welfare of the parish in the absence of a resident priest pastor." The task force, "in collaboration with Bishop Gerald Barnes and key personnel of the Diocese of San Bernardino," has held a series of workshops that have resulted in "an overview of this form of parish leadership, the reasons for its emergence, the promises it holds, as well as some of the practical implications of moving in this direction."
But for Mahony, lay parish leadership is not merely a response to the absence of resident priest pastors. Though in his September letter, he says, "a parish led by a Parish Life Director is not proposed as a model for ministry now or in the future" but as a "response to meet the pastoral needs of our Local Church," he also says he is "committed to the implementation of this form of parish leadership, which is not a stopgap measure or temporary solution to the diminishing number of priestly and Religious vocations." Here he simply reiterates what he said in As I Have Done for You, where he added, "even if seminaries were once again filled to overflowing and convents packed with sisters, there would still remain the need for cultivating, developing, and sustaining the full flourishing of ministries that we have witnessed." So, it seems for Mahony, that even if the archdiocese had a sufficient number of priests to serve as pastors, lay ministers would continue to serve as parish leaders.
This intention is underlined by a September 4 pastoral, As One Who Serves, which the cardinal's September letter says provides "the theological and ecclesiological foundations for this form of lay leadership." In the pastoral, the cardinal asks, what is the "charism of leadership" God has given to the Church? Central to this charism, he says, "is vision"; and "central to any Christian vision must be the Reign of God, which is at the heart of the word and the work, the meaning and message of Jesus."
Traditionally, the reign or kingdom of God is understood primarily as man's salvation from sin and union with God in His divine life through Jesus Christ. This occurs through the sacraments. Quoting Vatican II's Lumen Gentium, the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, "'to carry out the will of the Father Christ inaugurated the kingdom of heaven on earth.' Now the Father's will is 'to raise up men to share in his own divine life.' He does this by gathering men around his Son Jesus Christ. This gathering is the Church 'on earth, the seed and beginning of that kingdom.'" The "mighty works of God," says the Catechism, are "offered to believers in the sacraments of the Church" and "bear their fruit in the new life in Christ, according to the Spirit."
The character of God's kingdom requires a unique form of leadership, the leadership of one who acts in the place of Christ, Who is, as the Catechism says, the "Head of his Body, Shepherd of his flock, high priest of the redemp tive sacrifice, Teacher of Truth." Hence, the ministerial priesthood, the "ordained ministry, especially that of bishops and priests," through which "the presence of Christ as head of the Church is made visible in the midst of the community of believers." Bishops exercise the office of sanctifying, teaching, and ruling for the whole diocese, and priests exercise this office as "'co-workers of the episcopal order for the proper fulfillment of he apostolic mission that had been entrusted to it by Christ.'" [Emphasis in original.] "'Because it is joined with the episcopal order the office of priests shares in the authority by which Christ himself builds up and sanctifies and rules his Body.'" (In these passages, the Catechism again quotes Lumen Gentium.)
Whatever else the Church concerns herself with -- the temporal ordering of the world, the dignity of the human person, economic justice -- are secondary to the primary end of the God's kingdom -- the salvation of souls and their union with God. As the Catechism, says, "the Church is concerned with the temporal aspects of the common good because they are ordered to the sovereign Good, our ultimate end." Cardinal Mahony, however, seems to identify these temporal goods with the "Reign of God." At least, in As One Who Serves, the cardinal says nothing of the spiritual ends of that reign.
"Central to any Christian vision must be the Reign of God," says the pastoral, "which is at the heart of the word and the work, the meaning the message of Jesus. In the preaching and prophecy of Jesus, holiness, truth, justice, love and peace will prevail in the Reign of God. In our own time and place, we become heralds of God's Reign when we work here and now to safeguard and promote the dignity of the human person, the rights of workers, the person in relationship and community, opting for the poor, building solidarity among persons, nations, races, and classes, and caring for creation. To this must be added an ongoing commitment to forgiveness as a basis for a new world order, the seedbed for the flourishing of God's Reign of holiness, truth, justice, love and peace. This is the mission of Jesus, the mission of the Church."
In such a mission, "all who are baptized" are called to share. Quoting Gathered and Sent, a document of the archdiocesan synod, the cardinal says, "participation in the mission of the Church is rooted in Baptism, strengthened in Confirmation, and nurtured by regular celebration of the Eucharist. All receive gifts from the Spirit that call them to build the Church and advance the Reign of God." Thus, it appears, while the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, are important, they are merely means to a temporal end. The Eucharist is not the culmination of the Christian life, but food that strengthens us for mission.
But if the sacraments are merely means to help us fulfill a temporal purpose, and not the very means by which God's kingdom is brought to the world, then the priest becomes simply a kind of filling station attendant. He pumps the gas we need for the journey, but he may or may not know the route to travel, he may or may not be able to drive the vehicle that gets us to our destination. Or in the cardinal's words, the priest may or may not have the "vision" necessary for leadership. "The charism of leadership in the Christian community," says Mahony's pastoral, "is recognized in the one who is able to spell out the contours of the vision of the Reign of God in light of the changing circumstances in which we live." And since those contours are temporal in character, no super-temporal charism is needed to "spell" them out.
For Mahony, as far as being able "to spell out the contours" of the Church's vision is concerned, a lay man or woman is just as good as a priest. Hence the cardinal's emphasis on collaboration between clergy, religious, and laity. Hence the new paradigm of lay parish leadership.
In his pastoral, Cardinal Mahony says, "our situation in the Archdiocese is in many ways so very different from what it was when I came to this Archdiocese twenty years ago." These twenty years have brought so many changes that, it seems, even Pope John Paul II's 1988 exhortation Christifideles Laici has to be reevaluated. In that document, in Cardinal Mahony's words, the pope said, "it is the lay faithful who, in seeking the Reign of God by engaging in everyday, ordinary affairs and ordering them according to the plan of God, are the presence of God's Reign in the world." This would place the work of laymen primarily outside the parish, in the secular world. But, Mahony continues, "our understanding of the Reign of God, and what is entailed in living for God's Reign, must be formulated afresh in light of changing circumstances and in view of the shifting perceptions of different cultures and diverse communities. One such shift involves the realization that the Church-world divide is not as neat and clean as we once thought."
If, as the pope said, the role of the layman is to bring Christ to secular places, in Mahony's mind, the layman's task is no different than the task of the entire Church. Since, "the parish, too, is a 'place' very much part of this world," says Mahony, the layman's ministry is as validly exercised in the parish as in the outside world. In fact, being "in the world," the layman has a unique parochial charism that a priest may not possess and thus may function not only as a parish leader but as the parish leader. "The lay leader," says Mahony's latest pastoral, "brings the life of the world and its noblest concerns to the heart of the parish and, in turn directs the lifeblood of the parish -- strengthened and sustained by celebration of Word and Sacrament -- so that the world is more fully infused with holiness, truth, justice, love, and peace."
"The lay leader, above all the lay leader of the parish," Mahony continues, "is not someone whose ministry is to be understood as filling in the gaps, doing the many seemingly incalculable tasks that the priest once did, but does no longer, so that he can be 'freed up' to celebrate Mass and hear confessions.... And the one who is designated to be the leader of the parish community is above all the one who holds fast to the vision of the Reign of God central to the meaning and message of Jesus. And then calls others to be faithful to that vision through the charism of leadership."
Is Mahony's vision of parish leadership revolutionary? If "As One Who Serves" -- with its apparent reevaluation of the "Reign of God," its muddling of Church and world, its notion of the permanence of lay leadership -- is to be taken at face value, the conclusion can only be, "yes." But, perhaps, the cardinal has misspoke; perhaps the practical application of his pastoral will be benign; perhaps he doesn't intend what he seems to say.
It looks like we won't have long to find out. As His Eminence says in his September 4 letter, "some few parishes in the Archdiocese are already being led by competent laypersons" (according to the September 30 Tidings, the archdiocesan newspaper the archdiocese currently has two "non-priest pastoral leaders.") "However," says the cardinal, "beginning on July 1, 2006, this number [of lay leaders of parishes] will likely increase considerably."
Both the cardinal's letter and pastoral can be found on the Tidings webpage at www.the-tidings.com/2005/0930/asoneside.htm and www.the-tidings.com/2005/0930/asonemain.htm.