Tag: Clergy

Church Officers

An officer usually is a person elected or appointed to some position of trust, responsibility or authority in a government, corporation, society, etc.. We frequently associate it with police and armed forces.
   The Church has officers also, but uses different words to describe them like “clerics” or “clergy”.
   When church officer candidates are trained and ready to hold office, their commissioning is called ordination.
   Church officers also can be retired or discharged, honorably or dishonorably (punitively). For centuries their term of office was idealized as forever; however now they have set, limited terms of office.
   Church officers are often called “pastors”, meaning “shepherds”. A shepherd herds, tends, and guards sheep. Metaphorically, a pastor protects, guides, and watches over his congregation (his “flock” or sheep).
   However, Church officers are not a different breed; they also are sheep. But, they have leadership roles in the Christian community. They may have positions of rank, authority, or responsibility, but their role is to serve.
   In other words, the Church doesn’t have different classes of membership, only different roles of service and responsibility.
   St. Augustine, in his sermon On Pastors, described it well:
   “I must distinguish carefully between two aspects of the role the Lord has given me . . .
   “The first aspect is that I am a Christian; the second, that I am a leader. I am a Christian for my own sake; the fact that I am a Christian is to my own advantage, but I am a leader for your advantage.
   “Many persons come to God as Christians but not as leaders. Perhaps they travel by an easier road and are less hindered since they bear a lighter burden, In addition to the fact that I am a Christian and must give God an account of my life, I as a leader must give him an account of my stewardship as well.”

   In today’s Church, there are many men and women exercising roles of service, but only some of them are ordained officers. Sometimes, using a somewhat old fashioned vocabulary, we call the others “lay ministers”.
   Although they may have positions of trust and leadership in the Church, they still tend to be considered an entirely different class from the “ordained”.
   A current practical problem is that the dwindling numbers of ordained clergy simply are too few to be the exclusive leaders in the Church, and some of them are personally inadequate to the task.
   The understanding of Church leadership is changing, and some of the terminology being used to describe the changes is new.
   For centuries, in a mostly monarchical Europe, Church leadership was monarchical and clerical. Vatican Council I, in a changing world, tried to address this. It began with clarifying the office, duty, and authority of the Pope but was interrupted before it could to do the same for bishops.
   Vatican II remedied this in part. A new post-conciliar structure was the Synod of Bishops, a large and diverse ad hoc body chosen by the Pope to advise and collaborate with him in overall planning and leadership.
   Now a next stage of development is gradually emerging; called Synodality, it involves finding and establishing forms of exercising church leadership that include more than pope and bishops alone. Initially perhaps upsetting and difficult to understand and implement, it is necessitated by the reality of the church today.
   Slowly but surely, Church leadership is no longer being limited to an exclusive body of ordained Church Officers.


10 October 2021

Ruling (the) Class

“Rulers” (e.g., governors, presidents, CEO’s, kings, tyrants, dictators, bosses) may but are not obliged to justify their decisions or actions.
   They wield power. They may possess it through family, social status, election, appointment, class privilege or even deception, falsification, assassination.
   “Teachers” (e.g., professors, school teachers, scout masters, dieticians, counselors, trainers, guides, trail blazers, therapists, models, designers, artists, directors) are the opposites of rulers
   They coach and challenge others to learn to think, analyze, and understand, encouraging them to encounter new ideas, perspectives, and experiences.
   “Leaders” are a sort of blend of both. They have a responsibility for organized groups with common purposes. They serve the group both through personal qualities and example and through their special role of making decisions for the common good.
   What is the principal role of clergy? When a bishop, priest, deacon, or other minister is preaching the Good News, explaining the Scriptures, or counseling an individual or a congregation, is it mostly a matter of teaching, leading, or ruling? Is it more about witnessing, persuading, or demanding?
   There’s a complicated history to all of this, and the answers may vary depending on the era you have in mind.
   Jesus was not a ruler, even though he spoke with the language of his day of a kingdom not of this world. He taught by word and example, he led and guided, he gave standards and mandates.
   His early followers were heralds and proclaimers of what they considered to be good news all over in and outside of the Roman empire in which they lived. But, they needed and had leaders, not rulers, to guide them, coordinate their efforts, and foster their unity and common values.

   Jesus and his first followers were Jews, whose tradition was that priests and other Levites were a special tribe with roles and power as presiders in religious rituals and as adjudicators of the laws of God.
   The early Christians in the Jewish world were influenced by this tradition, while those in the pagan world struggled to accommodate the proclamation of Jesus and his teachings to the traditions and ways of a foreign culture.
   When Christianity became the official religion of the empire, the proclaimers of the message and the celebrants of the rituals possessed a status in the empire, as the new priesthood and temples replaced the old.
   With the collapse of imperial authority in the West, Christian leaders in Rome began to fill the gap, by ruling and wielding political power. This blurred the distinctions between ruling, teaching, and leading for many centuries. (Movie fans, just think of Becket, A Man for All Seasons, and films about Joan of Arc.)
   Vestiges of this, like the pope’s appointing nuncios (ambassadors) to countries or establishing codes of law, still linger. Is the Pope today a powerful enforcer of legislation, a fearsome wielder of life or death decisions? Hardly!
   His power lies in faith and witness, in his skill in teaching, motivating, and leading. Dictates are out-of-date and ineffective.
   Decreeing, judging, and penalizing have become outdated religious methodologies, while witnessing, explaining, persuading, and leading are far more effective.
   Even so, trying to rule as well as to teach and to lead still lingers as a methodology of some religious leaders and their followers.


18 July 2021

Dreaming the Impossible Dream

The spirit of the great sixteenth century Spanish novel, El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha, was beautifully captured by a song in the Broadway musical based on it, “To dream the impossible dream.”
Impossible dream is a good description of an ideal. A dictionary definition of an ideal is “an ultimate object or aim of an endeavor, especially one of high or noble character.”
Ideals are abstractions. An ideal is “the act of considering something as a general quality or characteristic, apart from concrete realities, specific objects, or actual instances.”
An attractive ideal is also a “carrot on the stick”—the metaphor refers to a cart driver dangling a carrot in front of a mule or donkey to induce and encourage it to move forward.
One of the great ideals that began to profoundly influence the development of Christianity, especially after it became an imperial state religion, was that of totally renouncing the world, the flawed and corrupt world, to live a life of extreme following of Christ.
Once the era of the heroism of the martyrs with their willingness to suffer and die was over, the new heroism that captured the Christian imagination was to choose to tame the body by radical austerity and solitude, to seek an imagined angelic purity of spirit.
The ordinary believers esteemed these amazing monks, sought their counsel, and aspired to somehow introduce some limited moderated elements of their spiritual discipline into daily life, especially prayer, fasting, and sexual continence.
Even if the extremism of these “quixotic” ultra-austere monks could not be fully imitated, this angelic ideal took firm root in Eastern Christianity and gradually spread throughout the whole church.

The ideal life-style of the clergy had been proposed by Saint Paul in his first letter to Timothy (3:2-13):

. . . a bishop must be irreproachable, married only once, temperate, self-controlled, decent, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not aggressive, but gentle, not contentious, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, keeping his children under control with perfect dignity . . .
Similarly, deacons must be dignified, not deceitful, not addicted to drink, not greedy for sordid gain, holding fast to the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience . . . Deacons may be married only once and must manage their children and their households well . . .

The growing esteem for the monks’ ideals and life-style began to change the ideals of clergy life. Many bishops chose total abstinence and an austere life-style. Their example, in effect, began to be a reproach to others, even those living good and holy lives according to the counsels of Paul.
The traditions of the Eastern churches even today reflect this. Bishops must be selected from among monks or lesser clergy who live a monastic life style: however priests and deacons may be drawn from the married or celibate.
The radical, extreme ideals of the desert fathers and the Eastern monks are impossible dreams in that, except for a special grace of God, they are not humanly entirely attainable—but some still inspire, induce, and encourage us.


3 November 2019

Teamwork & Middle Management

What are some things a good management consultant would advise about church organization? Probably the need for better teamwork and more middle management.
   How big should a team be? Are there limits to how many players are needed to make an effective team?
   In basketball there are 5; volleyball and ice hockey, 6; baseball, 9; softball, 9-10; football and soccer, 11.
   In most situations where a group of skilled and creative people are involved in complex and diverse tasks, there are limits to the number of people a leader can effectively supervise, coordinate, and manage.
   In the Bible, a favorite number seems to be 12—the number of the tribes constituting Israel, the number of the apostles/close collaborators of Jesus.
   What about the church? Are there limits to how many people are needed to make an effective collaborative and coordinated working church team?
   On paper, the organizational structures of the Roman Catholic Church are parish, deanery, maybe vicariate, diocese, province, maybe regional, national, and international conferences, and Holy See.
   However, in practice, the effective structures are parish, diocese, and Holy See. Each of them is well defined in canon law and usage; the others, less so.
   Suppose that a dozen is a good number for a collaborative, coordinated working team in the church That would imply that:
   – a parish team should consist of the pastor and no more than 11 other leaders;
   – a deanery should consist of the dean and no more than 11 other pastors;
   – a vicariate (or a small diocese) should consist of the vicar (or bishop) and no more than 11 deans;
   – a large diocese should consist of the bishop and no more than 11 vicars.


   But, in practice, this is rarely the case.
   – Increasingly parishes have qualified lay personnel and deacons for support services and various ministries. They function best as a team led by the pastor.
   – With younger, less-experienced, and isolated pastors, there is need for a functioning intermediate organizational structure between parish and diocese and for closer supervision and leadership than the bishop and his staff can supply. That’s where deans fit in.
   – A dean should be an experienced pastor who coordinates, supervises, and leads his team of pastors in a particular area.
   – In a large diocese, the bishop may have auxiliary bishops or senior priests serve as vicars, each coordinating, supervising, and guiding a team of about a dozen deans.
   – There should be weekly working meetings of the pastors, deans, vicars, and bishop with their respective teams, and they should regularly personally supervise and visit each of their team members.
   – Additionally, everyone should have a current position description providing his/her position title, reporting relationship, basic role, and a prioritized list of principal responsibilities.
   Each person’s carrying out of these responsibilities should be evaluated at least annually. Such performance evaluations should be a basis for decisions about remuneration and promotion, as well as retention or termination.
   Successful businesses, organizations, armies, and states do these things. Church work shouldn’t be incompatible with good teamwork and management.


13 October 2019

Clergy Retirement Implications

It was a great surprise when Pope Benedict XVI declared in 2013 that he was resigning his office, explaining that “. . . I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.”
This unusual act challenged common understanding of the nature of the papal office. By this decision, Pope Benedict established that accepting election as Bishop of Rome is not necessarily a commitment for the rest of one’s life.
With this decision, the relatively recent practice in the Church of resigning one’s office and retiring now extended to all ranks of clergy in the Church—deacons, priests, and bishops—without exception.
Resignation or retirement presumes a separability between the person and the office the person holds. Traditions notwithstanding, the acceptance of election or ordination is no longer considered an irrevocable bonding of the person and the office, lasting forever or until death.
Further, since resignation and retirement are now expected and required at a certain set age for most clergy, in effect they are being ordained for a set, predetermined period of time in the first place.
And, it would follow that, if they are being ordained for a set, predetermined period of time in the first place, the set period of time could be shorter then up to the fixed retirement age.
For example, religious congregations of brothers or sisters, monks or nuns, have set periods of limited or temporary vows before making a permanent commitment.
Many other occupations have something similar—e.g. military services, civil services, and educational institutions.
For all, there is no stigma attached to completing an agreed-upon term of service and declining to renew it for another.

Regarding offices or jobs in general, usually someone may accept the offer of a job, make a contractual commitment to it, perform it for better or for worse, and resign it or be released or dismissed from it.
In practice, generally all jobs are undertaken for a set, limited period of time, even though they may be classified as “temporary” or “permanent”.
In some occupations resignation or retirement presumes a willingness to return to service if called upon in a situation of emergency and need.
In some occupations and situations of emergency or need, a qualified person can be deputed to assume a responsibility or office on an ad hoc or temporary basis.
How many general employment policies can be, could be, and should be applied to clergy office holders? For example:
– “Temporary” (set, short-term) ordinations—for, e.g., three, five, or ten years—as well as “permanent” ones?
– Clear, agreed-upon clergy position descriptions, detailing prioritized current work responsibilities?
– Probationary, ordinary (usually annual), and extraordinary performance evaluations of clergy?
– Immediate work supervisors or superiors with responsibilities for the regular monitoring of clergy performance?
– A clear procedure for honorable and dishonorable discharge or termination of clergy service?
– minimum period for investment in retirement benefits?
Could even Jesus have made a living if he hadn’t done a good job?


6 October 2019

Vanishing Clergymen

Fifty-two years ago, two years after the conclusion of Vatican Council II, an article by Msgr. Ivan Illich was published in The Critic magazine. It was entitled “The Vanishing Clergyman”.
Like much of Illich’s reflections, talks, and publications, it was way ahead of its time, almost prophetic. It was also startling, controversial, and criticized by very many of its readers.
It can’t be summarized any more than a few bars of only one of its melodies can summarize a concerto. Illich’s clear, tightly-packed, and well-organized exposition is a meal no slight tasting can fully imagine.
From the moment I first read this article it was unforgettable. Re-reading it now, I marvel at how prescient it was and find new depths of insight and meaning in it.
Some have misunderstood Msgr. Illich, thinking him to be an eccentric genius, a wild man whose biased extremism was destroying the church—but, his thought and his work faithfully echoed the spirit of John XXIII in convoking the second Vatican Council and of Paul VI in reconvening it and patiently and perseveringly guiding its implementation.
A brilliant thinker and reader of the signs of the times, Msgr. Illich had little patience with head-in-the-sand reactions to them. He spared no punches in suggesting courses of action to address them from a prospective of deep faith.
Of course, he also knowingly and intentionally wanted to rattle his readers out of their lethargy and hesitation—e.g., the striking title of his essay (which did focus, in particular, on ministry)
It has taken half a century for many of the analyses, ideas, and proposals he advanced, long treated as marginal and extreme, finally to start becoming matters of serious mainstream consideration.

Here are a few excerpts of his thoughts (their selection reflects my own bias):
– the Church’s institutional bureaucracy is in need of radical structural reform;
– the relationships between sacramental ministry and full-time personnel, between ministry and celibacy, and between ministry and theological education need to be re-examined;
– the post-conciliar growth of the Vatican is leading to an ungovernable bureaucratic maze, overwhelmingly staffed by clerical specialists, members of the aristocracy of the only feudal power left in the Western world;
– in the entire Church, a clergy survives partly because priestly service at the altar is united with clerical power and privilege;
– the Church needs men deeply faithful, living a life of insecurity and risk, free from hierarchical control, working for the eventual “dis-establishment” of the Church from within;
– the era of religious congregations may be over . . . an analogous movement is at work among the clergy;
– an adult layman, ordained to the ministry, will preside over the Christian community of the future. The ministry will be an exercise of leisure rather than a job;
– the current ecclesiastical imagination is still inadequate for defining this new function—the lay priest;
– the union of the clerical state, holy orders, and celibacy in the life of the Church has confused the understanding of their individual realities; (and above all)
– the Spirit, continually re-creating the Church, can be trusted.


9 June 2019

Standing Ready and Waiting

“How do you like being retired,” is a question often asked of me, and one I find difficult to answer. For better or for worse, being retired has been hard—harder, in a way, then any work assignment I ever had before.
I always embraced whatever was asked of me as a priest and whatever assignment I received. Our spiritual formation stressed this, to accept whatever was asked of us by religious superiors as the will of God.
But, humanly speaking (how else does one speak!) the change from one day to the next, from exercising a significant role in many people’s lives and bearing multiple responsibilities to an almost total absence of responsibilities is a challenging kind of “freedom”.
It’s also wasteful. Curiously, the notion of retirement was introduced in a time in which there was a relative abundance of priests and where the priest usually served until death. By the time it began to be implemented there was a newer situation of increasing scarcity of priests in ministry.
In some ways, the legislation of our contemporary U.S. civil society is more nuanced than our canonical practice. No one can be retired involuntarily merely and solely because of chronological age; termination of employment requires adequate cause—e.g., poor performance, substantial diminished or in-capacity, violation of rules, etc. . .
Of course, the retired priest is retired in the sense that he is not given any assigned responsibility (job) by his religious superiors; however he freely may seek and negotiate his services on a voluntary basis with a local parish or religious institution.
If one’s work is only a job, retirement may be welcomed. If one’s work has become one’s life, retirement may be a kind of death.

There is a dual aspect to the vocation and life of a priest: to be a man of the Church and a man of God.
The man of the Church, the employee entrusted with and exercising important responsibilities in the ecclesiastical institution, can retire or be retired.
The man of God, the servant of the Lord bearing witness of love in the midst of the world and the community of his disciples, cannot retire or be retired.
God may use our work to achieve his purposes, but all our plans, projects, and strivings are not necessary to the great plan of his providential love and mercy.
John Milton wrote a very beautiful sonnet on his blindness. For me, it’s also a moving spiritual reflection on being retired:

When I consider how my light is spent,
E’re half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide
Lodg’d with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide:
“Doth God exact day-labour, light deny’d?”
I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his milde yoak, they serve him best. His State
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’re Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and waite.”


19 May 2019

Split Personality

It’s not a pathology, but there is a dual aspect to the life of a priest—he is both a man of God and a man of the church.
The vocation to priesthood itself has this same dual aspect—the priest candidate is called both by God and by the church.
During my college days, I wrestled long and hard with whether God was calling me to be a priest. My problem was whether I was good enough for such a job. Could I be a man of God? It took me a long time to acknowledge to myself that with the grace of God it could be possible.
Later, in the major seminary the call of the church was much simpler and easier. I was invited, called to enter the clerical state—the “civil service” of the church—by the seminary authorities through the ceremony of tonsure. Subsequent calls to receive minor and then major orders with successive ceremonies of ordination culminated in priesthood.
Fidelity to these two calls and these two commitments is a constant challenge and a continuing vital tension for any priest.
To be a man of God means to be a holy, a sacred or “separated” person, not living by worldly values or ways. (In the Western Church, this is understood to involve a renouncement of marriage and family by a permanent commitment to celibacy.)
To be a man of the church means to be a public officer of the institutional church with a certain degree of authority and responsibilities for leadership, teaching and administration.
Faithfulness to the promptings of the Spirit may strain the priest’s relations with the community he serves or with ecclesiastical authorities.
Conversely, the priest’s solidarity with the local Christian community or ecclesiastical authorities may conflict with the promptings of the Spirit.

It’s not an “either-or” but a “both-and” situation. God spare us from a priest who serves people and institutions well, but not the Lord! And, a good priest may be considered a holy man, but he can’t neglect carrying out effectively the responsibilities of public office in the church.
An often neglected aspect to responding to the call of God is that it is a continuing, never-ending challenge of discernment. It’s not that God changes his mind but that his plan for us may have many twists and turns, up and downs, and successes and failures (due to our blindness, deafness, and insensitivity to his providential action in our lives).
The call of the church generally presumes a “death till us part” type of commitment-unless, of course, the priest is disabled, retired, or severely disciplined by a kind of discharge or “reduction to the lay state.”
But, the call of God isn’t quite the same. For sure, our response to the call of God must be a forever commitment—but from the merely human point of view it can appear very changeable indeed. Even if it involves walking through the valley of the shadow of death, it’s still the way to go.
The church may limit or revoke its call to serve, but, as the gospel hymn says, “I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back.”
When all is said and done, the real issue for the priest—or anybody—is not duality but priority.
No matter how unexpected the promptings of the Spirit—whether leading us into or out of ministry or anywhere else—no turning back!

12 May 2019
(Developed in part from
“Guru vs. Cleric” published in
CNEWA World, 28:4, July 2002)

Guru vs. Cleric

In Ethiopia’s ancient Orthodox Church, the traditional way for a young man to prepare to become a priest was to live among a small group of disciples with a wise, holy, and experienced priest. The lifestyle for all was poor indeed: living quarters were often tiny, individual wattle and mud huts; classrooms, the shade of large trees.
The disciple — the seminarian — lived no better, if not worse, than his neighbors. Over many years, he learned by heart the words of sacred scripture and the prayers of the liturgy. Finally, when ready, he was ordained and would serve another small village like the one in which he grew up.
Ethiopia’s younger Catholic Church follows Western ways of priestly formation. Candidates for the priesthood live and pray together in the seminary residence of their diocese or religious order. Most attend formal classes at a common philosophy-theology institute for six or seven years after completing their secondary education.
The seminary residences are modest by Western standards, but modern and comfortable by those of rural Ethiopia. A challenge for the newly-ordained Catholic priest is returning to live among the simple people he came from, after becoming used to a more affluent lifestyle during his professional education.
These two different ways of formation with their different emphases could serve as symbols for two different polarities in the life of every priest. There is a dual aspect to priesthood — the priest must be both a man of God and a man of the church.

The very vocation to priesthood has this same dual aspect — the seminarian is called both by God and by the church.
During my college days, I wrestled long and hard with whether God was calling me to be a priest and whether I was good enough for such a job.
Later, in the major seminary, the rector called me to enter the clerical state — the “civil service” of the church — and to orders, culminating in priesthood.
Fidelity to these two calls is a vital tension for the priest. To be a man of God means to be a holy, a “separated” man, not living by or succumbing to worldly values or ways. To be a churchman means to be a public officer of the church with responsibilities of leadership, teaching, and administration.
Faithfulness to the demands of the Spirit may strain the priest’s relations with the community he serves or with ecclesiastical authorities. Conversely, the priest’s solidarity with the local Christian community or ecclesiastical authority may conflict with the promptings of the Spirit.
It’s not an “either-or” but a “both-and” situation. God spare us from a priest who serves people and institutions well, but not the Lord! And, a good, holy priest may become a great saint, but he can’t neglect carrying out effectively the responsibilities of public office in the church.
A priest lives with great expectations — the church’s, the people’s, and the Lord’s.


(Published in
CNEWA World, 28:4, July 2002)