Parish Councils: Pastoral and Financial
Given to all pastors by Archbishop Schnurr in September 2023, Parish Councils: Pastoral and Finance examines consultation through parish councils in the wake of Vatican II, as a result of the Council’s emphasis on active participation of the laity in the life of the Church. It offers an in-depth vision of the origins and development of these councils, including the theological and canonical reasoning behind them, as well as a detailed look at their functions, operations, and relationships to other elements of the parish.
Resources related to Beacons of Light
“Every Family of Parishes will have a unified Pastoral Council, with other relevant consultative groups for specific areas of parish life.”
The pastoral council is the primary consultative voice of the members of the Family of Parishes. The members of the council foster discernment and dialogue among the clergy, pastoral staff, and members of the Family, sharing the responsibility of leadership as they advise the pastor on important matters of the spiritual, social, and temporal needs of the Family of Parishes.
For more: https://pathway.catholicaoc.org/lessons/p1-leadership
The key function of the pastoral council is to make recommendations to the pastor on matters of pastoral importance, developing a pastoral plan under the leadership and authority of the pastor.
The role of the finance council is to advise the pastor and the pastoral council regarding the financial implications of their respective policy decisions. The finance council also prepares budgets in accord with the policy and priority decisions of the pastor and the parish.
A unified pastoral council should be formed as early as possible, providing sufficient time for members to become familiar with their role and with one another prior to advising the pastor on any substantial decisions. The formation of a unified council is one of the milestones for Phase 1 of the Leadership principle.
For more: https://pathway.catholicaoc.org/topic/2-1-form-a-family-pastoral-council
Four potential models have been identified for the formation of a unified Family pastoral council:
Each parish of the Family of Parishes should have representatives on the unified council. A parish’s representatives can best speak to the pastoral needs of their specific parish but can also contribute to building up pastoral collaboration among all the parishes in the Family of Parishes.
The pastoral council provides advice to the pastor and the pastoral staff in the development of ministry goals and of programs that carry out the Family’s pastoral plan. The council evaluates progress toward the plan, recommending priorities according to the spiritual, social, and temporal needs of the Family.
Most parishes use a combination of open nominations with a period of prayerful discernment to select members, who serve a three-year term to ensure effective representation over time. It is important that there is an intentional value toward representation of diverse ethnic and cultural groups, gender and age of members, and tenure in the parish.
Typically, the pastoral council consists of six to fourteen members in addition to ex officio members (the pastor and parochial vicars).
"How necessary pastoral councils are!...The flexibility of the norm permits the adaptation considered apt for the concrete circumstances, as for example, in the case of multiple parishes entrusted to a parish priest, or those within pastoral units: it is possible in this cases to establish a single pastoral council for several parishes.”
Read more about the 2020 Vatican Instruction The pastoral conversion of the Parish community in the service of the evangelising mission of the Church.
“At the present time, the Archdiocese has discerned that the model of Families of Parishes under the leadership of a single pastor will be the new and normative form of pastoral organization within the archdiocese with the goal that the Family of Parishes will become a canonical parish in the course of the five years between July 1, 2022 and June 30, 2027. Therefore, the Family Pastoral Council will become the parish pastoral council of the new parish when the parishes in the Family merge or are suppressed and a new parish is established.”
