USD Magazine, Spring 1995

Father Pachence agrees. "We've been working on helping lay people see that when they take on new roles, it's not that they are just help– ing Father because he doesn't have any priest helpers, but that they are doing ministry they are called to do because they are baptized." As priests have updated

Priests, too, have been sorting through the changes in the church and revising their own roles during this pivotal period in modem Catholicism. Before Vatican II, a priest was expected to be the jack-of-all– trades for his parish. "A priest was trained in theology, so in the seminary he would study mainly sacred

their perceptions about parishioners, lay people have revised their outdated expectations of the clergy. There used to be a philosophy that priests were available always. "If your family was having a crisis at 8 o'clock at night, you didn't give it a sec– ond thought to go up to the rectory and ask to see the priest," Father French says. Today, the church recognizes that the clergy have limita– tions. Rectories have introduced office hours, for instance, so parishioners now make an appointment with their priest. Sometimes he isn't available, which is a very new concept. Sometimes priests aren't available simply because there are fewer priests in the church's work force. In some sparsely pop– ulated areas of the United States, "priestless parishes" have developed in which a lay person runs all aspects of the parish during the week and a priest travels to the church on Sunday to celebrate Mass and any other sacraments that are requested. Or, the priest may consecrate bread and wine, which is used later in communion services led by nuns or other parishioners. Metropolitan areas are not immune to the shortage either. Father Barry Vinyard '68 was called to service recently by a fellow priest in San Diego who needed surgery. Father Vinyard and a retired priest filled in for their colleague at the Saturday and Sunday services during what they expected to be a four– week convalescence, and the parishioners covered weekday worship by holding communion services. "The folks at that church didn't mind having communion services for three or four weeks while their priest got back on his feet because they had the promise that another priest would be arriving on Sunday to say Mass," says Father Vinyard, asso– ciate chaplain of campus ministry at USD. "But what happens if there is rarely a priest?"

scripture, moral theology, dogmatic theology and how to give homilies," says Father Michael French, priest and psychologist at The Christian Institute for Psychotherapy and Training in San Diego and a USD visiting assistant professor of psychology. "Then he would be assigned to a parish where that would be the least amount of his work. He would be administrator of the parish, he would run the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts, he would run the religious education program and he would be in charge of the maintenance around the parish plant." This contributed to a strict authoritarian structure in the parishes: The priest was in charge of everything and made all of the decisions. After Vatican II, a more egalitarian structure was emphasized, and priests began to share the work with members of the laity. Where priests were once expected to be the finan– cial agents and make investment decisions for their parishes, for example, finance councils are now required. For the majority of the priests, this was welcome assistance. A few of the priests struggled with this new style of running a parish because it was in direct conflict with their many years of training and practice. Most theologians and religious, however, celebrate these changes. Not only do they enable lay people to answer their own calling within the church, but they permit the priests to focus more of their work on pastoral, rather than administra– tive, concerns. Even so, there is still much work to do in educating the laity about how they perceive their expanded roles. "If you ask most people why these changes are taking place, they will say, 'Because there is a terrible shortage of priests and nuns,"' Father French notes. "That's not the real reason. It may be a contributing reason, but it's not the real reason."

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