PATERFAMILIAS =/- THE NUTS AND BOLTS

If you want to get a round of applause in a gathering of priests, make the comment that the Church should get into the habit of hiring someone else to do all of the day to day work of the parish leaving the priest to be able to focus on sacraments and other ministry. Indeed some places experience that already where there is a grave shortage of priests. A person who is not a priest runs the day to day business of the parish and a priest comes in to pray the Mass and here confessions on a circuit. (They are nicknamed sacramental machines) But the idea that a priest be relieved of the “business” end of a parish is gravely flawed.

The first problem is that legally and canonically a pastor is responsible for the parish. So even if a priest hired someone to be, say, a business manager and does not keep an adequate eye on him and something goes wrong guess who the bishop (who is the pastor of the diocese) is going after – and perhaps more importantly guess who is going to be sued. It is in the very structure of the Church as a canonical and legal entity that this would happen. So to say that a pastor should be assigned to a parish but be relieved of all the non-ministry concerns is impossible without a major restructuring or at least exempt status in worldwide law.

But that is not even the most important part. The “business end of things” IS part of the priest’s ministry. I will grant you that the regulations and paper work in our day are becoming outrageously complicated and it is near if not completely impossible for a priest to any longer run a large parish without assistants such as a business manager and a couple of secretaries (at least in the U.S.) But he is the “father” and pastor of this community and as such he should be finally responsible for the goings on within the family.

Now, I will admit that I actually enjoy the nuts and bolts along side of the spiritual. And at times the nuts and bolts take up entirely too much of my quality time. But I imagine that is the case in everyone’s life and you learn to deal with it. The nuts and bolts are not a completely separate category from the spiritual. That too is a terrible misconception. All human activity has a spiritual component and it ALL works together for our salvation. It is not simply a necessary evil but an essential part of humanity and therefore an essential part of salvation. We as a people already compartmentalize our lives to a far too great extent separating what I do at work, home, or school, from what I do at church – a huge error in Christian living and baptismal calling. We should not further that misconception as a Church.