New vision ahead for pastoral councils 

During the COVID pandemic, many parish councils within the Archdiocese of Baltimore stopped meeting in person – or at all – even though the need to help the parish thrive was as vital as ever. 

Julie St. Croix, director of the Office of Parish Renewal within the archdiocese’s Institute for Evangelization, noted that coming out of that experience, pastors wanted to reimagine what a pastoral council should be and do. 

A parish pastoral council, required by canon law, primarily exists to reflect about the needs of the parish, discern about options and make recommendations to the pastor. 

Pastoral councils are not supposed to be a board with meetings conducted according to Robert’s Rules of Order, St. Croix said. “The pastoral council should really be a prayerful, discerning group that is very much guided by the Holy Spirit.” 

That requires listening in a synodal way to those in the parish. “I think we have examples of parishes where pastoral council meetings (involved) ministry heads just coming in reporting on what they’re doing without sort of taking a step back and saying, ‘What is the Lord calling us to do in our neighborhood as our parish?’,” she said. 

Pope Francis, in his encyclical “The Joy of the Gospel,” noted that the local parish is uniquely situated to be the presence of the Church and its outreach in the local community, with a core identity to evangelize. 

The Office of Parish Renewal works with parish leadership to implement the core mission priorities Archbishop William E. Lori outlined in his pastoral letter, “A Light Brightly Visible” in 2015 and the follow-ups in 2021 and 2025. To help parishes, the office prepared guidelines for “Discerning Pastoral Councils” that include frequently asked questions about how to form a council and keep it going. 

“They’re guidelines, not policies,” St. Croix said. “We’re trying to give the pastor and the leadership some flexibility to kind of shape this according to their parish, but really to build on this call to be a synodal listening church.” 

Pastoral council members should be mature Christians who reflect the diversity of their parish and tackle adapting the Church’s outreach to contemporary challenges – from artificial intelligence to the needs of the latest generation to addressing parishioner “loyalty” when people feel free to worship where they are best nourished in the faith. The council must listen, advise the pastor and always focus on helping to form missionary disciples in the parish. 

One suggestion is not to have a parish council election, which is especially difficult in large parishes where parishioners may not know everyone. Instead, the selection process focuses on discernment of who might be called to serve and whether that person will be a good fit. Such a plan harkens back to the early Church when pastoral advisers were selected, often by lot, from those who had shown attention to the community and a good reputation. 

“The key thing is you want people who understand … that it’s their baptismal call to go make disciples themselves,” and not just focus on the kinds of ministry the parish offers, St. Croix said. 

Father Gerard Francik, pastor of Sacred Heart in Glyndon, said the Office of Parish Renewal has been helpful since the parish did not have a functioning pastoral council when he arrived. Kellie Reynolds, one of the Emmaus Team members in the Office of Parish Renewal, gave presentations on the new vision for pastoral councils versus one with bylaws and a constitution.  

Reynolds also conducted a sacred purpose workshop for the new pastoral council and other key parishioners to brainstorm on where the parish should be going. “That was really helpful, too, in gathering people together and harnessing their energy and also building that enthusiasm as a parish,” the pastor said. Father Francik and Reynolds continue to meet monthly to help him retain that focus. 

St. Croix noted that all parishes want to be – and most claim to be – welcoming, but many times that is based on the popularity or the charisms of the pastor. Under the archdiocese’s model, pastors serve a parish six to 12 years. “If the attraction is all about the personality of the pastor, then people are going to follow elsewhere. The idea is instead that the culture has to be ingrained in the community,” she said. 

It is important for parishes to foster connections among parishioners and neighbors who are not part of the parish. Creating small groups within the community helps support people as they walk their path. 

“That’s why a great conversation for a parish council to have is: ‘Why am I loyal to this church?’ ‘Why do I keep coming back?’ And we’ll hear those stories and then say, ‘How can we amplify that?’ ” 

At a time when people can feel more connected to their gym than their church – even getting a call when they miss a workout – she asked why church couldn’t feel the same way. What if, when someone missed Mass, a parishioner reached out to ask if everything was OK? 

She acknowledges that the office works with some parishes and pastors that have had bad experiences with pastoral councils in the past that were guided more by rules than mission. She is able to tell pastors, “This is actually going to be a group that isn’t going to tell you what to do. It’s going to prayerfully discern and give you some recommendations that you have the option to implement or not. … It takes a surrender and a vulnerability to have a kind of council like this and then to really engage with them and really see what the Holy Spirit brings.”  

For more information on Discerning Pastoral Councils,  visit bit.ly/aob-councils 

Email Christopher Gunty at editor@CatholicReview.org 

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