Response to Mark Fischer, Brad Hinze, and Gail Polhaus
On the “Consultative Only” Role of Parish Pastoral Councils
William A. Clark, SJ, Holy Cross College

Brad Hinze has pointed out that the weight of Mark Fischer’s argument for “consultative-only” pastoral councils falls on the practical side. Brad has himself provided a more detailed theological argument to justify a different approach. Gail Polhaus’s presentation of the results of the VOTF survey put the whole discussion into the context of a church seeking accountability in the wake of a horrendous failure of both structures and understandings of authority. Altogether, and especially because of the presence of the VOTF piece, these papers demonstrate to me the way in which seemingly minor practical details have in our time become the loci of enormous, even revolutionary, struggles in the church.

The Spirit is the source of authority in the local church community: both Mark and Brad point this out; Mark with regard to the difference between legislation and wisdom, Brad with regard to the presence of authority within the whole community. But American culture, not to mention Canon Law, still demands a legal foundation, at least for when “push comes to shove,” as indeed it has done in the abuse crisis; which is why this is also a legitimate concern for VOTF, represented here by Gail.

So the question is whether this legal foundation should stress the ministerial authority of the pastor (as Mark’s paper suggests), or the baptismal authority of the community itself (as Brad would have it). Notice that, since all authority is from the Spirit, these two are not ideally opposed to one another; the question is about what sense of proportion and order are conveyed by the legal structure.

Although some of Mark’s practical concerns are well-taken (freedom for pastoral leadership; clarity of structure and mandate; administrative efficiency), one wonders how “consultative only” can convey the true depth of the sacramentally-based spiritual authority of the community, when it is part of a system which can still create and destroy whole communities at will, and which offers as consolation the people’s “radical power of shaking the dust from their feet as they exit.” Brad’s counterproposal may present similar conundrums with regard to the position of ordained ministry: just what will become of the authority of the pastors when councils are deliberative? What sorts of mechanisms will help ensure genuine discernment, rather than political maneuvering, within a council? If we move in the direction of communal discernment, what safeguards do we have against the splintering that has been the lot of so many Protestant churches over the last 400 years? In the end, though, Gail’s representation of VOTF here helps me to look beyond these very real questions to another reality: our pastors have not been “like Socrates and Jesus,” and we have serious questions about whether we are capable of producing such pastors, especially within a system that does not require any accountability of them. And so we must find ways of demonstrating to our communities, through their very structure, that such accountability can be required.

One of the ways in which I, personally, would like to see these questions pursued would be through attention to very early ecclesiology, when both the community’s infusion by the Spirit and the bishop / pastor’s crucial role in the maintenance of unity and authenticity were deeply experienced by the church as a whole. It strikes me, for example, that Ignatius of Antioch’s strong position on the role of the bishop has much less to do with the current popular idea of the bishop as CEO and his priests as branch managers than with an overall spiritual authority within the community that is “summed up,” guarded, and enabled by the office of the pastor.

Ultimately, then, it seems to me that this question is about much, much more than parish councils, but the whole relationship of parishioners and pastors. The kind of “being-and-acting in communion” for which Brad calls will only be possible when trust has been restored. This won’t be guaranteed, but at least assisted by, a legal framework within which a genuine sense of mutuality is not just a happy accident, but something which is expected by the systematic arrangements themselves.