the parish councils

Writing about “augmenting and later supplanting membership in the councils” presupposes a lot of things which this little space in our parish weekly paper cannot fully accommodate all at once. When we speak of “councils” in our parish we are referring to a gigantic structure consisting of probably more than 150 persons and divided into 3 classifications as to function and expertise, namely the Parish Pastoral Council, the Parish Apostolic Council and the Parish Finance Council. For purposes of this article I think it would suffice to explain in passing their function and their relationship to each other.

THE PARISH PASTORAL COUNCIL
The Parish Pastoral Council is the “planning” Council. It has three functions, namely: “to investigate aspects of a pastoral situation, to ponder and reflect on them, and lastly to reach a conclusion and recommend this to the parish priest.” As a planning council they are called to identify and reflect on the parish situation, compare that situation with the ideal presented by the Word and the call of the Church, deliberating on how they can bring change, and finally recommend solutions to the parish priest. It should provide the vision that would act as the rudder and the compass to the parish from which all her activities, decisions and priorities are based, measured and examined.
Pastoral Councils by the nature of their task avoid the nitty-gritty details of every parish event by “staying on top” of it. Its scope is limited to major pastoral issues so that they can concentrate on the best response to a pastoral situation in the parish and chart its growth.
By the nature of their function as a planning council membership demands that they represent the parish and its concerns and provide it with the genius of practical wisdom. This is not just a technical know-how but more precisely a wisdom that can only be had when a person is immersed in the situation of the parish and at the same time see it from afar vis-avis the challenge of God’s word.

THE PARISH APOSTOLIC COUNCIL
Following the Tri-council model, our parish has the so called Parish Apostolic Council. This council is commonly known as the “implementing” council in contrast to and in aid of the Pastoral Council which is the “planning” council. It implements visions and plans set by the Parish Pastoral Council providing at times the “meat” that would make these doable. It also coordinates the various activities of the parish and the various religious organizations and movements of the same.
The Parish Apostolic Council does the dirty work of implementation. By the nature of its function it provides the nitty-gritty details of a program, its day to day activities and follows it through the various phases of its implementation. To implement the various programs of the parish it is composed of 4 major committees namely the committees or worship, education, service, and the youth. These committees have various sub-committees working under them ensuring that activities and programs are implemented. To further aid this, the working committees of the Apostolic Council are duplicated in each barangay and to ensure further that the day to day function is followed through, the office of the Pastoral Secretariat was established, composed of desks for the various committees of the same council and a secretariat coordinator to coordinate their various and varied activities.
Some parishes may have found the Apostolic Council in their parishes a duplication of the function of the Pastoral Council, and in a sense quite redundant. But I can only speak from my experience in the parish of Jaro. Without the Apostolic Council, the Pastoral Council which has the all important task of charting the vision and gaols of the parish would lose its focus. Take away the Apostolic Council and you will have a Pastoral Council that would spend most of its time talking about fiestas, processions, novenas, mass sponsors, the food to be served during the Parish Christmas Party, flower arrangements and what have you in the day to day life of the parish. To be a truly planning council, for all practical purposes, it has to be discerning and to be discerning it has to be more reflective and one can only do that when the agenda is cleared of trivia. Thus it has to establish an implementing council that would concern itself with the details of implementation and which would be answerable, so to say, to it regarding implementation of programs in consonance with the vision it has set. Also one has to take note that the various concerns in the parish have to be coordinated. A council concerned with the various and sometimes endless parish apostolate has to act as a clearing house that would coordinate activities and align them to the vision set by the Pastoral Council.

THE FINANCE COUNCIL
The Finance council by its very name concerns itself with the logistics of the parish program, making priorities in the budget and raising funds. It works closely with the parish priest for the administration and stewardship of the temporal goods of the parish. While the Parish Finance Council does not have decision making authority, consultation is at the heart of the decision-making process – sharing
information, listening, contributing to the discussion, and promoting consensus. Thus, it is important that members do not only have the know-how of finances and its administration. More importantly they should have a love for the Church and its apostolate and develop a thorough understanding of the parish’s mission, goals, people and other resources.

THE PROGRAM STATEMENT
From this understanding of the role of the councils what does the program mean when it says that after three years membership in the Councils shall be augmented and later even supplant the existing members with emerging leaders coming from the BEC cells “so as to make these Councils truly representative of the parish?”
First, it should be noted that the present membership in the various councils today are appointed ad interim, that is, in a less than permanent capacity. Based on the documents provided by the Archdiocesan Pastoral Council, membership in the council should be representative of the parish and done through elections. This could not be done however because the pastoral programs though written on paper never materialized as envisioned thus postponing the formation of a Council truly representative of the parish. Our situation is such since three years ago when Msgr. Ramon Masculino Jr. took over from the former parish priests. When our new parish priest took over, the term of the Interim Parish Pastoral Council was further extended in view of the soon to be implemented parish program. This arrangement that whenever a new parish priest comes in, he merely extends the term of an interim council cannot continue especially when diocesan policies regarding tenure of parish priests are more and more defined and implemented. The Pastoral Council, though in principle is co-terminus with the parish priest, provides, in actual practice, the stability which any pastoral program needs. The present council, thus, views it as its most important task to sign its term of existence so as to make way for a more permanent and a truly representative parish pastoral council.
Second, Pastoral Councils, to my mind can only be understood and can only be to true to its nature when it is developed from bottom up. As I have noted above, part of the misunderstanding regarding the relationship of the Parish Pastoral Council and the Parish Apostolic Council, specifically on the seeming redundancy of the latter, comes from the misunderstanding of their diverse and complementary functions in the life of the parish. As a Pastoral Council it has the task of seeing the bigger picture of the parish unimpeded so to say by a very particular concern (particular concerns pertain to the Apostolic Council). As a discerning council it must have the first hand experience of the parish situation and how the parish program benefits the parishioners even in the Barangays, and its over-all impact in the parish. Thus, a member, to be truly representative must be immersed in the barangays and is a beneficiary of the program, that is, one who has gone through the slow process of evangelization, education in the faith, growth in community, and empowered by firsthand knowledge, learning and experience. The Pastoral Council is a Council of Discerners. Their ability to discern and reflect is crucial, but equally crucial is the “what” of that discernment. A member should have both.
To my mind, therefore, the reluctance to adopt the tri-council model is not per se a reluctance to adopt the seemingly redundant function of the Parish Apostolic Council. It is actually a reluctance to put in place a real and functioning Parish Pastoral “planning/discerning” Council. When you have a group of discerners somebody in that group would have to give up his/her “seat” of wisdom as the “only” wisdom!
Thus, it is important that Basic Ecclesial Communities have to be developed first and allowed to grow. From this basic (small) communities leaders would emerge which in the future will form our permanent (in contrast to interim) Pastoral Council. It is not our intention to totally abolish the old council for the time being. I personally would like to adhere to the slower but surer process that allows change to gradually take place in the parish at large vis-avis the changes that gradually take shape in the small communities of faith in our parish. To induce it before its proper time would only mean going back to the old ways of creating facades without substance.

CONCLUSION
As I reflected on the program restarting the formation of Basic Ecclesial Communities in our parish the passage in scriptures which caught my attention is the passage in Mark’s first chapter and verse, “Here begins the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” (Mk. 1:1) In other versions of the bible it says, “the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, Son of God.” In a world that is becoming materialistic and individualistic in its attitude and outlook, in a world where man and the majority rather than God becomes the measure of morality, in a church which could no longer convince even its members of the truth which it holds from God, in a church that can no longer communicate the call of the gospel in this ever increasing cacophony of voices that drowns out the truth of Jesus Christ, one cannot help but rethink the position that we are still a catholic nation. If Catholicism is equated with the number of candles lighted, expenditures made during processions, and attendance in Aguinaldo masses, then Catholicism in this part of the world is phenomenal. But are devotions and show of piety the measure of Christianity?
To adopt the BEC program is to accept the reality that Christianity is fast becoming a minority. We have come to that point when we have diluted so much the Word and Truth of Jesus, one can only have an inkling of its original taste. Gone are the days of long processions, of those days when the church would and could rally the people to take upon themselves convincingly the moral stand of the Church as the moral stand of Jesus. We have to go back to the basics of evangelization, going way, way back to that time when Christianity was nothing but pockets of small communities here and there united in the teachings of the apostles. We have to re-plant the “mustard seed,” of Jesus, the smallest of all seeds, in our parishes, where these small communities of faith would develop and grow thoroughly convinced and truly living the values of the gospel. To embark on this program is to accept humbly the reality presented to us by Mark, that we are once more in the beginnings of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Son of God. Only then can we truly become a community of faith . . . again!