The Appointment of Lay Pastors

Key Facts:

• Diocese of Upper Michigan is experiencing a priest shortage to the point that even assigning priests and deacons to two parishes the bishop is unable provide a cleric for every parish.
• The bishop has decided to appoint lay administrators to some parishes and assign experienced priests to oversee three parishes.
• The bishop grants certain faculties to the lay administrators usually reserved to clergy: presiding at weekday communion services and on Sundays when no priest is available, serving as official witnesses at weddings, administering Baptism, preaching at liturgy, serving as chief teachers of faith and morality in their parish, and offering spiritual counsel in lieu of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. In dire emergencies, lay administrators will be authorized to anoint the sick.

Can the bishop delegate these faculties to lay ministers?

Questions:

Some of these faculties are commonly delegated to lay ministers, some are not; the areas in question for me are preaching, anointing of the sick and the “official” practice of spiritual counsel rather than the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Pastoral Issues:

Balancing the rights and needs of the Christian Faithful and the right and need of the Church to protect the stability and integrity of the institution. It appears that the bishop has carefully considered how to provide for the needs of his people without crossing the official line between ordained clergy and non-ordained ministry. Keeping that line distinct in the minds/eyes of the lay administrators and their parishioners will be critical.

If, as many commentators suggest, the decline in ordained vocations is a result of a shift in communal values (e.g. there is little encouragement or support for young men to consider the priesthood from their families/friends), will the laity become so accustomed to and comfortable with the occasional celebration of Eucharist and other sacraments that they will lose any sense of the need for ordained clergy?

What are the issues/consequences of ministry that can be hired and fired? Priests take a vow of obedience to their bishop but the laity do not. How would that impact the governance of the local church by the bishop?

Pertinent Canons:

• Governance
  • Canon 129 - §1. Those who have received sacred orders are qualified, according to the norm of the prescripts of the law, for the power of governance, which exists in the Church by divine institution and is also called the power of jurisdiction.
    • §2. Lay members of the Christian faithful can cooperate in the exercise of this same power according to the norm of law.
  • Canon 274 – §1. Only clerics can obtain offices for whose exercise the power of orders of the power of ecclesiastical governance is required.
• Lay Participation in Parochial Pastoral Care
  • Canon 150 – An office which entails the full care of souls and for whose fulfillment the exercise of the priestly order is required cannot be conferred validly on one who is not yet a priest.
  • Canon 517 - §2. If, because of a lack of priests, the diocesan bishop has decided that participation in the exercise of the pastoral care of a parish is to be entrusted to a deacon, to another person who is not a priest, or to a community of persons, he is to appoint some priest who, provided with the powers and faculties of a pastor, is to direct the pastoral care.
• Liturgical Functions
  • Canon 230 - §3. When the need of the Church warrants it and ministers are lacking, lay persons, even if they are not lectors or acolytes, can also supply certain of their duties, namely, to exercise the minister of the word, to preside over liturgical prayers to confer baptism, and to distribute Holy Communion, according to the prescripts of the law.
  • Canon 910 - §1. The ordinary minister of holy communion is a bishop, presbyter, or deacon.
    • §2. The extraordinary minister of holy communion is an acolyte or another member of the Christian faithful designated according to norm of canon 230, §3.
  • Canon 1378 - §2. The following incur a latae sententiae penalty of interdict, or, if a cleric, a latae sententiae penalty of suspension: 1° a person who attempts the liturgical action of the eucharistic sacrifice though not promoted to the sacerdotal order.
• Lay Preaching
  • Canon 766 – Lay persons can be permitted to preach in a church or oratory, if necessity requires it in certain circumstances or it seems advantageous in particular cases, according to the prescripts of the conference of bishops and without prejudice to canon 767, §1.
  • Canon 767 - §1. Among the forms of preaching, the homily, which is part of the liturgy itself and is reserved to a priest or deacon, is preeminent; in the homily the mysteries of faith and the norms of Christian life are to be explained from the sacred text during the course of the liturgical year.
• Marriage
  • Canon 1112 - §1. Where there is a lack of priests and deacons, the diocesan bishop can delegate lay persons to assist at marriages, with the previous favorable vote of the conference of bishops and after he has obtained the permission of the Holy See.
• Anointing of the Sick
  • Canon 1003 - §1. Every priest and a priest alone validly administers the anointing of the sick.
  • Canon 1379 – In addition to the cases mentioned in canon 1378, a person who simulates the administration of a sacrament is to be punished with a just penalty.
• Reconciliation
  • Canon 965 – A priest alone is the minister of the sacrament of penance.
  • Canon 1378 - §2. The following incur a latae sententiae penalty of interdict, or, if a cleric, a latae sententiae penalty of suspension: 2° apart from the cases mentioned in §1, a person who, though unable to give sacramental absolution validly, attempts to impart it or who hears sacramental confession.
  • Canon 989 – After having reached the age of discretion, each member of the faithful is obliged to confess faithfully his or her grave sins at least once a year.
• Teaching Office, Catechetics, etc.
  • Canon 759 -  By virtue of baptism and confirmation, lay members of the Christian faithful are witnesses of the gospel message by word and the example of a Christian life; they can be called upon to cooperate with the bishop and presbyters in the exercise of the ministry of the word.
  • Canon 774 - §1. Under the direction of legitimate ecclesiastical authority, solicitude for catechesis belongs to all members of the Church according to each one’s role.
  • Canon 776 – By virtue of his function, a pastor is bound to take care of the catechetical formation of adults, youth, and children, to which purpose he is to use the help of . . . lay members of the Christian faithful, especially of catechists. None of these are to refuse to offer their help willingly unless they are legitimately impeded.

Literary, Rhetorical and Historical Aspects:

The canons regarding this issue seem to reflect the general unease of the entire Church that surrounds this topic. The Church is faced with the reality of not having enough priests to fulfill all the needs of the faithful, yet the Church is striving to protect the sanctity of holy orders. In canon 129, we can see the reserve of powers to the ordained but in the second paragraph the laity can “cooperate in the exercise” of those powers. What it means to “cooperate” is what needs to be interpreted in this scenario. In a similar way, the practice of preaching is permitted to lay persons in canon 766, but the right to preaching during the time reserved for the homily is limited to ordained ministers. To go further, the canon provides for the entrusting of pastoral care to lay persons, but in a limited fashion, under the direction of a priest who is appointed as pastor.

Proposed Resolution and Implications:

I believe that the bishop is not only within his rights to establish parish administrators, but due to the severity of the situation, is obligated to do so. He must make careful effort, however, to ensure that it is clear within the minds of the parish administrators and of the parishioners that the administrators are not pastors.

Regarding the areas of liturgical responsibility, lay persons have been serving in the roles of readers and extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist for some time and are allowed to do so in canons 230 and 910. Presiding at liturgies outside of Mass is also allowable under canon 230. In recognition of the potential situation that the bishop of this scenario faces, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops has established norms for Sunday worship without priests that can be found in Sunday Celebrations in the Absence of a Priest. The bishop, however, should practice discretion concerning the use of vocabulary when discussing lay preaching. Lay preaching is permitted in canon 766 but the preaching of homilies is reserved to priests and deacons in canon 767. As homilies are reserved for a specific place in an Eucharistic liturgy and a lay leader of prayer would be not be presiding at such a celebration, there is probably little chance that the lay leader would be see as preaching a “homily.” In any event, the bishop should take care that the term homily is not used to refer to the preaching by lay ministers so as not to confuse the issue in the minds of the faithful.

Presumably the bishop would seek the necessary permission of the Holy See as required by canon 1112 for the delegation of assisting at marriages by a lay minister. Concerning the Sacrament of Anointing, according to canon 1003, the bishop does not possess the authority to delegate the faculty to a lay minister nor even to a deacon. The lay minister would be limited to the distribution of viaticum according to the Rite of Holy Communion and Worship of the Eucharist outside Mass (Beal, et al., p.1107).

It appears from this scenario that the bishop is not proposing that lay ministers would be attempting to administer the Sacrament of Reconciliation, but much as in the case of lay preaching, the bishop would need to take pains to make it clear that seeking spiritual counsel from a lay person is not the same as receiving the sacrament. In caring for his flock, the bishop would have to be attentive to their need to receive the sacrament and make provisions for priests to be available occasionally for that purpose.

If I were to advise the bishop on how to go about developing the process and guidelines for implementing a program of lay administrators, I would suggest that one way to keep clear the distinction between a pastor and a non-ordained administrator is to divide the delegated responsibilities for each parish among two or more lay ministers. For instance, the pastor would be the overseer of three parishes. In each parish there would be a lay administrator responsible for the day-to-day workings of the parish (record keeping, plant maintenance, etc.). A lay leader of prayer or liturgist would be responsible for planning and presiding at liturgies. The catechesis of adults and children would be the responsibility of a director of religious education. The pastor overseer would be responsible for monitoring the work of these individuals and ultimately would be the leader of each parish. This would be difficult and draining for the pastor, but hopefully by not having to attend to every issue in each parish, it would leave him with the energy to celebrate the sacraments with each community on a regular (but not weekly) basis.