Cardinal suenens church governance models

EMBED for wordpress. Want more? Advanced embedding details, examples, and help! Many questions arise exercising a mutual influence upon one another. Within this vast complex of problems, some priorities can be discerned, and in these pages I have tried to draw out that which on the level of pastoral activity seems to be the dominating theme of the Council: the coresponsibility of all Christians within the People of God.

Coresponsibility is embodied at all times in ecclesiastical institutions, but, institutionalized or not, it is always underlying the very life of the Church. This synthetic aspect of collegial notion will occupy most of our attention. The demands of our time -- pt. The coresponsibility of the papacy -- IV. The coresponsibility of bishops -- V.

The coresponsibility of priests -- VI. The coresponsibility of theologians -- VII. Working to establish broad consensus is a good thing, but so is making hard decisions in a timely fashion. An unaccountable single leader can move quickly but nobody can call them to account. A democracy where everyone gets a voice is great in theory, but nothing gets done.

Different people have different gifts and capacities, so responsibility needs to be divided somehow for the spiritual and temporal work of a church. Churches need to decide how many leaders they want at each level an individual, a small group or a large assembly as well as the balance between ordained clerical and non-ordained lay leaders.

All this will determine where they land on the spectrum from cardinal suenens church governance models leadership to more congregational leadership. What happens next when something goes wrong? Who steps in when there is a crisis, conflict or change of leadership? This might be an unexpected crisis, such as a breakdown in pastoral relationships or moral failure of the Senior Pastor.

It might be a slow-building conflict that involves one or more leaders and so cannot be resolved without outside help. It might also be an inevitable change, such as the transition from founder to sustainable succession. At one extreme this responsibility resides totally in the local church gathering, at the other it lies with a central authority.

If it has a sufficient breadth of representation and perspectives it can be an effective balance to otherwise centralised power and decision making. The way most churches in Australia answer these questions tends to spread out on a spectrum, from highly centralised clerical systems at one end, to loosely associated congregational models at the other.

Here are some of those common models, and what some of their distinctive strengths and weaknesses might be. In the Roman Catholic model there is a clear chain of accountability: congregations are accountable to the parish priest, who is accountable to the bishop. There are few opportunities for congregation members to be involved in governance of their church.

The Pope can call a Synod a gathering of bishops, which can sometimes include congregation members, regular priests, members of religious communities and representatives from other Catholic institutions however it is essentially an advisory body. The primary authority within a diocese is always the local Bishop, which means for example only the Pope can effectively investigate misconduct by a local Bishop himself.

Clergy are relatively disciplined, with clear chain of command and accreditation worldwide. Doctrine and practice is fairly consistent across the world. Weaknesses :. The model struggles to deal with corruption or abuse within the hierarchy, especially where the person accused is a bishop. There is little opportunity for lay involvement in leadership.

There is very limited scope for partnership between men and women in ministry and leadership inevitably suffers for lack of female image-of-God-bearers in the room — it is not good for the man to be alone, Genesis It is most common in churches where the church is led by its founder and there has not yet been transition of leadership.

In the mega-church model, power is highly centralised. The Senior Pastor leads the executive and also chairs the governing board. Executive staff and pastors sit on the board and sometimes outnumber non-executive directors. Most roles are appointed by and accountable to the Senior Pastor.

Cardinal suenens church governance models

Where multiple congregations exist these sites or campuses have relatively little autonomy. Membership is tightly controlled. The church with centralised power and founder control is very effective: it gets things done and can move quickly. Such strong direction and leadership is attractive to many church attendees. A governing board dominated by executives who are employed by and accountable to the Senior Pastor seldom is able to provide effective oversight, or manage conflicts of duty or interest.

The model is structurally ineffective to deal with corruption or abuse in the leadership. There is minimal scope for congregational involvement in governance and leadership. An Anglican Parish divides responsibility between spiritual and temporal matters. However, to grasp the full meaning of the Council, it is not enough to view it only in relation to a past which it concludes.

We must also consider it in the light of those forces of the future which it contains. It is, in its own turn, a point of departure, as Pope Paul VI forcefully reminds us:. Here the Pope invites us to see Vatican II in its relation to the future. The Church is a Church on the way, a pilgrim Church. It never has the right to stop; it pauses only to prepare itself for new steps on its journey.

Under certain aspects the Church is always 'passing' John XXIII used to love to say, 'They speak of me as a transition pope, and he then would add, 'That is true, but the continuity of the Church is made from transition to transition'. Henry Bergson once wrote, 'What has struck me about Jesus is precisely this mandate to go on always toward the future.

So much so that it could be said that the stable element of Christianity is the order never to stop'. Whether we wish it or not, we are at the moment en route towards some Vatican III, whose character must remain vague and which will take place in a tomorrow as yet undefinable. Certainly Vatican II had its limitations; it neither approached nor resolved all problems.

Nevertheless, we must recognize that it has opened up immense horizons. It has sown, in the field of the Church, seeds which give promise of maturity at harvest time. If we were to be asked what we consider to be that seed of life deriving from the Council which is most fruitful, we would answer without any hesitation: it is the rediscovery of the people of God as a whole, as a single reality; and then by way of consequence, the fact implied in this that every member of the Church shares in the responsibility for the development of the Church's life.

In presenting the Church as the people of God, the Council immediately took a stand, more fundamental than the organic and functional distinction between hierarchy and laity, and considered that which is common to all, baptism. It is the same baptism which makes all Christians children of God, brothers in Christ, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.

Whether they be members of the hierarchy or not, all Christians are first and foremost 'the faithful' in the deepest meaning of this word, that is, 'the believers'. We can never meditate enough on the fact that the whole life of the Church is based on baptism, this primal mystery of Christian existence, which unites in one decisive act the acceptance of the Lord, the profession of the gospel, the purification from sin, the active presence of the Spirit, and entrance into the community of the faithful.

The sacrament of baptism is the gateway to Christian life. The other sacraments suppose that we have already 'entered'. Their outlook is different. Baptism is the root of the whole of Christian and religious life, be it structured or not. It is that point from which all vocations, functions and charisms originate. In the Church of God, this fundamental equality of all is the primary fact.

There is no superbaptism, there are no castes, no privileges Galatians We must always be aware of these fundamental truths, for they are essential to the life of the Church, and govern all our choices and attitudes. For too long a time and too frequently, we have confused the terms 'layman' and 'faithful'. The pope or a bishop or priest is not a layman, but he is one of the faithful by the very fact that he is baptized and a Christian.

The greatest day in the life of a pope is not that of his election or coronation, but the day on which he receives that which the Greek fathers call the holy and unbreakable seal of rebirth in baptism. His first duty, like that of all of us, is to live the Christian life in obedience to the gospel. His own proper mission derives from this duty.

This primacy of baptism entails as an immediate consequence the primacy of community. Each one must live and insert his personal responsibility in and with that of all the other faithful. Vatican II asks us to accept all the consequences of the co-responsibility of Christians at every level. It is possible to differentiate individuals and groups within the people of God on the basis of divinely conferred function or charism, and to discuss co-responsibility in terms of these groups.

But, in regard to all these distinctions, we must bear in mind the fundamental principle enunciated by St Paul, that all these gifts contrive toward the building up of the 'perfect man' Ephesians, This principle is applied to the distinction between laity and hierarchy, and is beautifully expressed in the Constitution on the Church when it says, 'For the distinction which the Lord made between the sacred ministers and the rest of the people of God entails a unifying purpose, since pastors and the other faithful are bound to each other by a mutual need.

The renewal of community in the Church, which ultimately derives from faith, naturally finds its place within the progress of a world moving more and more in the direction of democracy. It could seem that as we stress the role of the laity we deny the hierarchical character of the Church. But this is not true, provided that we understand how the Church accepts democracy within herself, and the historical context in which, not authority itself, but its way of cardinal suenens church governance models exercised has come about.

The incarnation of the Word took place at a given point in space and time. Christ's personality bears the mark of his place and time of birth. The Church carries the same marks; as a human society it bears the imprints of the time in which it lives. History shows us how, through the course of ages, the way in which authority is exercised in the Church at all its levels has developed.

The manner of ruling in the secular world and in the Church inevitably influence each other. The Church therefore has had rulers of the type of Constantine, the cardinal suenens church governance models lords and enlightened despots. Today most developed countries have adopted a democratic form of government. Of course none of this belonged to the essential nature of the Church.

It was brought by the fickle winds of history. It is precisely in this realm that we find a real uneasiness in today's Church. There is a crisis in confidence, not in authority as such, but in the government of the Church as a human system and structure. We meet in books and magazines criticism of the way the Church is being governed, independent of any particular personalities.

These criticisms are special in that they often come from priests and lay people, devoted children of the Church, whose loyalty cannot be doubted, and who suffer from the situation which they deplore. The directing bodies, they say, have a way of functioning which is no longer in accordance with the atmosphere of our time. They lack the spirit and customs with which we are all familiar in democratic regimes.

Expressed in this way, such criticism is ambiguous and requires greater clarification. But let us say straight away: the categories in which we think are never adequate to express, much less to enclose, the profound mystery of the Church. To wish to catalogue the Church under the label of monarchy, oligarchy or democracy is a futile task.

The Church's reality is too rich and too complex to fit within human categories. There are within the Church elements which are monarchical, others which are oligarchical, and others which are democratic. The papacy, the bishops, and the laity could be invoked as illustrative of these elements.