Pastoral Ministry in a Mission Diocese

By Irene Lagan
HERALD Staff Writer
(From the issue of 11/7/02)

LEXINGTON, KY — "To be Christians means to be missionaries, to be apostles. It is not enough to discover Christ – you must bring Him to others … You must have the courage to speak about Christ, to bear witness to your faith through a lifestyle inspired by the Gospel."

This message, given by Pope John Paul II at World Youth Day in 1989, is at the heart of what it means to be Catholic in today’s world. As Catholics we are called by baptism to be missionaries, to bring Christ out into the world.

One of the blessings of being Catholic is that the Church is universal. Wherever you happen to find yourself, you are at home in the Church amongst people who share the same Faith and celebrate the Eucharist. Yet, there is variation in our unity as members of the same body, perhaps most apparent in the differences between urban and rural parishes.

In rural ministry, where parishes are scattered over vast distances, the visible expression of the Church has a different character. In a mission diocese, parish ministry entails a unique complex of challenges. According to the USCCB Committee on Home Missions, mission dioceses are those dioceses unable to provide their people with the basic pastoral ministries of word, worship and service without outside help.

The Appalachian region, which spans 13 states and all of West Virginia, is mission territory. The Lexington Diocese encompasses 50 counties, most of which are in the mountainous regions of Appalachia. According to figures cited by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate for 2002, the Lexington Diocese has 60 parishes, with 47,583 Catholics. These figures indicate that there are 793 Catholics per parish in the diocese of Lexington, compared to the national average of 3,258 Catholics per parish. Approximately 70 percent of Catholics in Lexington are clustered in or around larger cities or towns. In more remote areas, some parishes have as few as 15 families with the number of people who attend Mass often as low as 20. Because parishes in outlying areas are few and far between, ministry tends to be very broad and diverse, with parish life less centered on the church itself.

According to Sister Helen Garvey, director of Pastoral Ministry in the Diocese of Lexington, ministry involves "taking the mission of Jesus Christ out to the people and nurturing them by being Church living in the midst of the people." To bring Christ to others, she said, means to "be all things to all people" and to bring about a conversion of heart. Personal relationships are the key to bringing Christ to others by meeting the most basic needs of health care, food, freeing people who are addicted, sheltering victims of domestic violence or simply being present to those who live in isolated areas. While the distances between parishes and parish size are the most salient differences between an urban and a rural diocese, the Lexington Diocese also faces a severe priest shortage. A total of 60 active priests, with 10 retired, serve the entire population of Catholics in eastern Kentucky. This means that one priest is often assigned to a parish and several mission churches.

More than 10 years ago, the diocese recognized the scarcity of priests and began to consider the staffing patterns of parishes. After holding both parish and regional meetings to address the problem, the diocese devised a plan to keep parishes open in accord with the teachings of the Church.

"What we were really talking about is the Eucharist, the source and summit of life in the Church," said Sister Garvey. "Our primary consideration was how we were going to provide the Eucharist for our people. Closing parishes was not an option."

The diocese adopted a plan in accordance with code 517.2 of Canon Law that allows a bishop to appoint a deacon or qualified person to administer the parish and minister to the pastoral needs of the people. Lay "pastoral directors" are responsible for the overall care of some parishes, with priests serving as "sacramental ministers" to administer the sacraments. In such cases, the bishop appoints a "priest who, with the powers and faculties of a parish priest, will direct the pastoral care." In Lexington, a priest in this role is the "pastoral moderater."

Father Robert Nieberding, diocesan administrator, said the new pastoral plan has not been ratified, but is a "work in progress." One of the important points, he said, is that the new plan calls men and women of faith to respond to their baptismal call so the faith can be passed on. At the same time, he said, people need to know that priests are available when absolutely necessary.

While the new parish plan has met with mixed reactions, Father Nieberding stressed both Vatican II’s and Pope John Paul II’s emphasis on the role of the laity, and said the new plan allowed priests to be free to minister to the spiritual needs of the people and to "be more Christ-like in ordinary affairs."

In The Lay Members of Christ’s Faithful People, Pope John Paul II wrote: "The Faithful, more precisely the lay faithful, find themselves on the front lines of the Church’s life; for them the Church is the animating principle for human society. Therefore, they in particular, ought to have an ever-clearer consciousness not only of belonging to the Church, but of being the Church, that is to say, the community of the faithful on earth under the leadership of the Pope, the head of all, and of the Bishops in communion with him." And, "Their [the lay faithful] activity within Church communities is so necessary that without it the apostolate of the pastors is generally unable to achieve its full effectiveness."

At the same time, in a recent document titled The Priest, Pastor and Leader of the Parish Community, the Holy Father reaffirmed the proper function of the parish priest as the shepherd of the parish community and exhorted Catholics to "ask the Lord with faith and insistence, to raise up numerous and holy laborers for the harvest." In addition, at a recent speech given at Georgetown University, Cardinal Avery Dulles also said "while Vatican II increased the role of the laity, it did not turn over the power of ‘pastoral government.’"

In a mission diocese, love of neighbor takes on true Gospel significance, since communities are organic and neighbors tend to be fewer and farther between than in metropolitan areas.

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