In the August 16th issue of The Catholic Herald we are introduced with much fanfare to the planning document “Energizing Our Vibrancy” authored by Father James Connell. Others have said that a better title to this planning document would be “Where is Everybody?” and I wholeheartedly agree with this assessment.
However, I think another good title to this document is Energizing More Confusion. I believe that this document clearly adds to the confusion that we have in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee in regards to the role of the laity and the role of the ordained priesthood in the Church.
In this document, Father Connell talks about how Catholics experience their prayer and worship through a parish in a diocese and that the “pastoral care” of the Parish is assigned by the Diocesan Bishop to the Pastor of the Parish. However, Father Connell defines the Pastor of the Parish as including not only the “sacramental priest” but parish administrators and parish directors as well.
It has been my experience in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee that Parish Administrators and Parish Directors tend to be lay persons. I suspect that these individuals would fall into the new semi-lay, semi-clerical religious order known as Lay Ecclesial Ministers (LEMs). For more information on Lay Ecclesial Ministry, I would refer people to the same issue of The Catholic Herald where Bishop Sklba praises the new St. Clare Center for Ministry Formation at Cardinal Strich University which will be taking the lead in training LEMs for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. In this article Bishop Sklba says the following about the role of LEMs in the Church:
“The spiritual wellbeing of a parish community may well also profit on occasion from the ministry of personal witness and proclamation exercised by trained lay ministers, he said. To take advantage of the presence of the larger numbers who gather for the Sunday Eucharist would be a practical occasion for the exercise of that ministry,” he said, adding that current liturgical law regarding the Eucharist, however, restricts that task to the ordained. Thus, the second compelling question for our day is the challenge to find a way of including our lay ecclesial ministers into the ministry of preaching in a way that respects the integrity of the Eucharist, the needs of our people and the gifts which these individuals can bring to the life of the church.
Evidently there is a belief that if we take away the administrative tasks of the priests in the parishes and give these jobs to the laity and, I guess, the LEMs in particular, then this would encourage more young men to consider the ordained priesthood. However, as shown in the very same issue of the Catholic Herald, Bishop Sklba does not talk of training LEMs in order to assist in lightening the load of the parish administrative tasks of the priests but said that the second most compelling question in regard to the role of LEMs in the Church is to figure out a way to get LEMs to preach at Mass which is currently a job reserved to the ordained. It seems that the Bishop must also think that having priests do less preaching at Mass is a way to increase the number of young men considering the priesthood.
In reality though, I really do believe the following comments by Bishop Sklba quoted from this same article on the role of LEMs whom he describes as Co-workers says it all:
“My first compelling question, then, is how can we make sure that the notion of ‘co-workers’ at every level of church structure remains part of our most cherished biblical heritage and never becomes viewed as a stopgap measure in an age of fewer numbers of ordained?,” asked the bishop.
In other words, the LEMs are here to stay and this is not merely a stopgap measure until we get more priests in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee at least.
The irony of all this is that the Church is spending all of this time and money training lay people to do the things that really the ordained can and should be doing. However, the Catechism of the Catholic Church talks about a real ecclesial order in the Church that most lay people already belong to but judging from the long lines at the marriage tribunals in the Dioceses of the USA they are not very well prepared for:
Furthermore, it is the parents who are the chief catechists of their children in the faith so if lay people ought to be preaching anywhere it should primarily be in their families through the way they live their lives and teach their children. Perhaps if lay people were trained and encouraged by our Priests to fulfill their authentic role in the Church then we could re-title Sacramental Priest Connell’s document “Here Comes Everybody” but it appears that before a major re-write of this document could ever possibly happen that a major conversion of faith among our spiritual leaders here in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee will be needed. So, I believe an important role for the faithful is prayer for these “Sacramental Priests” that someday they will embrace their role as our Spiritual Fathers and actually begin to fill this role that God has called them to in the Church.
In addition, it is the parents that are to be assisting their children in discovering the vocation to which God is calling them and they are to be especially attentive to their children who have been called by God to Spiritual Fatherhood:
It is truly unfortunate that our Spiritual Fathers (or should I use the term Sacramental Priests?) in this Archdiocese have really lost their way. Instead of spending their time and money in the Church training us lay people to become good husbands, wives, fathers, and mothers which is a true ecclesial order in the Church that is definitely lacking in formation, they prefer to train us lay people to essentially take more and more of their jobs away from them. And, then they sit back and wonder………….why don’t any of these young men become priests???????
