ENTRUSTED TO ONE ANOTHER

By Sean O'Leary

Something important is quietly taking shape in the Church. The Canonical Commission established as part of the Synod's implementation has been asking how the insights of synodality might find expression in the law of the Church. Among its proposals is a stronger recognition that lay women and men, when suitably qualified and competent, can exercise ecclesial offices, ministries and functions, including responsibilities within the sphere of governance. The Commission has also examined the place of pastoral and finance councils and other participatory bodies in the Church's discernment and decision-making.

This might sound technical. It is, in fact, deeply pastoral. For generations we have sometimes imagined parish leadership in fairly simple terms: the priest leads and the people help. The emerging synodal vision asks us to recover something older and deeper. The mission belongs to the whole baptised People of God.

This does not diminish the vocation of the priest. Nor does it blur the distinction between ordained and lay ministry. It allows each vocation to become more fully itself. The question facing our parishes, therefore, is not simply: Who will do what the priest used to do?

That question is too small. The better question is: What has God entrusted to this community, and who among us has been given the gifts to carry it?

Once we begin there, new possibilities appear. Lay women and men may be called to significant responsibility for pastoral coordination, catechesis and formation, youth and family ministry, bereavement and pastoral care, administration, finance, outreach and missionary initiatives. Others may exercise leadership through parish and pastoral-area councils, participating genuinely in the discernment of where God is calling the community.

Some ministries will remain particular to the ordained. Others can properly be entrusted to lay people. And some responsibilities will best be carried together. This is particularly important as parishes begin working more closely in pastoral areas. If our only response to fewer priests is to ask one priest to carry responsibility for ever more parishes, we have changed the map without re-energising the Church.

A pastoral area can be something richer. It can become a communion of communities in which priests and people share responsibility for mission, each according to their vocation, gifts and ministry. There will be priests, pastoral coordinators, local parish leadership teams, commissioned lay ministers and pastoral councils, not competing for authority, but placing their different gifts at the service of the same mission.

And here the Commission's attention to a Diocesan pastoral plan becomes especially significant. A pastoral plan is not simply a document produced at diocesan level and handed down for others to implement. In a synodal church, it becomes part of a continuing movement of discernment, implementation, evaluation and renewal. It is envisioned that the Diocesan Pastoral Council and the Council of Priests will have a part in evaluating its implementation, while the wider diocesan community is drawn into the periodic discernment of the road ahead.

That gives the pastoral plan a deeper significance. It is where listening begins to become direction, where shared insight becomes shared commitment, and where discernment is tested in action. Without such a plan, synodality can remain a series of worthwhile conversations. With a pastoral plan, the question becomes more demanding: Having listened together for the voice of the Spirit, what are we now prepared to do together?

This could be particularly important for pastoral areas. A diocesan pastoral plan can provide a common direction while allowing each area and parish to discern how that direction should take flesh locally. The purpose is not uniformity. It is communion in mission: different communities responding to different circumstances while travelling towards a horizon discerned together. A good pastoral plan therefore does more than organise activity. It holds discernment and action together, enabling a local Church to remember what it has heard, to act upon it, and to return in time to ask what has borne fruit.

The Commission has also explored strengthening pastoral councils, including the possibility of making parish and diocesan pastoral councils obligatory. This reflects a larger conviction: participation should not mean simply being informed after decisions have been made. The Church is learning again the harder discipline of listening, discerning and discovering together the shared insight that can emerge when different perspectives are brought before the Holy Spirit.

None of this will happen simply by changing Canon Law. We will need formation. We will need trust. We will need priests willing to make room for the gifts of others and lay people willing to accept not merely tasks but responsibility. We will need councils capable of discerning priorities, making commitments and returning honestly to evaluate what has been done. And we will need pastoral plans that are living expressions of that discernment rather than documents placed neatly on a shelf.

Above all, we will need a deeper conversion. Lay leadership is not a solution invented because there are fewer priests. It arises from Baptism before it arises from shortage. In the same way, pastoral planning is not primarily a response to institutional decline. At its best, it is an expression of hope: a community becoming sufficiently attentive to the presence of God to choose together the next faithful steps.

Perhaps that is the real invitation contained in these developments. We are being asked to move beyond a Church in which a few carry responsibility for the many, towards a Church in which the gifts of the many are discerned, formed and entrusted for the good of all.

The future diocese may have fewer priests. But that need not mean that it has less ministry. It may instead become a community discovering something we should never have forgotten: God has entrusted the Church to all of us, and in doing so has entrusted us to one another.

The pastoral plan of the Diocese of Ferns (2024-2030) entitled ‘Our Future Church’, was developed collaboratively by the Council of Priests and Diocesan Pastoral Council as the fruit of the synodal journey in our diocese. To explore the plan, see

www.ferns.ie/pastoral-plan/

For the final report of the Canonical Commission, see: https://www.synod.va/en/the-synodal-process/phase-3-the-implementation/the-study-groups/final-reports/the-canonical-commission.html