Newspaper Page Text
May 21,1981
PAGE 5
The Gym-Uniform Syndrome
BY FATHER PHILIP MURNION
“We’re in a gym-uniform discussion
again!” , .
A parish council I know of in Virginia once
spent a full hour discussing the best color for
student gym uniforms in the parish school.
Now, whenever the council gets bogged down
in a discussion of details, some member can be
counted on to recall that famous discussion of
uniforms.
There is an issue at stake here: the
distinction between policy and
administration.
A parish council’s primary task concerns
policy, established within the framework of
diocesan policy. The administration of policy,
however, is the responsibility of the pastor
and other parish staff members.
This distinction is of great importance for
Structure.” It is obviously too general to serve
as an adequate statement of mission for every
individual parish. But a council may use the
statement as a basis for developing its own
understanding of a parish’s mission.
By spelling out the basic mission of a
parish, a council has a basis for setting
priorities and measuring its performance. So,
policy first means mission.
After developing a statement of its
mission, a council should consider each area
of parish life: the liturgy, education programs,
care for people in need, and the rest. Then it
can formulate its hopes or goals and spell out
how it thinks these goals can best be pursued
in a given year. What qualities are necessary in
each program area? Where is particular care
required? What are some standards that
should be observed? These become policy
statements.
KNOW
YOUR FAITH
(All Articles On This Page Copyrighted 1981 By N.C. News Service)
councils. For a parish council can easily get so
preoccupied with administrative details that it
never gets around to its real task. And the
pastor or others responsible for programs can
quickly feel that their responsibilities are
being usurped by the parish council. Here we
have a problem in the making.
The pastor is primarily responsible to the
bishop for parish practice. The pastor and
council share a responsibility for parish
policy. It is primarily the pastor’s
responsibility to hire and supervise the staff of
the parish, whether paid or volunteer, even if
the pastor solicits the advice of the council in
hiring a staff person or the cooperation of
council members in carrying out the
ministries of the parish.
In practice, the line between policy and
administration may not be so clear and
council members may find themselves quite
active in carrying out parish policy.
Furthermore, the council may review parish
practice so as to recommend ways of
improving parish life. Yet, it is valuable to try
to keep council meetings focused on policy
questions.
What does policy mean in a parish? First of
all, through policy the mission of the parish is
clarified. Recently the U S. bishops’ Ad Hoc
Committee on the Parish issued a statement
designed to stimulate discussion in parishes of
their basic mission. The statement is titled,
“The Parish: A People, A Mission, A
Now let’s get back to that parish council in
Virginia and its gym uniforms.
That parish council might decide that
physical education or “gym” should be part
of the school program. It could also decide
that a teacher should be hired for this purpose
and even express a wish that the program
emphasize team efforts to encourage
cooperation among students. But it is up to
the school’s administration to hire the teacher
and, with the teacher, to design the specifics
of the program.
Of course there are some administrative
areas that are of such significance to
parishioners that the staff thinks it is
well-advised to consult the people. These
areas may concern ways of doing things that
have become such a tradition in the parish
that any change not widely agreed on is likely
to cause great upset.
A parish and its people face a challenge in
this broad area of policy. For, even when
participation in the development of policy is
achieved, wide room is still needed for
initiative on the part of those responsible for
various parish activities.
A parish council is not likely to encourage
imaginative and effective leadership if it
attempts to dictate too much to parish
leadership. But, if parish leadership moves too
fast, without developing support from the
council, it will discourage parishioners from
feeling that they have any responsibility for
their parish.
The Gifts Of The Spirit
BY FATHER JOHN J CASTELOT
After roundly criticizing the Corinthians
for their scandalous conduct in liturgical
worship, Paul returns to the questions sent to
him by the community.
The Corinthians apparently were
experiencing some confusion about “spiritual
gifts,” and so Paul starts Chapter 12 of First
Corinthians, “Now, brothers, I do not want to
leave you in ignorance . . .’’Thisis his unusual
way of saying, “I want you to understand
clearly,” a form he also uses elsewhere.
It is hard for us to appreciate the
extraordinary activity of the Holy Spirit in
the early church. The New Testament bears
abundant testimony to this activity but,
unfortunately, gives us very little specific-
information about its various manifestations.
That is tantalizing, but it should warn us
against giving precise definitions for those
gifts in our day.
At any rate, these gifts of the Spirit seem to
have been both a blessing and a source of
trouble for the Corinthians. One problem was
that of discernment. How could one be sure
that, in any particular instance, he or she was
really being led by the Spirit and not by
wishful thinking, fantasy, self-delusion? That
is an ever-present danger and a basic one.
Accprdingly, Paul addresses it
immediately. He reminds the Corinthians of
their lives as pagans, not too long ago, when
they worshipped idols and were carried away
by all sorts of spurious enthusiasm. Paul tells
the Corinthians that one sure criterion for
determining if it is really the Spirit animating
them is this, “Nobody who speaks in the
Spirit of God ever says, ‘Cursed be Jesus.’”
This seems rather extreme. Would any
Christian ever say that? Well, perhaps not in so
many words. But it is significant that Paul says
“Jesus,” the name he consistently uses to
designate the Jesus of history - Jesus in his
humanity. The Corinthians often had
manifested a lack of appreciation for the
humanity of Jesus and for the implications of
that humanity in their daily lives.
Any “spirit” which did not impel them to
acts of selfless love, the hallmark of the
humanity of Jesus, is suspect, according to
Paul. Conversely, only the Holy Spirit can
empower one to confess that this same human
Jesus is now the exalted Lord.
Apparently, certain people prized some
gifts of the Spirit more highly than others:
they were flashier and attracted more
attention. Paul considers this attitude to be
immature, at least, since it betrays a centering
on the self which is directly opposed to the
purpose of the gifts.
To correct this, Paul points to the fact that
no matter how many gifts there may be, they
are all manifestations of the same Spirit, each
one as precious as the other. Most
importantly, they are “gifts,” which is the
very meaning of “charisms.” No one has any
right to parade a gift as if it were his own
personal endowment.
Significantly, Paul links together gifts,
ministries, and works. A gift which is not used
for ministry, for service to others, is thwarted
of its purpose. If it does not “work” for the
community, it is inauthentic.
Notice also the beautiful trinitarian
formula: gifts-Spirit; ministries-Lord;
works-God. The gifts are given to enable the
Christian to continue the ministry of the Lord
Jesus, to work hand in hand with God - “for
the common good,” not for one’s personal
advancement or glory.
Paul mentions several of the gifts but gives
no clear indication of just how they operate.
That is not his concern here. He sums up that
concern in the last sentence: “It is one and the
same Spirit who produces all these gifts,
distribut ing them to each as he wills.”
Discussion Points And Questions
1. According to Father Philip Murnion, what role should a parish
council play in parishes? What is its most important activity?
2. Why shouldn’t a parish council spend time discussing what color the
gym uniforms are, in Father Murnion’s opinion?
3. Does David Gibson think working together comes naturally to
people? What is his experience in this area?
4. What are some reasons why people want to cooperate? In Gibson’s
view, what helps people to work together smoothly?
5. Think about the way you prefer to work. Do you enjoy working
with others or do you prefer to work alone? Why?
6. What does Father John Castelot say is the “one sure criterion’’ for
judging authentic gifts given by St. Paul to the Corinthians?
IT IS PRIMARILY THE PASTOR’S responsibility to hire
and supervise the parish staff, whether paid or volunteer. The
pastor in many cases might seek the advice of the parish
council in hiring these staff people. (NC Photo by Carolyn
McKeone)
When People Don t Work Well Together
BY DA VID GIBSON
In “Above Suspicion.’’ the thriller I read
most recently by Helen Mac Innes, a British
university couple, rather inexperienced in the
workings of international espionage, were
dispatched on an intricate and important
mission in Germany and Austria In the days
just before World War II, they were to
discover the whereabouts of an agent who had
disappeared.
The couple’s mission began with a set of
complex instructions they were given once
and expected to recall more or less perfectly
later on. The instructions led the couple from
one fleeting undercover contact to another
until finally -- after a close call with death that
ended instead in a German’s plunge off a
mountainside and the knifing of a killer dog -
they discover and rescue the missing agent.
Then, with the help of still more agents -
but only when the British woman is rescued
after being recognized and kidnapped in
Innsbruck by her chief German antagonist -
the couple escapes from Austria to safety.
The story is quite exciting. But what
interested me is just how well all these
undercover agents, including the relatively
inexperienced couple, work together to
accomplish their goal. When difficulties are
encountered, including serious ones, they are
successfully overcome.
Frankly, my own experience in this
complex, fast-paced world is that people do
not always work together that well. In fact,
considering how necessary it is for people to
work together on all kinds of projects -
perhaps we could even say that “wording
together” is a basic for modern life - it is
amazing how much of a problem it can be.
First, even though people plan a project
and work on it together, the goal may remain
a* bit fuzzy. Communication is crucial and
misunderstanding easy to come by. In the
beginning of many projects, the people
working together often don’t envision the
goal in the same way.
Then there is remembering what has been
said about how a project will be carried out.
Again, communication is essential. But days
and weeks after a successful planning session,
even the most experienced people tend to
forget parts of what was decided. Total recall
is rare; its rarity is the source of problems.
Finally, when serious difficulties are
encountered by a team, they are not always
readily overcome. The difficulties may delay
the project greatly or lead to a re-evaluation of
the project’s worth.
There are good reasons why people should
work together on projects. First is the utter
necessity of doing so. Many valuable projects
cannot be accomplished by one person
working alone.
A family, for example, cannot achieve new
goals unless members cooperate. Leaders of a
school community cannot achieve
educational goals by going off in separate
directions.
But another reason for working together is
the sheer joy of it. For many people, getting
together to plan and work, exchanging
information, sharing hopes, is a way of
meeting others on a new level. The experience
people have of each other on a shared project
can be a means of personal growth for
participants.
But, let’s be honest. There are reasons why
people sometimes like to work alone. When
you work alone, you probably establish your
own schedule, decide what your project’s
outcome should be and proceed to it. If you
encounter difficulties, you attempt to work
them out quickly.
Working alone, you don’t have to cope
with the attitudes, the feelings or the varying
abilities of fellow workers. Your frustrations
will be largely with yourself or with the
project. And only one person can quit the
project: you.
Cooperation, it seems, isn’t always easy, no
matter how worthwhile. To cooperate well,
people have to think about the process of
cooperation: about the gifts of others, the
way the project appears to others, the roles of
the others, the reasons w'hy others are
involved.
To work well together, people need to
know what makes cooperation difficult - and
what cooperation can accomplish. No matter
how basic it may be for contemporary
society, working together well does not
always come naturally.
JUST AS THE INSTRUMENTS in a fine orchestra must
blend together to achieve a beautiful sound, so must the
members of any group work together to achieve a goal. The
resulting experience people have with each other on a shared
project can be most rewarding as well as achieving a
worthwhile result. (NC Photo from PBS)