Pastoral Council
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Concept
Catholic pastors consult pastoral councils in order to be better leaders. Bishops and priests ask their councillors to investigate some aspect of the church, reflect on it, and recommend their conclusions. In brief, the work of the pastoral council is pastoral planning.
Yet even today, more than fifty years after Vatican II, the debate about the nature of the pastoral council still continues. People discuss what councils do, how they do it, and the motive for putting their gifts at the service of the Church.
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Pastoral Council membership qualifications
- Registered Catholic member of the parish
- commitment to attend meetings regularly, propose agenda items, actively participate in meetings, and volunteer for special activities
- familiarity with parish programs; understanding interrelationships of parish programs
- commitment to participate in training and development programs
- interaction with the Finance Council to help ensure financial resources are available to support council objectives
- commitment to consensus-seeking approach
- commitment to represent the whole community, expressing collective wisdom, perpetually eliciting the needs and concerns of the parish, acting as a channel of communication and motivation in developing and unifying the parish as a Catholic community, and acting as an advocate of staff and councils
- commitment to spiritual growth
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Pastoral Council Members 2024-2025
ANDREW SKRZYNSKI
Monica Voinov
Timothy McKenna
Chuck Ocampo
Pauline Kaminski
Richard Heckelmann
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In his Apostolic Exhortation at the Beginning of the New Millennium, Pope St John Paul II stated that “the Church of the Third Millennium will need to encourage all the baptised and confirmed to be aware of their active responsibility in the Church’s life.” The Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity of Vatican II noted that as:“Participators in the function of Christ, priest, prophet and king, the laity have an active part of their own in the life and action of the Church... Nourished by their active participation in the liturgical community... they should develop the habit of working in the parish in close union with their priests, of bringing before the ecclesial community their own problems, world problems and questions regarding personal salvation, to examine them together”.
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