VOTF Working Group
Goal #3 – Structural Change
Submitted by Margaret Roylance
What does VOTF mean by structural change? Many lay
Catholics express concern about this issue. They are
reluctant to become involved with any group that might
damage our precious heritage of faith, even as they
acknowledge that the events of the past year have revealed
profound flaws in the human institutional life of our
Church. A year ago, the Representative Council of VOTF
directed that a group be formed to clarify what VOTF
wishes to change, and how we intend to go about changing
it. That group was the Structural Change Working Group
or SCWG. Its membership was drawn from four states,
and its first eight months of existence was dedicated
to preparing a statement on what VOTF means by structural
change. That statement was approved unanimously by the
Representative Council at its meeting on February 22,
2003.
Since the unanimous passage of the statement last February,
the SCWG has been working with great dedication to put
the words of the statement into action. VOTF and the
SCWG said that we would work to empower active, collaborative,
effective and representative pastoral councils, finance
councils, and safety committees in every parish in the
US. In order to achieve this national goal, we recognized
that we would need to provide significant educational
support and resources, and that we also needed a forum
for a national discussion about these issues.
The first step we took was to expand our membership
from the original nine members to more than twenty.
Since our membership is spread across a wide area of
the country, we have relied heavily on technology to
communicate with each other and coordinate our efforts.
Between monthly meetings we use e-mails, chatting and
teleconferencing to stay connected. The photo shows
SCWG member Mary Freeman of Kingston, RI, chatting electronically
with members of the group within the SCWG that is working
on supporting parish pastoral councils (PPCs).
Mary leads this group, together with Gaile Pohlhaus,
who lives in Wayne, PA and teaches theology at Villanova.
They are currently designing a questionnaire to learn
more about the status of PPCs throughout the country.
We have discovered that no such survey has been carried
out since the 1980’s, and understanding more about
how PPCs actually function across the country is a critical
first step in helping to renew them. We have strongly
encouraged individual VOTF members to become members
of their PPCs, and we hope to provide them with solid
suggestions for operations and best practices when they
do.
Similar groups have been formed within the SCWG to
support finance councils and to form and support safety
committees. Every parish should have a finance council,
according to Canon Law, but increased breadth of representation,
openness and accountability may be required to ensure
that we are prudent stewards of the gifts God has given
us. Parish safety committees are new lay groups, formed
in response to the current crisis that work to ensure
that all members of our faith communities understand
the importance of protecting our children and are committed
to it. We believe these committees are of the utmost
importance for the safety of our children and anyone
who may be at risk, and that they offer an opportunity
to begin rebuilding the trust in our Church, which has
been so badly damaged by all that has come to light.
In the structural change statement approved last spring,
we promised to provide a Primer (a guide that seeks
to impart a basic understanding of a subject) on Church
Structures. We identified the need for such a resource
early on when we realized that, despite many decades
of Catholic education among us, we didn’t fully
understand how our Church functions as a human institution.
If we are to propose changes, we must first understand
what we seek to change. For example, if we are aware
that Diocesan Statutes actually carry more legal weight
than policy directives from the US Conference of Catholic
Bishops, we will focus our energies for change where
they will be the most effective – on dialogue
with our local Bishops. We are currently going through
a final review of the Primer with Fr. Ladislas Orsy,
S.J., who has been retained by VOTF as a professional
outside consultant in canon law and related matters.
We hope to make it available to affiliates across the
country some time in September.
In response to the need for a national forum on shaping
change in our Church, we have developed the Structural
Change Network or SCN. The SCN has been operating in
a test phase for the last several months, and will be
officially launched on September 8, 2003. The SCWG would
like to thank those VOTF members across the country
who have participated in the SCN during this period.
During the test phase, many issues have been addressed,
and there will continue to be room for creative, free
form discussion. Initially, there will also be four
focused topics for discussion on the SCN: pastoral councils,
finance councils, safety committees and lay involvement
in pastoral selection. Each of these topics will have
a facilitator, who will keep the discussion on track
and give a monthly report to the SCWG on suggestions
or recommendations that have emerged. The SCWG will
try to provide the best of these ideas with the national
attention and recognition that they deserve, since a
good idea from Michigan might be used to solve a problem
in Connecticut, or vice versa. If you are interested
in being a part of the SCN, you must have an account
on Yahoo (available at no charge) and request membership
at SCN_Moderator@yahoo.com.
In order to participate in the launch, you must join
by August 28, 2003. If you wish to propose a new discussion
topic for the SCN, and are willing to moderate, or have
any other questions or comments, please contact us at
scn@votf.org. If you
would like to read the VOTF Structural Change Statement,
please go to the VOTF website at http://www.votf.org/Structural_Change/structural.html
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