This past Sunday at the Mass honoring St. Agnes at which we closed out our golden jubilee as a diocese, I announced that I had established a Diocesan Pastoral Council. For a long time, I have hoped that we would be able to have a council of this sort for the good of the whole diocese, as was discussed in the Presbyteral Council. At a certain point, I asked Bishop Wcela to form a committee to help put together a proposal for such a council. That committee did good work and presented to me a very elaborate scheme that has been incorporated in the present constitution of the Diocesan Pastoral Council. That proposal had been delayed for some time because I needed time to review certain aspects of it and then it was brought again to the Presbyteral Council, which with the help of the Vincentian Center for Church and Society at St. John’s University, gave a consensus to our moving forward to form the Diocesan Pastoral Council at this time.

What is a Diocesan Pastoral Council? The council arises out of the Second Vatican Council and subsequent letters and decrees by popes and congregations in Rome. It is a response to the desire to have greater collaboration in the life of the Church and to let the voices of the laity be heard in plans and hopes for the future of the Church. Perhaps the best single piece of writing I have come across describing parish councils is by John A. Renken in The Jurist 53 of 1993 entitled Pastoral Councils: Pastoral Planning and Dialogue Among the People of God. Let me take his principle points and use them as a basis to help us understand what our new Diocesan Pastoral Council will be doing.

First of all, the fundamental task of a Pastoral Council is to be a consultative body to the bishop. This is a group of members of the Church, mostly lay persons, who meet periodically with the bishop in order to talk about the future of the Church and to help give ideas for planning for the growth and spiritual and pastoral well-being of the people. It truly is an act of planning for pastoral purposes. In this it stands in contrast to other groups such as the Diocesan Finance Council and the Presbyteral Council. The Diocesan Finance Council has very specific tasks to fulfill that have to do with the governance of the diocese. They have a responsibility in terms of the budget of the diocese and things of that sort. All the members of the Finance Council are wonderful Catholics who have the good of the Church and the Gospel at heart. Similarly, the Presbyteral Council or Priest Council serves as the sounding board for the bishop in a number of issues that have to do with the pastoral life of the Church. Certain issues must be brought before the Presbyteral Council so the bishop can hear their opinion before he moves forward. From the Presbyteral Council comes the College of Consultors who must be consulted on a number of issues that have to do with the good governance of the diocese.

By contrast, the Diocesan Pastoral Council are those members of the Church who agree to share hopes and prayers, plans and goals for the good of the Church in the years to come. In that, they are not involved in jurisdiction or in governance but they, like all Catholics, share in the mission of the Church which is to see how we best can proclaim Jesus Christ and to make our witness of Him a credible witness to the world about us.

To that end, the composition of the Diocesan Pastoral Council should be representative of the whole Church across Long Island. In a sense, it should be a microcosm of the makeup of the Church in Nassau and Suffolk Counties. While consultative, they will certainly be of great importance for the bishop to understand better the hopes and the dreams, the aspirations and the needs of the People of God.

Our Diocesan Pastoral Council will probably meet about four times a year, the first meeting being sometime in late spring once we have constituted the membership. It will be expected that they will have certain work to do in terms of study before meetings. It will be expected that they will give their honest opinions and work with one another in a collaborative spirit in order to help the bishop understand some of the issues that are being faced today by Catholics on Long Island. To qualify, one must be a Catholic in full communion with the Church. That means someone who accepts and lives the Gospel, the message of Jesus Christ, and the teaching of the Church, particularly of the Holy Father and of the bishops.

After much discussion, we have determined that there will be 30 members of the Diocesan Pastoral Council. There are 14 deaneries or sub-groupings of parishes in our diocese. There will be one lay person chosen from each deanery. A pastor will nominate a person from his parish and then the pastors of the deanery will present two nominees from that deanery. A subcommittee of the Presbyteral Council will examine the nominees and then present a list of 14 to the bishop. These 14 must include men and women of all ages, people who are “from the pew” and not diocesan or pastoral personnel as such. They should be people who are totally committed to the life of the Church. In addition to the 15, there are five who by reason of their office are members of the Diocesan Pastoral Council. They are the three auxiliary bishops and the two vicars general. There will be one deacon so that the Order of Deacons is represented and there will be three religious, two women and one man selected by a subcommittee of the Presbyteral Council. In addition to those already noted, a subcommittee of the Presbyteral Council will also select a priest to serve as a member of the Diocesan Pastoral Council. The bishop will then be able to add six others to that. I have committed myself that the ex-officio members and my appointees not be more than the numbers who are chosen from the deaneries. These six will be chosen by me in order that the new Diocesan Pastoral Council will be a representative group of faithful Catholics reflecting the diversity of our great diocese.

Pastoral planning is nothing new in the Church. It has been going on from the time of the Acts of the Apostles. What is new is the impetus the Second Vatican Council gave us to having parish Pastoral Councils which we have had in this diocese for some time and whose statutes were revised when I came here in 2001. So while there are many groups that do planning on pastoral issues, the Diocesan Pastoral Council is the only one which exists for that sole reason — to help the bishop in pastoral planning.

“In each diocese, to the extent that pastoral circumstances recommend it, a pastoral council is to be established whose responsibility it is to investigate under the authority of the bishop those things which pertain to pastoral works, to ponder them and to propose practical conclusions about them.” (Canon 511)

You can see this is an exciting opportunity for a very specific kind of role to be played. The Council has as their great bond the fact that they, like all of us, share in the mission of the Church which is to proclaim and worship Jesus Christ, to pass on the faith about Jesus Christ and to be a witness of Jesus Christ in the world about us. In this they share in the mission that every Catholic has, to be the light of Christ as one of His disciples to the whole world.

That mission, which is at the heart of our call from Christ, is a shared mission. By reason of our baptism, we all are called to witness Jesus Christ. We all have been constituted as the People of God. We all share in Christ’s priestly prophetic and royal office, each one of us in his or her own manner. We all are called to exercise the mission which God has entrusted to the Church, to fulfill in the world in accord with the commissions and the responsibilities each one of us has.

As bishop of this diocese, I look forward to the constitution of this new Diocesan Pastoral Council and to our future meetings when we will be able to talk about what it is that has made this Church so great and how we can contribute together to plan for the future. I am deeply grateful to Bishop Emil Wcela and his committee for the work they did in giving us the foundation stones that made this Diocesan Pastoral Council possible. I thank as well the members of the Priest Senate and the Presbyteral Council who have worked together and have discussed this for many times, as I thank the men and women of the Vincentian Center who worked so closely with the Chancellor and Vicar General in giving us a variety of proposals from which the Presbyteral Council indicated this model as the model for us.