WHEN CATHOLICS WERE CONGREGATIONALISTS An experiment that faltered
Shelley, Thomas J
When Catholics were congregationalists One consequence of the recent sexual-abuse scandals has been a call for new structures in the church to provide greater lay involvement and clerical...
...Three aspects of the trustee system offer lessons for today, both positive and negative, as American Catholics attempt to redefine the role of the laity in the church...
...It hardly seems subversive to make use of the structures that the ecclesiastical authorities themselves have established for the better governance of the church...
...Catholics share that conviction, but they also believe that the bishops, as the successors of the Apostles, occupy a unique and privileged place in the ecclesial community...
...With John England's death in 1842 and the gradual elimination of lay trusteeism elsewhere in the United States, any significant lay role in the administration of parishes came to an end...
...Although these conflicts were confined to a relatively small number of parishes, at the First Provincial Council of Baltimore in 1829...
...Tensions between clergy and laity sometimes flared into open conflict when the trustees attempted to appoint or remove a pastor without consulting the bishop, or did so in defiance of the bishop's wishes...
...Often these turf wars were further exacerbated by ethnic differences among parishioners and pastors or bishops...
...Two centuries ago, American Catholics experimented with a system of parish administration that provided the laity with a substantive role in a hierarchical church...
...So that now, though they grieve still, they have not strength enough to give a decent kick...
...With passage of that resolution, the power of the trustees in New York was broken...
...Father John Carroll, the priest Rome had appointed as superior of the American church, rejected the claim of the lay trustees to hire and fire their pastor because he feared it would lead down the slippery slope to Congregationalism...
...Between 1785 and 1855, a few highly publicized confrontations between lay trustees and bishops in the United States led to suspensions, interdicts, and even schisms...
...To paraphrase G. K. Chesterton, perhaps the existing structures have not been tried and found wanting, but found difficult and not tried...
...For the first time in a century, American laypeople were offered a role in the functioning of their parishes...
...The trustees were usually the legal owners of the church property and managed the finances...
...Congregationalists believe that religious authority comes from God through the ecclesial community...
...Elsewhere, it was a different story...
...Finally, if American bishops today vary in their reaction to Voice of the Faithful, it is worth noting that their predecessors manifested the same ambivalence toward lay trusteeism...
...His words may seem disappointingly vague, but, like Voice of the Faithful today, he had no road map to follow and was seeking to define the place of the laity as he grew into his role as the chief shepherd of the U.S...
...That does not mean that the function of the laity in the Catholic Church is merely to pray, pay and obey, however...
...Catholic Church...
...That is not a good system, as American Catholics have become painfully aware...
...and even now I shall ever pay to their wishes every deference consistent with the general welfare of religion...
...This clerical folk memory, only partially accurate, is one reason why some priests and bishops today look with suspicion on organizations such as Voice of the Faithful...
...Today, the effectiveness of pastoral councils varies widely, and in some places there seems to be a reversion to the system of one-man rule that prevailed before Vatican II...
...Devising new structures to achieve those goals is a delicate task, however, because Catholics are not Congregationalists...
...One of the first places lay trusteeism led to bitter divisions was at Saint Peter's Church in New York City in 1785...
...The system seems to have worked...
...Moreover, it is not the system embodied in the canon law of the church, which mandates the establishment of finance councils and encourages the establishment of a pastoral council in every parish...
...Only in the aftermath of Vat- ican 11 was there an effort to redress this imbalance by introducing elected parish pastoral councils...
...It was called lay trusteeism...
...He was seeking some middle ground between those two extreme positions...
...At the same time, Carroll assured the trustees that the laity should have a role in the administration of their parishes...
...In New York, the defining moment for lay trusteeism came ten years later, when John Hughes, still only the coadjutor bishop to Bishop John Dubois, went over the heads of the trustees of Saint Patrick's Cathedral and appealed directly to the pew-holders who had elected them...
...If ever the principles laid down there should become predominant," Carroll warned two of the trustees the following year, "the unity and Catholicity of our church would be at an end...
...The system worked well in places like southern Maryland, where there was an ethnically homogeneous Catholic population with a long tradition of lay involvement in church affairs dating back to the days of the Catholic gentry in Elizabethan England...
...An Irish immigrant like Hughes, England was so impressed with the American political system that he attempted to incorporate some of its features, including a written constitution, into the government of his diocese...
...Virtually every Catholic parish founded in the United States prior to 1830 (except those under the auspices of religious orders) had a board of lay trustees, and the board wielded considerable authority in many areas of parish life...
...Moreover, parish trustees could be removed only by their fellow trustees...
...The central feature of the constitution that England gave his diocese was an annual convention that consisted of a House of the Clergy and a House of Lay Delegates with elected representatives from each parish...
...On the contrary, he told them, "Our interests are the same...
...Monsignor Thomas J. Shelley, a priest of the Archdiocese of New York, is professor of historical theology at Fordham University...
...For that reason Catholics cannot envision a nonhierarchical church...
...John Carroll was neither a clerical autocrat nor an ecclesiastical democrat...
...When Catholics were congregationalists One consequence of the recent sexual-abuse scandals has been a call for new structures in the church to provide greater lay involvement and clerical accountability...
...First, this so-called republican form of church government was far from democratic, as the trustees were not elected by the whole congregation, but only by the wealthier parishioners who could afford to buy or rent pews...
...What Hughes wanted, and got, was a resolution disavowing any action that would "hinder or prevent our bishop from the full, free, and entire exercise of the rights, powers, and duties which God has appointed as inherent in his office...
...The laity had no competence over doctrine, sacraments, liturgy, or the clergy, but they did have authority over financial matters and lay personnel in parishes...
...and it would be formed into distinct and independent societies, nearly in the same manner, as the Congregational Presbyterians of your neighboring New England states...
...By the time Hughes abolished lay trusteeism in New York, however, it was well established in the diocese of Charleston, South Carolina, with not only the approval but also the support of Bishop John England...
...There was also a provision in the constitution for the laity to take action against unsatisfactory clergy...
...At least, England thought so...
...He told the Georgia diocesan convention in 1826 that there was no reason why the clergy and laity should be suspicious of one another, "each fearing an encroachment upon its rights by the other...
...the American bishops sounded the death knell of lay trusteeism when they decreed that henceforth all church property should be vested in the local bishop...
...Second, long after the era of lay trusteeism had passed, the clergy remembered it as a period marked by bitter and divisive struggles...
...Whenever parishes are established," Carroll told them, "a proper regard, and such as is suitable to our governments, will be had to the rights of the congregation in the mode of election and presentation [of pastors...
...In a letter, Hughes gloated to Archbishop Samuel Ecdeston of Baltimore: "We killed the trustees, as 1 told you, but they could not believe that they were dead-it came so sudden...
Vol. 130 • September 2003 • No. 15
