PARISH PASTORAL COUNCILS

TO FOCUS ON PLANNING 

With the aim to create a “culture of dialogue” in every parish of the Diocese of Brooklyn, the diocesan Pastoral Planning Office is introducing an initiative to strengthen parish pastoral councils where they exist and develop them where they do not.

Leading and coordinating the effort will be Robert Choiniere, the associate director of the office since January, whose prior experience in pastoral planning was gained in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston.

In September, Mr. Choiniere and a team of 30 facilitators will begin visiting 70 parishes and meeting their clergy, Religious and lay leaders to discuss pastoral planning and parish pastoral councils. Two additional groups of about 70 parishes will enter the program in January and April of next year, respectively.

The facilitators will be drawn from the diocesan Pastoral Council, graduates of the diocesan Pastoral Institute and persons recommended by pastors and diocesan vicars. They will offer their services in English, Spanish, French and Creole and generally will have a background in theology.

Mr. Choiniere said the facilitators will guide discussions that they hope will lead parish leaders to see their role in determining the future of their parishes.

“We will try to give them as much information as possible, such as demographic statistics compiled by the New York City Planning Office, spiritual and sacramental data drawn from the spiritual reports parishes give to the Diocese annually, and details on temporalities provided by diocesan agencies,” he said.

The information will include Mass attendance figures. Parishes conducted Mass counts in the five weekends of May. The planning office intends to request that parishes repeat the count twice a year on a regular basis.

Three months into each cycle, the parish pastoral council members will undergo a training and formation program to assist them in understanding the theology and practical skills of pastoral planning, Mr. Choiniere said.

According to a survey taken by the planning office, 51 percent of the 216 parishes in Brooklyn and Queens have a parish council.

“I’m excited about the prospects for this program,” he said. “It’s an opportunity for parish leaders and parishioners to talk about their core values as Catholics and their priorities for their parish and the Church. We need to keep in touch with our basic mission---who are we and why are we here?”

As a result of the pastoral planning process in Philadelphia, “people feel well informed,” he observed. “Good conversations are going on in the parishes. There’s a culture of dialogue focused on mission going on there that we hope to establish here.”

Many parishioners there “now feel connected to one another, understanding that ‘we’re all in this together,’” he said.

Mr. Choiniere, who was a pastoral services liaison to groups of parishes in the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston before going to Philadelphia as the program coordinator for parish pastoral councils, said he is thrilled to be working in the Diocese of Brooklyn.

“I came here because I feel I was called to be here,” he said. “It is what God is asking me to do. I feel blessed and graced to be a servant of the people of the Diocese.”

Mr. Choiniere (pronounced shwan-YAIR), a native of Reading, Pa., has an undergraduate degree in theology from DeSales University in Allentown, Pa., and a master’s in pastoral ministry from Boston College.  He also studied community organizing and administration at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and took part in the clinical pastoral educational program at Easton, Pa., Hospital.

By next Spring, he said, the pastoral planning office plans to initiate a parish self-study that will invite a representative group of parishioners to begin interacting about the life of their faith community today and their vision of parish life in the future.

He said that once the planning process is underway in each parish, clusters of parishes will be brought into the process to review the new parish pastoral plans and address the needs of the cluster in light of those plans.

Mr. Choiniere said Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio and Msgr. Neil Mahoney, Vicar for Pastoral Planning, “are extremely supportive” of his organizing efforts. “Decisions affecting the Diocese in the years ahead can’t be made without the information that will come from the planning process,” he said.

As for what the planning process will mean for the people of the Diocese, decisions based on consultation and pastoral planning “will build on the foundation of our shared faith and shape our future,” he said. “These are holy conversations.”

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