By Gretchen Keiser

A new structure of a council and committees, made up of laity, priests, deacons, Religious, and staff of the archdiocesan offices, has been set up to advise and assist Bishop James P. Lyke, OFM.

The new structure is headed by an Archdiocesan Planning and Development Council, (APDC), with 14 members. Three major committees, Planning, Development and Finance, have also been established. Among their tasks is to address means of initiating long- and short-term planning for the archdiocese, and to develop systematic and sustained methods to fund and to staff the works that are determined to be most important to the Church community.

The Finance Committee, with several subcommittees, will help with the preparation of the archdiocesan budget and oversee the expenditure of budgeted funds, and advise on real estate holdings, loans and investments of the archdiocese. Building plans for parishes and Catholic institutions will continue to be reviewed by a building subcommittee.

The Council, and its committees and subcommittees have lay chairpeople.

The APDC is being chaired by Edward de St. Aubin, president of Servidyne Systems, Inc., whose work experience includes management and development. He has also been active in projects for his parish, for education and for public service.

The Council and its committees and subcommittees met as a group with Bishop Lyke for an information session February 9. Since then the APDC and the committees held their first separate meetings.

Among the first actions taken by the APDC has been to ask the Planning committee to begin to look at defining a process or methodology that the committee will use to find immediate, short-and long-term priorities for the archdiocese.

The committee is chaired by John Kerrigan, who recently became Southeast director for Salomon Brothers investment banking firm, and who has spent a number of years before coming to Atlanta in volunteer planning and development work for the Marist Brothers of the Schools in New York state.

In a document outlining the reasoning behind the Council, Bishop Lyke said the APDC will help him gather and maintain resources to address the pastoral concerns of the archdiocese and advise him in overseeing the human and material resources.

The bishop also said the use of such advisory, or consultative bodies is a way for Church faithful to participate in the direction of ecclesial life and to bring their “unique expertise to bear on the crucial issues which face the Church in the archdiocese.”

Membership has been carefully structured to include lay people and clergy and Religious. It has also been designed to represent a broad cross-section of the archdiocese, including its diverse geography, racial and ethnic composition, and its components of those who work for the Church, and those who make up the Church membership, while earning their livelihood elsewhere.

The Members also represent a deliberate attempt to draw out people with expertise in financing, planning, development, management, banking, building, real estate, and other key areas.

In letters of appointment to members of the Council, committees and subcommittees, Bishop Lyke said the creation of the body was “a new and necessary development in the archdiocese.”

He called it “new, not simply because it is newly established, but also because the finest insights of the Second Vatican Council regarding the role of the laity are the basis for its beginning and the guiding light for its future. Necessary, because you and the other lay women and men bring to this task the rich expression of your Catholic Faith and the expertise of your educational and professional backgrounds.”

Terms on the committees are for three years. Chairs and vice chairs are one-year posts.

Pre-existing committees and councils that served and archdiocese under previous bishops, such as the Finance council, Parish Review committee, Property Commission and Building Committee, have been replaced by the new structure, which absorbed the tasks of budget review property and construction review, etc. that the former organizations had done. People actively serving on those committees were invited to serve in the new structure.

The chairman of the new Development Committee is Phil Humann. The chairman of the new Finance Committee is Carroll Sterne.

Mr. de St. Aubin, a parishioner of All Saints parish in Dunwoody, said that his role had evolved in recent months as he approached the archdiocese offering to make a contribution of his skills to the Church as needed, and as Father Edward Dillon, vicar general, and Bishop Lyke refined a sense of what was needed to meet substantial challenges of growth facing north Georgia’s Catholic Church.

The Council is made up of 14 members, in addition to the bishop and vicar general. The 14 include the chairs of the Planning, Development and Finance Committees, the chief financial officer of the archdiocese, representatives of the priests’ Council, Atlanta Sisters Conference and permanent diaconate, five at-large members, the chair and vice chair. There is clergy representation on each committee and subcommittee.

Pointing out that non-profit organizations have become more and more professional in their approach, defining priorities, and developing good funding programs, Mr. de St. Aubin said that he thought the talents and involvement of many people were needed, and that the Council and supporting committees were broadly based.

“This is not a small group,” he said. “We really tried our best to get representation from all geographic parts and a mix of the various minority groups and to get really qualified people.”

The charge to the groups is to be “consultative bodies” to the bishop. In an explanatory document, Bishop Lyke said such groups make “recommendations which bear considerable weight. They are not legislative bodies which make binding decisions, nor are they merely advisory groups whose advice might easily be ignored.”

He also said the recommendations of the council and committees would be distinct from the daily acts of administration of the archdiocese carried out by the staff. Staff serve on several of the groups also.

In addition to his professional work, Mr. de St. Aubin is the head of the Men’s Club at All Saints, its pastoral board and board of education, and on the fund-raiding committee for Jerusalem House, a home for persons with AIDS in Atlanta.