By Rita McInerney and Gretchen Keiser

A willingness to draw up a blueprint for a new era of collaboration between clergy and laity prevails within the Archdiocesan Planning and Development Council established earlier this year by Archbishop James P. Lyke, OFM.

While the Council of 14 members clarifies its role of advising and assisting the archbishop, it is also beginning to have an impact in the archdiocese. It is offering a new channel of opinion to the archbishop on how the extensive archdiocesan operation responds to present and future challenges.

Council members interviewed shared a desire to incorporate lay skills into the service of the church in North Georgia in collaboration with and under the pastoral care of the archbishop.

Through debate and discussion, according to Edward de St. Aubin, chairman, the members of the Council are defining what their roles will be and how they can work together.

Since there are no local precedents, “We tried to educate ourselves,” he said. This included looking at similar councils and committees in other dioceses around the country.

Chairman de St. Aubin, a member of All Saints parish in Dunwoody, believes the Council can be an opportunity for a new cooperation among clergy, Religious and laity. “The word advisory has to be used over and over.”

At the same time, he believes that the archbishop, while pulled in a lot of directions, is really open to the input the Council is giving him. “He listens a lot, he doesn’t react,” de St. Aubin said.

Viewpoints are across a compass, reflecting the talents and backgrounds of members. The discussions, depending on who is speaking, are “vigorous,” and “frustrating.”

For businessman Gregory Baranco, from St. Peter and Paul Parish, Decatur, the participants are striving to reach a “comfort level” in working as a unit.

For someone who doesn’t understand the “vision and goal,” the discussion could be misinterpreted. There is no “friction or confrontation,” but rather a “vigorous discussion of the issues.”

Through discussion a support relationship is developing that includes respect and trust for different positions, he said.

Sister Mary Beth Beres, OP, sees the creation of the Council as “an effort to find a way in which competencies of lay members can be brought into the service of the Church.”

This involves “very significant changes. My sense is that all of the parties are looking for that constructive change. But people are coming from different points of view. That makes the effort exciting, challenging and generates conflict,” she said.

“One of the major challenges for everyone is that we’re all familiar with laity in the role of resource generators (fund-raisers). What we’re struggling with is how laity can offer expertise in other areas.” Sister Beres is a consultant for leadership and organization development with Leadership Systems, Decatur.

Because the archdiocese is relatively young and possibly the fastest growing in the U.S., Jim Conrads sees the Council as “very necessary.”

Conrads, of Christ the King parish, said that, to date, accomplishments are “not something you can pinpoint.” He feels the group is “moving along” while acknowledging that “all of us have been frustrated at one time or other” since the council began meeting.

Baranco sees the Council’s lay members as “representing our peers, not only to the clergy but our opinions to the archbishop. We are sure he is hearing our views. We understand and support the archbishop and want to make sure he gets input from everyone.”

It’s not any different with the archdiocese than it is with big business, he insists. “We are trying to make sure the decision-makers have the views of the people. They’re in this position because they are leaders, but the separation that sometimes exists is not good. We think this (Council) is very positive. I feel that the bishop shares this enthusiasm.”

“I think the archbishop has provided an atmosphere where people are free not only to disagree with each other, but to disagree vigorously,” said John Kerrigan, a Council member who also chairs its planning committee. “There are times when people are very, very blunt. I think the archbishop welcomes it.”

Another Council member, Frank Hanna of Holy Spirit parish in Atlanta, is getting good feedback on the Council’s role from people he meets “outside.”

He said there had been the feeling there wasn’t enough planning in the archdiocese. Now he is noticing, that “people have the feeling they are having some input.”

While some people on the Council would like to move faster, he feels that it’s the “very participation that slows it up.”

The Council is looking at the needs of the inner city, Hispanics, all of North Georgia, Hanna said.

“What’s happening this year we cant’ do anything about,” but in long range planning, over five or ten years, he expects the Council will have a voice.

His optimism on the role of the Council’s future success is influenced by the archbishop’s attitude. “It’s to his credit he allows us input. He’s very sensitive to everyone, wants to participate across the board.”

De St. Aubin said the Council, for the first four months of its existence, met on the second Thursday of the month at the archbishop’s residence. He believes this helped to bring members together. More recently, the Council has been meeting every other month with a steering committee meeting on alternate months. Attendance is very good.

An all-day session with Father David Nygren, associated with the department of psychology at DePaul University in Chicago, took place Sept. 27 at Ignatius House. This was scheduled, de St. Aubin said, to help the Council become more effective, to define its role and how members can work together.

“It took time for the group to get self-educated and evolve into what is our function,” he said. “A real learning curve is going on.”

One specific result of the Father Nygren workshop is a redefinition of the way people who work for the archdiocese relate to the Council and its committees. Until now several staff members have been on the APDC or its committees. Father Nygren said that traditionally advisory groups do not have staff as members, but staff serve as support to the councils and committees. Archbishop Lyke indicated he intends to accept that recommendation.

In specific terms, the Council has overseen the work of three committees, one of finance, one on planning and one on development. Finance also has a number of subcommittees concerned with advising and reviewing archdiocesan departmental budgets, land purchases, loans, building and construction, and investments.

Through the finance committee and subcommittees the Council has had an impact on the short-term financial decision-making and planning of the archdiocese, bringing the expertise of people who work in the financial field to some of the challenges that face the Church and its departments as they try to build and grow with a booming Catholic population.

Through the development committee, a longstanding desire of archdiocesan leaders, both clerical and lay, has been brought about--to establish a development office with professional staff who will buttress that critical plank in archdiocesan thinking and funding for the future.

From the planning committee, the Council is awaiting a recommendation about the need for some form of comprehensive planning process to be undertaken in the archdiocese, with a recommended outside consultant or consultants based on the committee’s study of other dioceses who have faced the same problem and already embarked on comprehensive training.

The task of the planning committee, said chairman Kerrigan, is to “help us establish a road map of where we’re going and how to get there” as an archdiocese. With the Catholic population expected to double in the next 10 to 25 years in North Georgia, “we can stumble our way to getting a half a million Catholics in the archdiocese or we can plan and meet needs.”

Among the characteristics that committee has already agreed the planning process should have, he pointed out, are that it be very participatory, “bottom up in addition to top down.”

Archbishop Lyke, in an interview about the Council, said that in its first six months of existence it is a “young and developing,” body whose impact is yet to be felt. “I am persuaded that by this time next year, its importance to the life of the Church of God in Atlanta will be readily seen and understood,” he added.

He called its members “committed Catholics who are experts in their professions…quite capable of bringing the insights of their fields to the ministerial endeavors of the Church.”

“Already their advice has been very valuable to me and individuals on the Council have gone out of their way to assist the archdiocese in some of our projects.”

The membership of the Council, which was structured to include people from different geographic quadrants of the archdiocese and also minority members and women, primarily is drawn form the fields of finance, business, planning and development. The archbishop said this structure may be unique in the U.S. dioceses in bringing that combination of people alone in a top-level lay advisory group.

He also disclosed that this structure will permit him to develop an Archdiocesan Pastoral Council in the future, which would emphasize education and sacramental life, “rather than dealing with the church’s temporalities and business operations.”

This new concept is one that he intends to develop into a concrete proposal over the next year, the archbishop said. “I want the APDC to be moving well before I take on such a large venture as the Archdiocesan Pastoral Council.”