Conference looks at parish leadership at a time of fewer priests

Published: 2004-01-12

NEW YORK (CNS) -- Diocesan staff members at a symposium in New York Jan. 8-10 wrestled with issues concerning leadership in parish life at a time when the proportion of ordained clergy serving as leaders is diminishing. The staff members, many of them lay people, reported on the challenges they face in selecting, training, compensating fairly and assuring accountability of the increasing number of lay workers who direct parish activities. They spoke about the shortage of priests and projections that the situation will worsen in the coming years, and the closing and merging of parishes. But a major aspect of the current situation, they indicated, is the increasing use of women religious and lay women and men as parish workers, often as coordinators of parishes with no resident priest, and its implication for the understanding of what it means to be a leader in the church. The New York gathering was the 16th annual Diocesan Leadership Symposium, sponsored by the National Pastoral Life Center in New York.

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