The Catholic Church is often caricatured as just one big ball of rules. Certainly, She does have a lot of rules, but far from being a litany of “thou shalt nots,” the laws of the Catholic Church frequently admit a certain flexibility. Canon 905 establishes that a priest can only celebrate Mass once a day unless, in the midst of a shortage of priests, the bishop allows him to celebrate twice a day, even three times on Sundays.
So, while there are many hard and fast rules in the Church, many, even most, have built-in exceptions which, with the permission of the bishop or some other ecclesiastical authority, a priest may use.
Similarly, there are certain options, certain permissions in Church law which are of such importance that they can’t just be given by anyone, nor even by any priest. Instead, they have to be given by a close associate of the diocesan bishop, like a vicar general, or even the diocesan bishop himself. For instance, the Book of Blessings reserves to the diocesan bishop the stable commissioning of extraordinary ministers of holy Communion — the lay “eucharistic ministers” that assist with the distribution of holy Communion at Mass. However, the bishop can delegate the commissioning to any priest and can, in fact, give a sort of standing permission for any priest in his jurisdiction to commission such ministers.
The freedom to exercise an exception or the standing permission to do something usually reserved for the diocesan bishop can be communicated any number of ways. Sometimes, it even arises out of simple repetition. An older priest says to a younger, more recently-ordained priest, “Oh don’t bother calling, the bishop always lets us use that exception.” Thus, through generations of priests, a sort of custom arises whereby it is simply understood that these are the things a priest in such- and-such a diocese can just do.
What’s happened in the Diocese of St. Cloud, however, without anyone quite noticing, is a dramatic drop in inter-generational mentoring by priests. With larger and larger assignments, even when two priests are serving neighboring groups of parishes or even the same large Area Catholic Community, the schedule and obligations are such that they cannot have a lot of time together. In order to serve as many people as possible, often in different corners of the multi-parish community, priests schedule contemporaneous events in different locations such that, often enough, if they are both in the same place, one of them is embarrassingly wrong!
So, while the Diocese of Saint Cloud was able to go without it for many years, like many dioceses in the United States, we needed and now have what’s called a Pagella of Faculties, a list of the standing permissions granted by the bishop to all the clergy ministering in the diocese. Bishop Neary asked me, the vicar for canonical affairs, to assemble a draft pagella shortly after he was consecrated. After the draft was viewed and revised by the bishop’s close advisors, the clergy of the diocese and the Presbyteral Council, the bishop promulgated — that is, “officially published” — the pagella on Dec. 22, 2023.
It is, ultimately, an expression of the bishop’s trust in and care for the clergy of the diocese, a priority since the beginning of his ministry here. As he wrote in the cover letter that accompanied the pagella: “I pray that this list of faculties and permissions empowers you to confidently carry on your work, recognizing the trust I have in you as coworkers in the mission.”
TO READ THE PAGELLA, VISIT STCDIO.ORG/FORMS-DOCUMENTS/
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Photo by Dianne Towalski