Fr Gerard McCarthy at the the third session of Training for Parish Pastoral Councils and Parish Finance Committees in Galway diocese. Photo: Facebook page of Diocese of Galway Dublin Archdiocese has launched a new resource designed to help parish and diocesan pastoral councils move away from operating like committees at a “business meeting” and instead adopt a more prayerful, discernment-based approach rooted in the Church’s synodal journey.
The resource, titled Becoming a Synodal Pastoral Council, was developed over several months by the Archdiocese’s Mission and Ministry Team. It is, in the words of Patricia Carroll, Director of Mission and Ministry for the Archdiocese of Dublin, “a fruit of the synodal journey and the final report of October 2024”, which placed a strong emphasis on the importance of participatory bodies in a synodal Church.
Those participatory bodies, Ms Carroll explained, are usually [parish] councils and commissions where lay people and clergy gather “to prayerfully consider pastoral directions and decisions together”. It was in light of the importance of these bodies that the Mission and Ministry Team set about producing the new resource, aimed at helping pastoral councils make decisions using a synodal model of working.
“What this means in practice is that where many councils work like committees and feel like a business meeting, the synodal way of working together fosters joint decision-making based on communal discernment and making pastoral decisions together,” Ms Carroll said. The principal method underpinning this approach, she noted, is “conversation in the Spirit” — a structured process of shared prayer and listening that has become central to the wider synodal process across the universal Church.
Conscious that “it is not enough to produce a resource”, the Mission and Ministry Team has also put together a short training series to introduce councils to this new way of working and being together. Because Dublin is the largest diocese in the country, the training is being delivered through three webinars, sparing participants the need to travel while also giving them the chance to meet others from across the archdiocese.
Ms Carroll was clear that the initiative represents only a first step. “This is only the beginning of transforming the way councils have been working in Dublin, and it will be a long journey of transformation,” she said.
She also pointed to the wider significance of pastoral councils within the life of the Church, describing them as one of the key bodies through which the co-responsibility of lay and ordained members can be fully exercised.