Reminiscences: Finance and Parish Councils

Patrick J Flanagan is a retired priest of the Diocese of Ballarat.

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As I understand things, Canon Law requires parishes to have a Finance Committee. Parish Councils are highly recommended, but not mandatory.

The Plenary Council has made Parish Councils obligatory in Australia, but the decrees of the Plenary Council do not come into effect until they have been rubber-stamped by some official in the Vatican bureaucracy. Which means that you and I may not live to see them become an everyday part of parish life in Australia.

Because, as things stand, the finance committee is compulsory, and the parish council is not, finance committees may be regarded as superior to parish councils. To me, this could present serious problems. A parish council may devote several meetings to decide that the parish needs a parish centre, and then find the finance committee, which has not been party to the parish council’s deliberations, vetoing it on the grounds that ‘we can’t afford it.’ That’s not theoretical. It has happened at times, and it has caused tensions.

When I had a few years of being a parish priest under my belt, I tackled this problem quite simply. The finance committee and the parish council became one body. I held meetings of the executive of the parish council weekly over lunch, and we discussed finance and other problems. The parish council met each month except January. I used to issue for parishioners a statement of receipts and expenditure at the end of each quarter. And there was an annual general meeting of parishioners, who would be invited it propose in advance items for the agenda of the AGM.

I think the arrangement worked fairly well; so I offer it for consideration by other budding pastors.

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