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Mission Management

For the church to carry out its mission, it needs management systems, trained personnel and the governance, oversight and accountability that people in the pews increasingly demand. That's what Mission Management is all about. Here we will explore success stories — best practices in church governance, management and leadership that can be emulated by others in similar circumstances.

When the budget is a moral failure, who will speak for the poor?

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Commentary

The House of Representatives has passed a budget based largely on a plan proposed in late March by Congressman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., — a practicing Catholic — and later endorsed by presumed-Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. The plan is structured to spare military spending from mandatory cuts. It is a vicious, anti-life austerity budget that, if implemented, would hammer the poor, the sick, the vulnerable and elderly.

Pastoral councils are a work in progress

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MISSION MANAGEMENT

Diocesan and parish pastoral councils have recently been in the news. First, the beleaguered Philadelphia archdiocese announced the formation of its first "archdiocesan pastoral council," as Archbishop Charles Chaput tries to create almost from scratch a well-functioning enterprise.

Then there's the case of Florian Stangl, a 26-year-old gay Austrian man in a registered domestic partnership, whose pastor had prohibited him from serving on the parish council to which he had been elected by a wide margin. Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna overrode the pastor and allowed Stangl to serve on the council.

Today, half of the 195 U.S. dioceses have diocesan pastoral councils, while three-fourths of the 18,000 parishes have parish pastoral councils, according to a 2003 survey by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

But what exactly is a parish pastoral council? Where do they come from? What is their mission? And how do they operate?

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In This Issue

August 2-15, 2013

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