Why I'm fed up with parish committees.

(and what it would take to get me back)

"GIVE ME A BREAK," A FRIEND CHUCKLED MORE than 15 years ago when his parish council started drafting a mission statement. An expert had told them it would take two years to polish that document and get the whole parish to "buy into it." My friend is a computer specialist and thinks like an engineer. He could not comprehend taking two years to write a few sentences, though he understood the value of having a parish mission statement.

His "Give me a break!" has stuck with me all these years as he endured the real-world issues of raising a family, surviving a buyout of his company, and continuing his parish participation faithfully without another reference to that mission statement.

Come to think of it, he hasn't mentioned the parish council, either.

My friend's experience, along with those of many other Catholics over the past three decades, demonstrates how parish committees all too often fumble and fail in fundamental ways. Many operate without enough connection to people's real lives, many have no real direction, some get blindsided and derailed by well-meaning or angry members, and some drift out of existence due to poor follow-up or management.

And as committees fade away, so do active Catholics, whom I call "fadeaways."

Some committees act like characters in the movie Groundhog Day. They keep raising the same topics over and over, never truly advancing important issues. I know of one parish council member responsible for writing a report for the parish bulletin once a month. After about five months, she realized she was writing practically the same words every month. "Even though we reached a consensus on each agenda item each month, there it was on the agenda for the next meeting, coming back like a bad penny," she said.

Another problem with parish committees is that they have no real authority. They are, of course, advisory. That's church law. But they could be much more. Two meetings in a row, a parish council I chaired unanimously adopted a resolution recommending specific action about a sensitive parish concern. The pastor chose to ignore us. He preferred the status quo to confronting the situation, and not long afterward, I resigned from the council.

Our parish also started talking formally about renovating our old, beautiful church. We hosted a series of educational meetings for parishioners to explain new church regulations about parish buildings. But all of that blew up. Some very angry parishioners showed up at the forums and viciously denounced the meeting's leaders. With personal attacks, a faction of irate parishioners made it clear they wanted no changes to our church building. The last educational forum ended abruptly, practically in mid-sentence, and the renovation committee drifted into nonexistence.

CHURCH MEMBERS' ATTACKS ON OTHER MEMBERS ARE NOT pretty, but they happen all the time, often behind the scenes. People feel so strongly about certain issues they become unreasonable, uncharitable, and obnoxiously self-righteous. "Why not round up all of these relentless complainers from every parish and create a new parish for them and call it Our Lady of Misery?" a priest once mused in a conversation with me.

The trouble is, so many committees are so dysfunctional that Catholics are fading away not only from committees, but also from their beloved parishes or, even worse, from active practice of the faith altogether. And most parishes are large enough that the rest of the parish doesn't notice them slipping away. But all of a sudden, they're just gone. The church's failure to deal pastorally with burned-out, frustrated fadeaways is a pervasive problem.

I'd say sometimes laypeople are the problem. Sometimes priests are the problem. So there, I've covered everybody. But the fact is, priests have enormous power, legally and structurally, to change, veto, or ignore any committee recommendation.

More than 20 years ago, I was on a parish committee that spent many hours in the school gym crafting a good-looking Advent banner. The group had almost finished its work when the pastor walked in, took one look, and said, "You can't hang that." He also said he needed to turn off the gym lights because it cost too much to keep them on. End of discussion. No banner. Lights out.

DESPITE ALL OF THIS TIME HARPING ON PROBLEMS, I STILL believe in the Christophers' motto that it's better to light one candle than curse the darkness. So in a spirit of hope and forgiveness--and with apologies to the priests and other church members who have made personal sacrifices to nourish me for more than four decades and who have enlivened parish communities through sensitive leadership--I have a few suggestions for making parish committees more effective:

1. Let's stop saying that collaborative processes will get "everybody" to "buy into" committee decisions. Never did, never will. A collaborative style helps leaders and followers alike move toward a common goal, but ultimately, somebody has to make decisions and move on. So please, committees and pastors, realize that the parish is looking to you to make decisions. Go ahead and make them and accept the fact you will have some dissenters.

2. Set clear objectives and then follow through. Parishioners who renege on commitments punch a hole in parish community, and priests who don't respond to committee advice lose credibility. Saying no or "I'll think about it" is far better than being silent. A response that says, "I don't care" is no response.

3. Either give priests training to be administrators, business managers, and plant managers, or stop expecting them to be experts at all these things. It's not fair to them. Tell them to hire people who can handle these functions better than they can. You say the parish doesn't have the money? Maybe not. So ask for more volunteer help, find the money, or reduce your expectations.

4. Give me a short-term project or assignment, not a lifetime committee assignment. Give me a starting date and ending date. Like most parishioners, I am stressed by family and work obligations. I want to participate, but I also want a safety net that tells me it's OK not to take part all the time.

5. Start a Re-member Church or similar program that invites fadeaways or inactive Catholics back. But don't announce this program in church. The people you're seeking aren't there. Buy ads in newspapers and you'll be surprised, humbled, and happy by who responds. I know because I served on a Re-member Church team for awhile.

6. Let's stop portraying the church as a place for saints. We're all sinners, very imperfect ones. Why can't we operate as if Saint Paul were right in saying that in his weakness he is strong? Every parish is a place where sinners operate and probably do the best they can with their weaknesses, which inevitably lead to frustrations, misunderstandings, jealousies, and other emotions that cause divisions. But that's precisely why we need a Savior, isn't it?

While these steps would help restore my confidence in the church as an institution, they are not the ultimate answer to getting people back--or me back. Getting them back, and me back, ultimately is their choice, my choice. I am currently a faraway, lying low at Mass at a neighboring parish most weekends. Returning to my home parish more actively would be a choice. I emphasize "my choice," my decision.

I could choose to be more forgiving and more tolerant and lower my expectations of what sinners can do. I could choose to live with the awesome magnitude of the problem and hang in there anyway. I could be less judgmental and lighten up. I could pray more frequently and pray for more guidance. And I could pray for others more humbly and fervently, because Lord knows that most days I feel so exhausted by some church dynamics that I know I desperately need the prayers of others.

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ED WOJCICKI, who works for the University of Illinois at Springfield, where he is publisher of Illinois Issues, a magazine about state government and politics.