Fr Joseph Harris, CSSp

Every organisation needs structure if it is to fulfill the reason for its existence and the structure that it has must be such that it facilitates the fulfilling of the mission or purpose for which it has been formed. 

From earliest days, to facilitate the Church’s mission as servant and model of harmony the universal Church has been comprised of local Churches, each seeking to live the message and to model for the world which surrounds it God’s vision of harmony, while remaining in union with the universal Church.

The Church is Trinidad and Tobago, known as the Archdiocese of Port of Spain, is one such local Church.

Each local Church is supervised by a bishop whose chief task is to promote the harmony the Church must model for the world. The bishop does this through his threefold responsibility of Teaching, Sanctifying and Governing.

Since priests are cooperators of the bishop, they share in this threefold responsibility, but also every area of pastoral work for which the bishop is ultimately responsible, to be authentically pastoral must be able to situate itself within this threefold responsibility of the bishop and fulfill the task of building harmony so that the Church models for the world the harmony which is God’s plan for it.

We are accustomed to illustrate the above with a diagram showing the bishop at the top in a box or circle with a straight line downwards intersecting another horizontal line. From that horizontal line, three vertical lines fall ending in three boxes representing the functions of teaching, sanctifying and governing.

From these boxes emerge vertical and horizontal lines also ending in boxes representing various ministries in the diocese connected to the three functions of the bishop.

There is another way of illustrating the link between bishop and ministries, however, and it can be compared to the source of a great river and its basin. From the source flows a river which divides into three branches.

These branches represent the three functions of the bishop. From each branch emerge tributaries representing the various ministries connected to the three functions of the bishop.

The three branches of the river and the various tributaries are streams of grace flowing from the source to reach each and every Christian in the diocese.

Just as all living beings in the basin of a great river are nourished by the branches and tributaries of the river so the diocese can be conceived as the basin of a river of grace in which all persons are vivified by the streams of grace reaching into every corner of the diocese.

What this model tells us also is that just as a stream dries up if it is not connected to the source, so too ministries lose their efficacy if they do not remain connected to the bishop.

These two models offer different gifts to a diocese. The first offers a certain order and tidiness, which are important; the second model offers a sense of creativity and life.

The first model, if one is not careful can lead to stagnation, in the same way the second model can lead to confusion. What we must ask ourselves though is which model can better help us to achieve the harmony, which is God’s vision for our world.