CTK Hosts OLHP Vicariate’s First Quarter Assembly for PPCs
The Christ the King Parish Social Hall was the venue for the Our Mother of Perpetual Help Vicariate (CTK is one of the parishes in the vicariate, along with Our Lady of Perpetual Help – Cubao, Our Lady of Miraculous Medal , TransFiguration of our Lord, Nativity of Our Lord, St. John Paul II – Eastwood, and San Roque – Bagumbayan).
Welcoming the Parish Pastoral Council members of the seven different parishes was CTK’s own Fr. Bong Tupino, who spoke on behalf of the designated incharge Fr. Arnel Recinto. Fr. Bong was quite pleased that all the parishes were represented, with at least one table per parish. To be expected, Christ the King- Greenmeadows had the largest delegation, completely filling up three tables.
After the dinner, which wa s complimented on by nearly all the visitors, Fr. Bong introduced the lecturer for the evening, Fr. Omer Prieto, from the Diocese of Cubao and a member of its Pastoral Team. At the same time, he is the parish priest of St. Anthony of Padua Parish. He also specializes in giving Marian talks, conducting cenacles and retreats for both clergy and lay, and has a weekly radio program, “Yes Father” at DWAD and a monthly slot at Radio Veritas “Alay Kay Inang Maria”.
At the outset, Fr. Omer revealed the topics for the four quarterly assemblies. This quarter’stalk would be on the parish. The second would be about the servant leaders of Communion ; third on the Structures of Participation; and fourth on the vicariate – how to achieve the mission of parish communion.
Fr. Omer proceeded to define the “parish”. He said “the parish is a community of Christ’ s faithful, established in the diocese by the Bishop, whose pastoral care is entrusted to the parish priest as its pastor. It is in the parish that the Church is experienced on a regular basis. He made the critical point that the parish is “territorial”, that is, embracing all the faithful within its geographic confines.
To illustrate more clearly, Fr. Omer presented the organization chart with the parish priest atop the three-layer structure of pastoral ministries-groups and the parish communities. The parish priest’s mission is abundantly clear – pastoral care as the bishop’s representative, ministering to the community. As such, he needs to know the faithful entrusted to his care. But there is a problem: most parishes have a large number of parishioners, numbering in the thousands of families.
It is the parish communities, or the “pamayanans” which legitimizes the “territorial” definition of ‘parish’. And thirdly are the pastoral ministries which constitute the pipeline through which pastoral programs flow to the parish communities. These ministries nourish ecclesial life, fulfilling the works of Christ.
Fr. Omer clarified to the vicariate gathering that Church renewal as a mandate was not an option, and that the ‘renewed’ Church’ must be reflected in the parish. If not yet, the parish must become truly a faith community He tossed around a number of points for the PPC members of the different parishes to ponder on:
– At the parish level: How can the parish PPCs help their parish priests with their immense responsibilities? What renewal programs should the parish adopt?
– At the community level: Is there a need to review the parish boundaries? For example, did it make sense that one side of the street belongs to one parish and the other side belonged to another? Is there a need to create quasi-parishes out of big parishes? And how do we reach out to the peripheries?
– At the ministry level: Are the ministries truly nourishing the parish community? And are the organizations aligned with the ministries collaborating in the mission? How can the parishes in the vicariate share strategies and thus help one another?
