Deacons and Welfare Supports in Church

 

Introduction

 

The concept of welfare support should be a parish affair and not to be narrowed down to just specific groups. There should be a real structural initiative to address individual needs in the Parish. This may cause rancour but it was also a problem in the early church, and in my opinion, it should be the starting point for faith.

Priests should cultivate enough detachment to let the deacons champion this. And where are the deacons? The church should ordain more spiritually minded workers and professionals as deacons to manage the Church’s temporal affairs. Priests should only stay as general overseers and devote more time to the Word. That was what the early church did.

 

1.    What are Deacons doing and what should they be doing in the church?

I do believe there has to be a new or rather broadened job role for deacons in the Church, which should be coordination and meeting the temporal needs of parishioners.

There is a heavy burden on Parish priests in the overall work of meeting the spiritual, mental, and material needs of the parish. These needs are increasingly difficult to detach from each other.

When these practical issues are not properly approached priests are either overburdened or parishioners are alienated when they feel no one does care for their ordeals.

Come to think of it, lots of parishioners’ prayers still stop on the temporal end, and as such the practicability of a pragmatic need of localized meeting of temporal need could be where the diaconate can find its reform.

The deacon can start by coordinating the workers in the parish in order to integrate the contribution of their expertise into the mission of the parish with continual feedback to the priest so that as souls are being fed spiritually, there are practical initiatives in place toward meeting their temporal need even on the parish level. 

I am aware that the Catholic Church is one of the largest charities in the world but this impact seems not to be felt by those in most need on the Parish level.

These workers when properly coordinated can meet the diverse needs of the parish. For instance, properly coordinated legal assistance, urgent building fixing at home, or medical attention.

I am aware that there are legal implications and risk management issues that have to be put in place, but the entire salvation decision itself comes as a risk decision. To close our eyes to these practical needs of parishioners means we are more interested in preserving honour than in saving souls. 

The new deacon in my opinion should be able to be the link between the Clergy and the Laity. Many laities are absorbed with real practical temporal concerns and surviving the pressures of each day, which are increasingly difficult for priests to manage in postmodern times.

These are not far-fetched from what the deacons were doing in the early church.

Without a proper contemporary structure that is practical enough in meeting the concerns of parishioners, we may continue to have issues with the engagements of parishioners on the parish level.

 

2.    Parish Welfare Call Centre

With the vast array of communication methods available nowadays, it is necessary that parishes have means and processes of continual and personalized engagements with parishioners in order to give them a sense of belonging.

This could be through the use of text messages, WhatsApp messages, or through the individualizing of email postings like Mailchimp or Convert Kit. Whatever method is preferred, it is necessary that church workers, probably coordinated by deacons and reported to Parish priests, have a proper system of welfare calls, logging, and reporting system in place so that individual parishioners can be engaged with and issues followed up.

I am aware that there are regulations like GDPR et al, but this should not be a hindrance to ensuring that parishioners feel cared for and that the parish stays abreast of what is happening to each of them.

This sort of idea requires proper professional coordination and it may be difficult to put in place initially, but once it becomes a culture, like the daily booking of Masses, it is something that would immensely assist the life and well-being of each parish and parishioner.

There is a close link with the first and second points mentioned in this writeup so that during calls if there are issues with parishioners, this can be logged and if it were spiritual issues, signposted to necessary prayer groups, or if they were temporal matters, signposted to the needed worker group as explained in point 1 above.