2000字美國基督教留學生essay-Discussion on the differences in Presbyterian Church hierarchy and the Roman Catholic version

 

 

1.0 Introduction

There are many religions in the U.S. some religions have large scales, many congregation, such as Roman Catholic churches, some religions are smaller and have less congregation, such as Presbyterian churches. However, in recent years, whether large or small religious organizations are faced with large challenges and dilemmas. The Roman Catholic priest’s child molestation recently gives heavy blow to the image of Roman Catholic churches (Sullins 56-81), and Presbyterian congregation has been showing a downward trend (Linthicum 3-10). Reasons causing this situation have a close relationship with their respective organizational structures. By understanding differences in religious structural organizations to understand the positive and negative effects brought by the differences helps religious organizations to take more targeted measures to address the current challenges. This thesis takes America's Roman Catholic churches (taking Holy Name Cathedral as the representative) and Presbyterian churches (taking Fort Street Presbyterian Church as the representative) as the research objects, from the perspective of bishops, presbyters and deacons to explore the differences in the structures of the two religious organizations, summarizing the impact of such structural differences as well.有許多宗教在美國宗教大尺度，許多教會，如羅馬天主教教堂，一些宗教越來越少的會眾，如長老會教堂。然而，近年來，無論是大或小的宗教組織都面臨著巨大的挑戰和困境。羅馬天主教牧師的孌童最近給予沉重的打擊，羅馬天主教堂的圖像（Sullins 56-81），和長老教會一直呈現下降的趨勢（Linthicum 3-10）。造成這種情況的原因有著各自不同的組織結構有著密切的關系。宗教組織的結構理解的差異，了解差異所帶來的積極和消極影響，有助于宗教組織采取更有針對性的措施來應對目前的挑戰。本文以美國的羅馬天主教教堂（以圣名教堂為代表）和長老會教堂（以堡壘街長老會教堂為代表）為研究對象，從主教的觀點，長老和執事們探討的兩個宗教組織結構的差異，總結出這樣的結構差異的影響好。

 

 

2.0 Discussion

2.1 Bishop

Bishops are senior clergy of Catholic churches and are appointed by the pope. The main characteristics of Episcopalism lie in that the churches divide parishes according to regions. Catholic churches have 195 parishes in the United States and are administered by bishops. In the United States, parishes are often bounded according to state, county. Parish administered by archbishop is called archdiocese. There are now 32 archbishops in the U.S., they manage 32 provinces. Bishop of Holy Name Cathedral is in charge of all administrative and academic pastoral work within the diocese, presbyters, deacons and others are just facilitators. This system has the advantage that a bishop has a great authority and all clergy in the churches are obedient, internal struggle for power relatively rarely happens. In addition, the administrative efficiency is usually better, after all, a person makes decision and everyone executes, there is no need to make decisions by repeated lengthy meeting. However, because of the lack of restraint mechanisms for bishop within a church and it asks believers to obey authority faithfully and blindly, it emphasizes the absolute power of bishop as well. If a bishop does not "control" his conduct, it is very prone to the state of harming believers and the interests of churches. In the case of the absence of control mechanism, it is prone to various sex and money scandal (Linthicum 2-15).

 

 

It is different from Roman Catholic churches that Presbyterianism that Presbyterian churches take  is the system which takes a parliamentary form of government. Generally, there is no clergy like bishop among Presbyterian. In organizational structure like Fort Street Presbyterian Church’s, it is not a single presbyter but "Presbyterian meeting" who has absolute power, all presbyters have equal authority. Therefore, Presbyterian decision-making body is "Presbyterian meeting". However, it is worth noting that the role that an executive presbyter plays in Presbyterian churches is somewhat similar in some respects with the role of a bishop, the executive presbyter is generally occupied by experienced and prestigious believers. When there is a need to have a meeting, an executive presbyter often organizes and presides over the meeting, an executive presbyter generally has very authority. In a Presbyterian church, believers and members elect presbyters, presbyters replace believers and members to perform a variety of management decision-making matters, church affairs are not decided by an individual, the proposed resolution must be sent to Presbyterian meetings to get final decisions, when most presbyters reach consensus, a resolution is to be effective, when there is disagreement, it should be in accordance with the articles of churches that the minority is subordinate to the majority in vote, but the young need to carefully consider the views of the senior (Linthicum 5-16). The advantage of this system rests on effectively restricting the phenomenon of personality cult in a church. Presbyterian meeting system can maintain peace and unity of Presbyterian churches to avoid division and strife, which is in favor of conserving the truth to avoid all kinds of falsehood and heresy, it is also beneficial for clergy to be reverent to avoid all sorts of scandals. However, Presbyterian meeting system is also flawed, the lack of the character who is as strong as a bishop results in that when there is a larger disagreement among presbyters, the efficiency of Presbyterian meeting in making decisions reduces.

 

 

2.2 Presbyter

Catholic presbyters are appointed by a bishop. Prior to this, it tends to have requirements for educational background of Catholic candidates, and the candidates must also accept a series of training (Tweed 213). Presbyters of Holy Name Cathedral also need experiencing a series of training and education. At the beginning of the education process, first of all, candidates for presbyters are required to complete high school. Then they should get a bachelor's degree and graduate from accepted universities. Philosophical education is better for graduate learning of theology at a Catholic seminary.Seminary cultivates the candidates as future presbyters via focusing on cultivation of their priestly human, intellectual, pastoral, spiritual formations (Tweed 225).Advantages of doing that lie in ensuring that presbyters of Catholic churches have a higher overall quality and theological literacy, which enables them to provide better service for Catholic believers. The disadvantages are the strict requirements for educational background of candidates who apply for presbyters, meanwhile the candidates must also pass a more rigorous training, although it ensures personal qualities of presbyters, it also cause a shortage of presbyters, making local bishops are relatively constrained in the choice of ways for disposal towards incompetent priest or those who make a mistake, which has an inevitable impact on the quality and the overall image of the clergy. For example, in 2012, an America Archbishop in Kansas has been accused of concealing a Catholic priest’s children sexual abuse, he was also the first archbishop who was prosecuted for shielding pedophile priest among the Catholic sexual abuse scandal in decades.#p#

 

Presbyterian congregation elects believers as presbyters. Presbyters as representatives of all believers manage church affairs. Presbyters hire pastors to be responsible for counseling work of Presbyterian churches. Ecclesiastical authority of Fort Street Presbyterian Church is meetings of various levels composed by presbyters and pastors. The meetings elect a chairman, who is responsible for the overall work. Each presbyter is equal within a Presbyterian Church (Linthicum 2-14).In this system, pastors and presbyters from local churches compose Presbytery, above it, there is General Assembly, which holds the highest authority. Local pastors and presbyters are elected by congregation or dispatched by Presbytery and recognized by local congregation. Presbytery and General Assembly determine policy, personnel, theological education of local churches. Benefits of democratically electing presbyters lie in that it helps to increase the enthusiasm of clergies’ and congregation’s participation in church affairs, which may be better able to curb possible corruption. However, there are some drawbacks in development of this election, for example, when congregation have different opinions, it may result in reduced efficiency of electing presbyters, candidates of presbyters can not be elected in time. Meanwhile Fort Street Presbyterian Church in Detroit adopts the form of meetings in election, which may lead to the waste of congregation’s a lot of time to make them fail to focus on their mission, thus some of the Presbyterian congregation leave Presbytery for this (Linthicum 2-16).長老教會的信徒為長老選舉。長老們為所有信徒代表管理教會事務。長老們雇傭牧師負責長老教會輔導工作。堡壘街長老會教會權威是由長老和牧師的各種層次的會議。會議選舉一個主席，負責全面工作。每個長老平等在長老教會（L 2～14）。在這個系統中，牧師和長老教會長老會的組成，上面，有大會，為最高權力。當地的牧師和長老教會的長老派的或由當地教會認可的選舉。長老會和大會決定政策，人員，當地教會的神學教育。民主選舉長老的好處在于它有助于增加的熱情，神職人員和教會的教會事務中的參與，這也許能夠更好地抑制可能出現的腐敗現象。然而，有在這次選舉中，發展一些缺點，例如，當會眾有不同的意見，這可能導致降低效率的候選人選舉長老，長老不可選的時間。同時堡壘街長老教會在底特律采用會議選舉的形式，這可能會導致聚集的大量浪費時間，使他們無法專注于自己的使命，因此一些長老教會長老會離開這個（Linthicum 2-16）。

 

 

2.3 Deacon

In Catholic churches, deacons are collaborators of bishops and priests. Deacons of Holy Name Cathedral are mainly responsible for promoting liturgical services, helping with promoting prayer, liturgy and so on. Deacons accept jobs by bishops’ edict, the positions are in line with their personal capacity, single or married status, suffered nurturing, age, and spiritually desirable ambitions, bishops list their roles in the appointments, the geographical scope of their duties or the targets of service should be clearly stated. Appointments must also indicate that the duties are performed in part-time or full-time form, while the names of priests that deacons are responsible for must also be specified (Tweed 208).Before receiving the priesthood of deacons, all candidates should clearly express their willingness to serve the churches throughout their lives in writing, since then, they join in specific regions or autonomous communities, or consecrate religious life, deacons who belong to the range of a vested SAR of a church can belong to the other. If there is a legitimate reason, deacons want to perform duties from their home parish to another parish, they must obtain written authorization from the bishops of both two parties. Deacons should be under the jurisdiction of bishops to perform all duties public salute and apostolic work relate to clergy. However, they are under the authority of their upper and follow discipline of their groups. When a deacon is transferred to group of another parish, the upper should introduce him, and in accordance with the agreement between the bishop and the upper to allow him to perform his duties. The duties of deacons are integrated as triple post of "etiquette, word and charity"(Tweed 187-205). This deacon system is conducive to safeguarding Catholic stable internal structure to ensure deacons’ efficient execution of bishops’ and priests’ decisions. The drawback is that deacons are always passive in acting in accordance with instructions from their superiors, which may lead to a lack enthusiasm for work, while it is not conducive to avoiding intra-religious personality cult and other behavior which violates doctrine. There are bishops and priests who are personally responsible for the management of deacons, which may not be able to find and treat behavior which goes against doctrine. Furthermore, deacons assume more responsibilities and work, but their promotion is restricted, deacons are unable to be promoted to bishops, which may affect deacons’ enthusiasm at work.#p#分頁標題#e#

 

 

The system about deacons in Presbyterian churches is quite different from in Roman Catholic churches. Taking Fort Street Presbyterian Church as an example, first of all, deacons are elected by the congregation. Then, management towards deacon is through bishops and priests, as well as internal independent Presbyterian deacon management agency. Again, Presbyterian deacons do not assume so much responsibility as Catholic deacons, they are more engaged in practical matters of finance, mercy, fabric and so on. Benefits of the system of deacons is that it can effectively manage the conduct of deacons’, behavior that deacons may have and is contrary to religious doctrine can be detected and handled in time. It can also avoid the appearance of corruption and problems of intra-religious cult of personality, a clearer division of labor also helps to reduce the work intensity of deacons. Disadvantages also lie in that the management towards deacons involves many aspects, which may cause the problem of declining efficiency of management. In reducing the intensity of work of deacons, at the same time, it may result in increased intensity of work of other clergy.

 

 

3.0 Conclusion

In general, hierarchy of Catholic churches is clearly defined and strict, the authority is more concentrated. Hierarchy of Presbyterian churches is not so explicit and less strict, the authority is also more dispersed. There is numerous Catholic congregation and the management is more difficult, their current organizational structure has a high management efficiency, which really helps them to manage the large church organization. However, the organizational structure lack transparency, which is not conducive to contain some internal clergy's behavior which violates the doctrine, for Catholic churches, how to maintain high efficiency in managing and increase management transparency is a question that is worth of considering. For Presbyterians, their current organizational structure and systems are formed after religious reformation and they have high transparency, congregation is given the right to elect, which is beneficial for attracting congregation, but the member of Presbyterian has indeed been reduced, one of the problem is its excessive decentralized organizational structure, leading to possible decline in management efficiency, the members must also spend a lot of time on meeting and voting, resulting in that they fail to focus on their mission. Thus for Presbyterian churches, in maintaining a transparent organizational structure, at the same time how to improve management efficiency is also the problem that is worth considering.

 

 

Works Cited

Sullins, Paul D. “Institutional Selection for Conformity: The Case of U.S. Catholic Priests.” Sociology of Religion Mar 2013; 74: 56 - 81.

Tweed, Thomas A. America's Church: The National Shrine and Catholic Presence in the Nation's Capital. default.html New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Linthicum, Robert C. “Why Some Churches Succeed, and Other’s Don’t.” 8 June. 2013