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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Rethinking the governance of Catholic parishes

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While the catholic legislation recognizes the priority of the Catholics’ community as a constitutive factor of a parish, canon law seems to close any discussion about the governance structure of parishes by designating the parish priest as the holder of sacramental and organizational power under the authority of the bishop. An approach based on the contractual theory of organizations offers a different vision of the issues of parish governance. While agency theory (dominant in the financial studies of organizations) is fairly easy to apply to the catholic model, stakeholder alternative theory sheds light on the organization’s relations with its stakeholders. The experience of the diocese of Poitiers in the 1990s and 2000s showed that it was possible to design and operate a different organizational model where the priest loses his office of « curé » (in the sense of leader) of the parish to become guarantor of the Catholic communities’ communion in the diocesan Church. This impacts the conception of the role of bishop, no longer primarily patron of an organization but above all responsible for the communion of Catholic communities and for the communion of his diocesan Church with the universal Church.