My first full day back at the office brought with it the chance to live a special initiative within the diocesan curia: a day-long meeting with Bishop Albert Rouet, the recently retired bishop of Poitiers in France. Bishop Rouet is best known for the special program he instituted back in his diocese to restructure the pastoral care of the people by maximizing the contribution of the lay faithful in the life of their local communities (i.e. in the parishes). Bishop Rouet was in Montreal last week as part of a special course being offered by the Dominican Institut de pastoral, but he agreed to stay on a few days to share with the members of the local curia what has been learned from this experiment in Christian community, and what might be applicable to our Montreal reality.
To be honest, I’m not sure how the Poitiers model might be applied here (after all, Quebec is not France and Montreal is not Poitiers), but I did find the whole philosophy behind the approach interesting. Clericalism is deadly to the full maturity of a Christian community, and if this model offers an opening up of the life of our local christian communities to the full contribution of each member of the faithful, then it is worthy of further study.
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