2000字美国基督教留学生作业-Discussion on the differences in Presbyterian Church hierarchy and the Roman Catholi

2000字美国基督教留学生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.有许多宗教在美国宗教大尺度，许多教会，如罗马天主教教堂，一些宗教越来越少的会众，如长老会教堂。然而，近年来，无论是大或小的宗教组织都面临着巨大的挑战和困境。罗马天主教牧师的娈童最近给予沉重的打击，罗马天主教堂的图像（Sullins 56-81），和长老教会一直呈现下降的趋势（Linthicum 3-10）。造成这种情况的原因有着各自不同的组织结构有着密切的关系。宗教组织的结构理解的差异，了解差异所带来的积极和消极影响，有助于宗教组织采取更有针对性的措施来应对目前的挑战。本文以美国的罗马天主教教堂（以圣名教堂为代表）和长老会教堂（以堡垒街长老会教堂为代表）为研究对象，从主教的观点，长老和执事们探讨的两个宗教组织结构的差异，总结出这样的结构差异的影响好。

 

 

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).长老教会的信徒为长老选举。长老们为所有信徒代表管理教会事务。长老们雇佣牧师负责长老教会辅导工作。堡垒街长老会教会权威是由长老和牧师的各种层次的会议。会议选举一个主席，负责全面工作。每个长老平等在长老教会（L 2～14）。在这个系统中，牧师和长老教会长老会的组成，上面，有大会，为最高权力。当地的牧师和长老教会的长老派的或由当地教会认可的选举。长老会和大会决定政策，人员，当地教会的神学教育。民主选举长老的好处在于它有助于增加的热情，神职人员和教会的教会事务中的参与，这也许能够更好地抑制可能出现的腐败现象。然而，有在这次选举中，发展一些缺点，例如，当会众有不同的意见，这可能导致降低效率的候选人选举长老，长老不可选的时间。同时堡垒街长老教会在底特律采用会议选举的形式，这可能会导致聚集的大量浪费时间，使他们无法专注于自己的使命，因此一些长老教会长老会离开这个（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#分页标题#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