Does Your Catholic Parish Use The Term Priest-Moderator To Designate Your Priest?

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Priest-Moderator or Pastor-Moderator is a term commonly used in many Catholic parishes or at least in my neck of the woods in Eastern Canada. This term is sometimes noted as a post-Vatican II priest that leads a pastoral team. However; its use is more commonly seen in Protestant Churches addressing their pastors. What are your thoughts on the use of this term assigned to a Catholic Priest?
 
A priest is a priest. I honestly don’t see a need to call him anything else.
 
centurionguard said:
Priest-Moderator or Pastor-Moderator is a term commonly used in many Catholic parishes or at least in my neck of the woods in Eastern Canada. This term is sometimes noted as a post-Vatican II priest that leads a pastoral team. However; its use is more commonly seen in Protestant Churches addressing their pastors. What are your thoughts on the use of this term assigned to a Catholic Priest?
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Can’t say that I’ve ever heard the term. Is it used when a priest is responsible for several parishes served by lay pastoral workers (as I see in my present NL diocese)? Or when he has total charge of 3 or 4 parishes (like the situation in my hometown parish of Dalhousie)?
 
My sense is that in our archdiocese, the term “pastor” is used for a priest who is present for the day-to-day pastoral care of the parish, while a priest-moderator does not work on a day-to-day basis either in the parish or at the “parent” parish of a mission church. I don’t just mean he doesn’t live in the rectory. I mean that he commutes in from other duties or from retirement in order to fulfill as many of the duties normally taken on by the pastor as possible, but not so many as would be ideal. Whether due to age or other obligations, a priest-moderator is not able to be as available to parishioners as a pastor.

In other words, when the bishop uses the term “priest-moderator” for a priest assigned to a parish, it is a bit of a warning. It represents a situation where this priest is serving a parish that is directly suffering from our shortage of priests. In my experience, this service can get into the realm of the heroic…as in, a priest well past 70 covering most of the weekend Masses at three or four different small parishes or a priest with full duties at the chancery office also covering a parish on weekends. These men oversee parish committees and administration as best as they can, but parishioners have to go to priests at nearby parishes for most of their other needs during the week, if it is anything the office staff cannot handle. Sometimes there is also a deacon, if the parish is lucky, who covers some of the pastoral work appropriate to be delegated to a man in the diaconate.

Pray for more vocations to the priesthood, and encourage those young men you believe might make good priests!
 
We do. It seems to be used in the context similar to what we once referred to as “curate” or “curé”. Except that the priest-moderator seems to be responsible for a pastoral unit that includes several parishes. In our area he does though appear to give pastoral care, I met our former one when I returned to the Church 13 years ago.
 
I’ve never heard the term (and I don’t live in Canada). Is it used in reference to a priest’s duties to a particular parish?

From what Easter Joy says, it may be similar to the term we use: priest-administrator. A priest administrator is a term used when a priest who is not the pastor or parochial vicar is assigned to be in charge of the administrative (as opposed to the more sacramental) aspects of a parish.

From the sound of it, priest-moderator sounds like some one chairing a committee.
 
Neither have I heard the term, nor live in Canadia, but likewise have some familiarity with pastoral administrators.

In addition to its use for a priest with responsibilities to more than one parish or the like, if I am not mistaken, *pastors *have certain rights under canon law that administrators without that title do not.

tee
 
I guess you could say I’m somewhat surprised nobody here has heard of the term Priest-Moderator

Easterjoy; came the closest with her explanation
A term for the minister who is the moderator of a worship service that includes communion. In most cases, only a member of the ordained clergy can be a celebrant. In 1983 the Catholic Church introduced the possibility of entrusting the pastoral care, of one or more parishes to a team of priests in solidum. This provision in the 1983 Code of Canon Law, which resembles ancient models of pastoral care in the Roman tituli churches with their colleges of priests, was introduced to help resolve some of the difficulties facing many dioceses. These include: shortages of priests; overpopulated urban parishes; depleted and scattered rural parishes; decline in attendance at Mass. This model of pastoral care is viewed as a practical way of promoting pastoral co-responsibility, as well as fostering a greater sense of the presbyterium among the priests of a diocese.
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centurionguard said:
Easterjoy; came the closest with her explanation
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Yup. However, it is not just " moderator of a worship service that includes communion." It encompasses all pastoral care.

See canon 517§1. “When circumstances require it, the pastoral care of a parish or of different parishes together can be entrusted to several priests in solidum, with the requirement, however, that in exercising pastoral care one of them must be the moderator, namely, the one who is to direct the joint action and to answer for it to the bishop.”

Canon 140 addresses the exercise of power when given in solidum. It can lead to complications, and thus the bishop must carefully indicate the duties of the moderator either in the appointment or by particular (diocesan) law.
 
I wouldn’t dare he is not a violent man but he might slug me if I made such a faux pas, he is not even thrilled with the term “presider”
 
puzzleannie said:
I wouldn’t dare he is not a violent man but he might slug me if I made such a faux pas, he is not even thrilled with the term “presider”
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Faux Pas? Why yes indeed.

he is not even thrilled with the term “presider” Not sure how many priests care for such a name.
 
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