I wasn’t sure where to put this. So, since I’m not Catholic, just plunked it here. To Whomever is in charge, feel free to move.
To those of us on the outside looking in, these positions (for lack of a more knowledgeable term) are very confusing. Please enlighten!
I know a bit. I know somewhat about what the Pope’s position is. Successor to Peter, Bishop to Rome and I believe, first among equals? There are priests at every church and the one in charge is the Pastor. There are deacons, some of which are permanent (volunteer?) positions and others are priests prior to being ordained.(?) A Monsignor is a special rank of priest.(?) A Bishop is over a diocese. An Arch Bishop is over an Archdiocese and may have auxiliary Bishops.
Enough of my guessing. I’m sure most of you have more of an understanding that I. Please share the knowledge.
It can be confusing.
The area of theology that studies church structure is called ecclesiology.
The basic unit of the Catholic Church is churches. Yes, that’s correct churches. The technical term is particular church. Most particular churches are dioceses. In some places there are other similar structures that exist for various reasons. We won’t get too complicated and go there but examples of a few are a territorial abbacy, prefecture apostolic, vicariate apostolic.
Every diocese has its own bishop. He is a successor of the apostles. In ancient times he’d have been everyone’s pastor. Overtime as the size of the Church grew it became impractical for bishops to minister to their entire flock. To accommodate these circumstances priests were ordained by bishops to minister to widespread communities that the bishop couldn’t reach regularly enough.
To make a very long story extremely short we now have dioceses with the bishop as the chief pastor. The diocese will be divided into parishes. Each parish will have a priest who is it’s pastor.
Deacons have always assisted bishops. In ancient times men were ordained as deacons and remained a deacon for life. Overtime it developed such that a man only became a deacon on his way to the priesthood. After the Second Vatican Council Pope Paul VI re-introduced the permanent diaconate. We now have permanent deacons who will be deacons for life. There are also temporary deacons who will become priests.
Most dioceses are, well, dioceses. Some are given the name ‘archdiocese’. There is no difference between an archdiocese and a diocese. The bishop of an archdiocese is called an archbishop. In his archdiocese, an archbishop’s authority is exactly the same as a diocesan bishop.
The Catholic Church groups dioceses together into provinces. Each province contains one archdiocese and one or more dioceses. The archdiocese is called the metropolitan see of the province. See is another word used to refer to particular churches. The dioceses in a province are known as its suffragan sees.
The archbishop of a diocese that is the metropolitan see of a province is called the metropolitan of the province. The diocesan bishops of the suffragan sees are the suffragan bishops of the province. Metropolitans have no real authority over the suffragan bishops. Metropolitans do have a small range of limited powers; many of which they exercise when a suffrgan bishop fails to discharge some duty.
Some archdioceses are not part of a province and so they are not metropolitan sees. A small number of dioceses are not part of provinces. These are exceptions to the rule rather than the norm. These particular churches report directly to the Holy See.
Any archdiocese or diocese can have one or more bishops appointed to assist the (arch)bishop. These assistant bishops are called auxiliary bishops. Sometimes the Pope gives an auxiliary bishop the right of succession. This means when the diocesan bishop retires or dies this auxiliary bishop automatically becomes the new diocesan bishop. An auxiliary bishop with the right of succession is called a coadjutor bishop.
The hierarchy of the Catholic Church is reasonably straightforward. It becomes complicated because overtime various exceptions are made to the basic structure. An obvious example would be the latest exception to the normal structure: the introduction of personal ordinariates to allow former Anglican clergy and laity to be received into the Catholic Church as groups, rather than individually, and retaining their own praxis.
Some priests are given honorary titles. They get the title off the Pope. I won’t go into details but there are three such titles. Any priest with such a title is called ‘monsignor’. The title monsignor has other uses that are outside the experience of most catholics. Certain post holders in the Holy See’s Curia are also monsignori. Although it is often not used in this manner, all bishops can be correctly addressed as monsignor.
Above I’ve talked of lots of different posts. To become a clergyman, or cleric, in the Catholic Church you must receive a sacrament called Holy Orders. There are three grades of Holy Orders. The first grade is deacon and all clerics are ordained as a deacon. Some become permanent deacons. Other deacons are ordained to the next grade after six to twelve months as a deacon. That next grade is priest. Most priests remain priests for life. A relatively small proportion of them are ordained to the third and highest grade of Holy Orders, that is bishop. The Pope and all other bishops I’ve mentioned have been ordained as bishops.
The above is a very simplified description of the basic structure of the Catholic Church; however, it could provide a basis for you to ask further questions.
