Parish Resources and Toolkit

 Message to pastors and ministers in the Church

How to use this website to help your parishioners.

Concerned Lay Catholics has researched and developed some pastoral tools that could be helpful to you in dealing with the topic of clergy sexual abuse with your parishioners. We encourage pastors, parish teams and lay ministers to look over our website to identify anything we have to offer that may be of use to you in your work. We also encourage you to share with CLC any resources that you have come across or developed that may be of assistance to others. We will do our best to share anything that could be helpful. You can do this by connecting with us through our contact page.

Presentations to parish councils/parish groups/deaneries/pastoral teams

Members of Concerned Lay Catholics are available to respond to questions and requests for presentations about our work to parish councils and parish groups. Please contact us to discuss your parish’s needs. We are also available to present to parish leadership teams, deaneries, and Catholic professional groups such as teachers and social workers. Please contact us through our contact page. Please note, that due to COVID 19 and/or geographical limitations, presentations and team discussions may need to take place remotely.

Facilitated Parish Conversations

Using the tried and tested tools and templates that we have developed, members of CLC are available to assist your parish to plan and host a listening-session at your parish. We can help you run it yourself, or we can come in and run the session for you and provide a report for your follow up. If interested, please contact us through our contact page.

Support for parishes that have experienced an allegation

While every effort must be made to protect the confidentiality of everyone directly involved, it is also important to acknowledge that a community is porous, and that, often without malintent, people will talk and share whatever information they may have- however partial or imprecise. And in the process, damage can be done both to individuals and to the spirit of the community. For this reason, CLC highly recommends that pastors and/or other parish leaders assess the need in your parish or community and connect you with experts in facilitating difficult group conversations in the wake of a communal experience of trauma. If you would like to discuss your parish’s needs with CLC, please contact us through our contact page.

Learning to Work Together- principles and approaches for clergy and laity collaboration

The Canadian bishops have called on all the Catholic faithful to be involved in transforming and healing our church. “All are being asked to take up the call to revitalize the Church by engaging new more collaborative forms of ministry.” (Protecting Minors from Sexual Abuse: A Call to the Catholic Faithful in Canada for Healing, Reconciliation and Transformation. p.39 CCCB Publications, 2018)

CLC believes, as the Holy Father does and the Canadian bishops do, that for the church to survive and to truly be ‘church’ we must develop collaborative approaches to ministry at every level. This will require training of lay people and re-training of priests in order to transform the culture of clericalism that permeates our current church structures and produces the types of abuse of power that led to the sexual abuse crisis. This is a work in progress, and we invite anyone with wisdom and resources to share on this subject, to do so.

Toolkit for Parish Conversations

Here we provide the tools we developed for our parish conversations. You are welcome to use them as you see fit. We encourage you to take a collaborative approach with your parish leadership team and the members of your congregation or church group so as to further the goal of developing more collaborative forms of ministry.