So you are a parish president


BY JAMES J. McQUADE, S.J.

A Qi/EEN'sy/ORK
Pamphlet





252^ 1
1

So You Are a

Parish President!

James J. McQuade, S. J.

THE QUEEN’S WORK

3115 South Grand Boulevard

St. Louis 1

8

. Misouri



Imprimi potest:

Joseph P. Fisher, S.J.

Provincial
,
Missouri Province

Imprimatur:

P Joseph E. Ritter

Archbishop of St. Louis

January 22, 1957

Any financial profit made
by The Queen’s Work will be
used for the advancement of
the Sodality Movement and the
cause of Catholic Action.

Copyright 1957

THE QUEEN'S WORK



So You Are a Parish President!

CO YOU are a parish president! It is a
^ sort of mixed feeling, isn’t it? It is
certainly an honor. With that you are
pleased and you should be. There is no
doubt about it that you feel you have a good
opportunity to assume your rightful role in
the lay apostolate. And you have. At the
same time you have misgivings. You won-
der, first of all, about yourself. Are you
able to “swing the deal?” What about your
popularity among the other members of the
parish? Above all, what about those who
did not vote for you? What about the priests
with whom you must necessarily deal in
your new position?

And what about the program? Do you
really know what you want to do? The
deficiencies of the present program may
have been apparent to you for a long time.
You wonder whether they are apparent also
to others. Yes, it is a mixed feeling, this
being a parish president.

What you need is assurance. You need to
be convinced that there is truth in the lines
of Robert Browning,

“Our feet on the torrent’s brink,
Our eyes on the clouds afar,
We fear the things that we think
Instead of the things that are.”

Abraham Lincoln solaced himself in the
midst of the worries of the presidency of
the United States by reflecting that, “I have
had many troubles in my life, but most of
them never happened.” So, it will be with

— 3 —



you and your new work as a parish presi-
dent.

If everything were perfectly clear and
you knew just exactly what to do and how
to do it, you wouldn’t be looking upon your
new job with these mixed feelings. Your
great enemy is confusion. But there is a
tremendous difference between a confused
mind looking at a situation and a clear
mind looking at a confused situation. Con-
fusion of mind can be avoided by taking up
one thing at a time. A carefully planned
program is the only answer to a confused
situation. Let’s talk over your new job and
see what you have to do, and how you have
to do it.

Calling a Meeting

Ordinarily you will be guided by the
routine of the organization of which you are
president. In any parish however, emergen-
cies arise calling for more general action.

One of the things which a pastor ordinar-
ily expects the parish president to be able

to do is to call a meeting of the parishioners
in general or of any specific group of par-
ishioners. Such a request from the rectory
will throw you into an anxiety state unless
you have a definite program of what to do.
You will develop your own special technique
as time goes on in your job. In the mean-
time you might consider something like the
following as a regular routine that you go
through whenever you have to call a meet-
ing.

The first thing you have to do in calling
a meeting is let people knew that there is

- 4 - -



going to be a meeting. They must get the
information. It is important that all who
should be there get the information. Many
a person has been hurt because they weren t
“notified.” Your most universal means of
getting this information is by requesting a
pulpit announcement at the Sunday Masses.
An even more universal means is insertion
in the parish bulletin. But be sure your in-
formation is clear, exact, and full. Other-
wise your poor pastor will be spending most
of his evenings at the phone clearing up
ambiguities in the announcement. If he
doesn’t trust you after that, you can’t blame
him.

Secondly, you must remember that people
have to have reasons for doing things. You
have to give them more than information.
You must give them some motivation. To-
gether with the information which you send
out about the meeting, there should be some-
thing or other that will make them want to
come. To be effective a motive must not
only be good, but it must be appealing to
the people concerned. A little study of the
wording of your announcement will pay big
dividends in this regard. Many a person
who would not come to a meeting for those
interested in education, would certainly be
there if the meeting were announced only
for those who are interested in their chil-
dren.

Thirdly, it is not enough just to spread
the word around. There has to be “follow-
up.” We are all old enough to know that
there is a big difference between listening
and hearing, between looking and seeing,
and we know how little people attend to

— 5 —



what they see and hear. There is nothing
like a personal note to persuade someone
to attend a meeting. Postcards are very
good for this. In your free time, once your
job is organized, you will probably have
postcards already addressed and classified
according to the various groups in your
parish. It will be a simple matter for you
to run the message side through the parish
duplicator with the announcement of the
meeting in an attractive form and drop
them in the mail.

However, the more personal the contact
the better. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if just
before the meeting, after they had heard it
from the pulpit and read it in the parish
bulletin and received the card about it, that
each one whom you wish to come, would
receive a telephone message about the meet-
ing coming up? And that isn’t impossible
at all.

Why not make yourself a chain reaction
phone service? It won’t be long in this new
job of yours before you begin to classify the
various members of the parish in your own
mind as to the degree of their cooperative-
ness in your work. If you want to make
yourself a chain reaction phone service get
a large sheet of paper. Put yourself at the
top. Then under you at wide spaces place
three names each with its proper telephone
number. Under each of those place three
more names. Again, with a proper telephone
number. Then each of those with three more
names and the telephone numbers to go
along with each, — and so on down through
your whole membership. Then have the
whole list mimeographed or duplicated and
give a list to each member of your organ-

— 6



ization. Then all you have to do is to call
those first three, talk to them about the
meeting, and ask them to pass the word on
to each of his three. Those three take each
again his own three. And in less than an
hour everyone in the parish receives a tele-
phone call. No one is overburdened. Each
has but three calls to make.

If you do these simple things, you’ll have
a meeting and those whom you wish to be
there will be there.

Getting a Meeting Underway

One of the first things you will realize as
parish president is that you can’t do every-
thing yourself. You will be expected, of
course, to conduct the meetings from the
chair of the group of which you are the
president. But in the course of time the
pastor will call upon you to form other
groups to do other things. He might very
well like to have you as chairman of the
group. If he does he will say so. Naturally
you will assume that role. But he knows
too that you can’t do everything. He will
expect you, therefore, to assemble a group
of parishioners for a special purpose, or-
ganize them, put them on the right track,
and then let them do the task. It is not so
hard to do this as you might think. First
of all, it is important that you be the first
at the place of the meeting. Being on the
scene first gives you a tremendous advan-
tage over all that come. You meet each one
that arrives. You get their names. As
parish president you have the rather diffi-
cult task of knowing the names of everyone



in the parish, in as far as it is humanly
possible to do so.

In most parishes names are best han-
dled by name cards. As the people come,
have them fill out a card with their name
and pin it on their clothes. Then each one
can refresh his memory of another person’s
name by a mere glance at the card. Get
some assistance on the filling out of these
cards so that you can circulate among the
guests and make them circulate among each
other as far as possible. Tell them here
and there what the meeting is all about and
if possible, get them discussing it in general
before the meeting starts. Give them plenty
of time to assemble. But beware of waiting
longer than is necessary. Unnecessary wait-
ing has killed more interest than any other
fault of organizations.

Too great formality for those who are
not accustomed to it spoils the spontaneity
of a meeting. Let’s not “call the meeting
to order.” Let’s just say, “Ladies and gen-
tlemen, may I have your attention?” As
they quiet down, explain the nature of the
meeting and the need of someone to take
charge of this business. Tell them that you
know that they are better judges than you
of whom they would like to have to conduct
this meeting. Offer to act as their tem-
porary chairman. Just say, “If nobody ob-
jects, I will act as temporary chairman to
get things started.” Obviously no one will
object. Then simply call for nominations.
As a good leader, of course, you will have
several nominations “planted” in the audi-
ence. You will have one of your friends
present agree to nominate so-and-so ; an-
other to nominate somebody else just to get

— 8 —



things started. Call on your friends last.
If others do have a nomination, so much
the better. If they do not, you are safe
with your friends. You will get a nomina-
tion.

Holding an Election

Unless you explain to them that you can-
not do this yourself because of your other-
wise great commitments in the parish, they
will most certainly elect you. If you do not
want to be elected, you must do something
about it. The very fact that you are acting
as temporary chairman makes them almost
automatically consider you as their first
choice. If you explain the matter to them,
and especially if you have some of these
“planted” nominations already in the audi-
ence, you will be able to get someone else
to take charge.

Then proceed to hold an election. Get a
chairmaji and at least a secretary. Depend-
ing upon the nature of the project, you may
also need a treasurer. Once you have this
much organization, step down, hand over
the meeting to the new chairman, and con-
duct your business from the floor. You can
ask for the floor, propose that Father so-
and-so explain the nature of the meeting, if
he is present. If he is not present and ex-
pects you to do so, then take this oppor-
tunity to explain just what the meeting is
all about and start it off by making a mo-
tion to do the thing for which the meeting
was called. You will already be prepared
by having one of your friends agree to
second you. The discussion will then be
conducted by the chair. And you as parish

— 9 —
I



president can supervise the projects which
they determine by their votes to undertake.
The parish president who can thus get peo-
ple to do things themselves is worth far
more than the most efficient parish president
who does everything himself.

Principle of Authority

One of the facts of life which every
parish president must face and face squar-
ely is the matter of authority in parish
affairs. Christ set up His Church on a
monarchical system, not a democratic one.
The Holy Father is the monarch of the
Church at large. The bishop is the monarch
of his diocese. The pastor is his represen-
tative of his parish. Some bishops and
pastors relegate more of the function of the
apostolate to the layman, some less. It all
depends upon them. Ordinarily the pastor
is more interested in the spiritual forma-
tion, the moral guidance, and the inspira-
tion of his laymen toward the full .Catholic
life. Ordinarily a great part of the planning
and execution of the various projects of the
lay apostolate falls to the lot of the lay-
men of the parish. But in all this the
guidance of the pastor is supreme.

All this may seem at first somewhat de-
pressing to the initiative of the ambitious
layman. But it need not be so. If the lay-
man is imbued as he should be with the
basic principle of authority laid down in
the natural law, all this will fit into place

for him. The basic principle is that all
authority comes from God. When one obeys
the voice of legitimate authority, one obeys

God. We are in this business, all of us,
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pastor and layman, for the glory of God.
One cannot give glory to God by going
against God's will. The pastor is the legiti-
mate authority in the parish and therefore
we can only advance the glory of God as
laymen by carrying out to the best of our
power his program.

Often enough the parish president is a
very capable man. Often enough he himself
is a “superior” in commerce or industry.
Often enough he is a man of ideas. It is
difficult for him to carry on according to the
mind of the Church in the role of the laity
of the Church unless he grasps something
of the supernatural principles by which the
Church is governed. The principle behind
Catholic obedience is basically one of faith.
God has revealed that to obey legitimate
authority is to obey God. Therefore, the
practice of the virtue of obedience demands
that we cultivate within ourselves a pre-
disposition to prefer, if possible, the view-
point of legitimate authority. In some
things, of course, one simply cannot under-
stand the prudence of a certain program.
When that occurs, one simply falls back
upon the basic revealed truth. It may not
be the will of God that the “more prudent”
thing in our view is the same as the “more
prudent” thing in God's long range view.
This we know, that when we are doing the
will of lawful authority, we are doing the
will of God.

Only in this way can the parish presi-
dent, facing this fact for all it is worth,
and accepting this principle with all its
applications, avoid the pitfalls involved in
the management and direction of all the

— 11 —



affairs of the parish which come within his
domain.

Leadership

The parish president must face the real-
ities of organizational life first, in dealing

with men, and second, in dealing with situa-
tions. If he does not have a good philosophy
with which to meet the peculiarities of
human nature and the unforeseeable in
situations, he will fall into one of the most
common pitfalls of leadership, that of dis-
couragement.

In dealing wifh men

He must remember, first of all, that all
men suffer from the effects of original sin.
Therefore, whoever deals with them must
have infinite patience. He must know that
human beings can be led, but not driven.
Therefore, he must try inspiration; must
avoid pressure.

He will have to be convinced that men
tend to rise to our expectations of them.
Therefore, he will make himself “like” his
following; he will take their good spirits for
granted. He cannot afford to forget that
human beings are sensitive. He will there-
fore be very careful how he puts things;
he will praise his following for their suc-
cess; he will take the blame for failure on
himself. It isn’t hard after you do it a
couple of times. He will be very much
aware that men are subject to the power of
suggestion. Therefore, he will use the com-
plimentary method wherever possible

;
he

will amplify what they suggest into what
— 12 —-



he would like them to do. They will enjoy
getting credit for the suggestion, he will
have his way.

He will, of course, not be unmindful of
the fact that men are jealous of their in-
dependence. When he delegates, therefore,
he will really hand over a project to them.
He will specialize in the art of supervising
without interfering; he will be very slow
to veto the propositions of others. He will
keep in mind that men need motives for
doing things. He will not overlook the fact
that men are inclined to have their own
ideas. He will therefore be willing to yield
generously to group decisions, even on his
own pet projects.

In dealing with situations

In all his organizational work the parish
president will be faced with the sudden
appearance of the unforeseen. If he is wise,
he will be ready to change his plans at a
moment’s notice; in fact, he will always
try to have at hand an alternative plan for
each occasion ahead of time.

Few are the parish presidents who do
not run into difficulties and obstacles in all
organizational work. A good parish presi-
dent simply regards difficulties as divine
test of his moral strength; he looks upon
obstacles simply as things to be overcome.

There is not a parish president in the
world who has not been faced at times with
utter failure. It is the part of wisdom
simply to expect a good percentage of fail-
ures in your program: “The servant is not
greater than his master.” Always be ready



to pick up the pieces of a ruin and to do
the best you can with what is left.

Finally, in all organizational work the
parish president is faced with the compli-
cations known as “red tape.” Red tape is
just a necessary evil in organizational life.
The parish president cannot change that.
He simply learns to work patiently through
the red tape, to go through the proper
channels no matter what they are.

With this philosophy of men and situa-
tions, he can avoid discouragement which
is the most efficient tool of the devil against
the efficient administration of the parish
president.

Over-All Policy

The parish president must next face the
necessity of a smoothly working organiza-
tion through which he can carry out an
effective program. Like the meat cutter in
a butcher shop, he must not only constantly
cut meat, he must continually sharpen his
knife. The parish president must be con-
stantly working at the job that he has to
do, and he must continuously work at the
sharpening of the instrument, the organiza-
tion with which he has to do it.

There ought to be in his mind, and the
best way of getting it in his mind is to
get it down on paper, a complete picture
of his organization. This picture ought to
show the function of each of the leaders
under him; it ought to designate their re-
sponsibilities and the degree of authority
which each one possesses. Responsibility
without authority is as disastrous as author-

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ity without responsibility. His job basically
as president is summed up in three words:
Organize; deputize; supervise.

Organize, Deputize, Supervise

First, he must “organize.” He must draw
up his chart of officers and members, of
committees and their functions, of the vari-
ous leaders and the specific areas of their
operations. Once he has this, half his work
is done.

Secondly, the parish president must “dep-
utize.” If he does not believe a man can do
a certain job, he should not give it to him.
If he believes he can do it, he should let
him do it. He should not place his trust
in another unless he can do it fully. It
must be remembered, of course, that he has
to do the best he can with what he’s got.
But it is certain that he will get much
farther, even with less reliable personal-
ities, if he expresses the fullest trust pos-
sible.

Thirdly, he must “supervise.” This means
that he carefully observes projects entrusted
to functioning committees, that he encour-
ages them, makes occasional suggestions,
and steers the happy medium of supervision
that lies between neglect and interference.

Get Your Bearings

It is very important for the new parish
president to understand thoroughly and to
realize fully just what he is parish presi-
dent of. He may be parish president of the
whole parish program. He may be parish
president of only one element in that pro-

— 15 —



gram. If there is a constitution for the
organization of which you are president,
it is most important for you to study that
constitution thoroughly, so that you will be
able to answer the who, what, where, when,
why, and how of all that pertains to the
organization. Only in this way will you be
able to know the scope and limits of your
operation. If there is no constitution, find
out in any way you can as much as you
can about your new job. Your predecessors
in office will be very helpful. Then discuss
the matter with the pastor. Your investi-
gation will undoubtedly bring questions to
your mind. Propose them frankly to the
pastor, or to the moderator of your organ-
ization, whom the pastor has delegated to
act for him. Get a clear idea of where you
stand, where you are going, what is ex-
pected of you in the best possible perform-
ance of this office. In brief, get your
bearings.

You and Your Officers

Americans are almost by nature organ-
izers. They tell a story of three planes that
had to be ditched over the islands of the
South Pacific. One was full of Frenchmen,
another full of Central Americans, the third
full of Americans. All took to parachutes.
When the Frenchmen landed, they had be-
tween them evolved a completely new phil-
osophy of love. When the Central Ameri-
cans finally set foot on firm ground, they
had devised a plan for an entire new revolu-
tion of the country. By the time the
Americans landed they had a president,
vice-president, secretary, and treasurer of
the OFS — Organization For Survival.

- 16 —



As far as officers are concerned, you will
at least have a vice-president, secretary,
and treasurer to work with. You will have
many more, most likely. We are great com-
mittee people, we Americans. Each com-
mittee must have a chairman. Chairmen of
committees, especially of standing commit-
tees, are usually considered full-fledged
officers of an organization. You must, first
of all, know these officers very well. You
must learn their jobs. You must learn them
well enough to do them if necessary and tr
take their places when they are necessarily
absent. You must keep informed in a nice
way, of course, of all that is going on in
every department. But above all, you must
keep them well-informed ahead of time of
everything that you intend to do in the
leadership of your organization.

The Staff Meeting

There is nothing so confusing to the gen-
eral membership as to discover that the
president of the whole organization is
utterly unaware of some important develop-
ment. And there are few things more de-
moralizing to the spirit of an organization
than the strong, silent leader who keeps
everything to himself. The best mechanical
device to take care of this matter is the
staff meeting. A staff meeting consists of
all the officers getting together for a special
meeting apart from the general meeting of
the organization. At this staff meeting all
the officers report to the whole group of
the operation of their respective depart-
ments and the plans they would like to carry
out through motions and resolutions at the
general meeting. The parish president on



his part explains to all the officers his plans,
his hopes, the policies that he would like to
follow. He discusses his plans with them;
they discuss theirs with him. Above all,
they plan carefully the coming meeting.
They draw up an “agenda.” They place on
this agenda all the things that they would
like to accomplish at the coming meeting.
Out of all the proposals that are made they
weed out the superfluous, the time-wasters,
the things that distract from the real pur-
pose of the organization.

If possible, it is a good idea to duplicate
the agenda on mimeographed copies. These
are to be handed out to all the members at
the meeting. Each one will see what must
be gone through at this particular meeting.
It is a wonderful aid in keeping people
from wasting time by unnecessary speeches
and unrelated digressions from the point at
issue. The officers know that certain motions
and resolutions are going to be brought up
for vote by the whole assembly. If these
resolutions and motions are spelled out word
for word on the agenda, much time will be
saved and many unnecessarily long explana-
tions avoided. Such a procedure will add
greatly to the efficiency of your meeting. It
will, moreover, make the members realize
that you are not trying to conceal anything
from them, that the whole operation is above
board, and that you as parish president
and they as officers are taking the whole
membership into their complete confidence.
Such mimeographed agendas serve as notes
for the members. They can write their own
ideas upon them, make notations as to the
procedure and thus each member of your
organization will have his own copy of the

— 18 —



minutes of the meeting. Later on, at a
subsequent meeting when the “minutes” are
read, it will.be more than a dull, droning,
boring routine.

It is most important also to arrange this
staff meeting at a time when the director
or moderator of your organization can be
present. After all, it is at the staff meeting
where policies are determined. There the
pastor or the director whom he appoints
has his best chance of guiding the program
of the organization. It is far easier for
him to prevent a motion from coming to
the floor than it would be for him to have
to veto a motion which was passed by the
whole organization. He has experience and
organizational “know-how” which will be
of great help to you and to the officers in
the planning of your coming meeting.

The Agenda

As you and the officers get more and more
experience preparing for meetings, you will
discover the type of agenda that works best
for your group. Quite possibly the consti-
tution of your organization determines, at
least it should, the general order of business
at each meeting. If it does not, here is one
that you can start with:

1. The call to order.

2. The opening prayers. It is customary
to call upon the director to open the
meeting with prayer. If he is not
present, it is a good idea to request
one of the members of the organiza-
tion to do so. It is one of the little
tricks of giving them a sense of be-
longing.

19 —



3. Reading of the minutes. You may
have to introduce this with a little
speech because in so many organiza-
tions the reading of the minutes has
become an empty formality. The
minutes, after all, are the official rec-
ord of the organization’s accomplish-
ments. It is very important that they
be kept accurately, that things be
stated correctly, that the correct in-
dividuals be credited with the things
for which they are responsible.

4. The director’s talk. You will have to
consult your director as to his pref-
erences in this regard. Most pastors
or directors prefer to talk a little at
the beginning of the meeting so as to
inspire the proper kind of activity
in the members throughout the meet-
ing. Because of his previous attend-
ance at the staff meeting, he will
know exactly what is coming up. He
will thus have an opportunity to ex-
plain to the members generally some
of the issues upon which they will be
called to decide.

5. Announcements. These should em-
brace all the important dates coming
up in the operation of your organ-
ization. They should call the atten-
tion of the members to all the events
in which the organization will be
expected to cooperate with other
societies. The section on announce-
ments provides the chairman or presi-
dent with opportunities of reminding
the members of certain standing ob-
ligations.

— 20 —



6. Treasurers report. The treasurer’s
report is rather important because it
is necessary to keep the organization
mindful of paying its own way. The
extent and nature of this report
should be determined by the pastor in
conference with the treasurer, and if
possible, the parish president.

7. Executive Committee reports. At your
previous meeting certain projects
have been determined upon. Certain
people have been appointed to carry
them out. It is important to the or-
ganization to know to what extent
they have been carried out and with
what success. Therefore, there should
be in any meeting a time designated
for the reports of those appointed to
do certain work for the group.

8. Old Business. At this time the chair-
man directs the organization to take
up unfinished business from the last
meeting. The minutes are consulted.
If there was a motion before the or-
ganization at the adjournment of the
last meeting, that motion should have
priority at the beginning of this
meeting. There may be several items
to be discussed because they were in-
completed at the last meeting.

9. New Business. Here under this title
are listed all the new projects that
have been suggested by members to
the officers, and by the officers them-
selves at the staff meeting. The clear-
er these are stated, the less time will
be wasted in explanation. When this
business is completed, the chairman
may call for

21



10. Adjournment. It is good to set a
definite time limit for the meeting.
When that time comes, the president
may ask for a motion to adjourn be-
cause time has run out for the meet-
ing. It is better for a meeting to be
cut off this way than for it to die a
slow death of disinterest.

11. Closing Prayers. When the motion to
adjourn is passed, the parish presi-
dent may ask the director to lead the
group in closing prayers or, if he is
not present, then one of the members
of the organization will be asked.

Basic Policies

Whether you realize it or not, you will
unconsciously form policies. You will find
as you go on certain modes of action which
are advantageous and certain modes which
are disadvantageous. The determination to
follow the advantageous modes is the form-
ation of policy. If this formation of policy
is left to chance, you will find yourself act-
ing on expediency, rather than on principle.
This is not so good, because expedience
changes too often, while principles only will
give definite direction to your administra-
tion. If you have your own set of principles
governing organizational work, so much the
better. Here are a few which have been
found by experience to be very helpful to-
ward efficient parish organization admin-
istration.

1. Work through love. Love must be the
dominant motive of all Christian liv-
ing, and therefore it is good policy to
try to make love the dominant motive

— 22 —



of all your work for others and to do
your best that Christian love may be
the guilding force of the apostolic
action of your group.

2. Win through peace. In a way this is a
result of the first policy. Your organ-
ization is not to fight for things

;
it is

to win them through love. Love begets
peace among men. It is certain that
no one ever wins a fight. It is far
better to drop a project than to cause
internal dissention over it.

3. Supernaturalize. As a Catholic organ-
ization you are trying to produce
supernatural effects. The ultimate end
of all Catholic organizations is to
make all men Christians and all
Christians saints. To do this we need
the grace of God. In planning your
apostolate, therefore, you will use
supernatural means. You will do a

' a lot of praying for the program of
your administration. You will get
your group to offer Masses, Holy Com-
munions, Rosaries, for the success of
your organization.

4. Push the leadership. The idea of this
policy is to get the members of the
organization to be the very root of its
activities. A good follower keeps after
his leader. A good committeeman
keeps after his chairman. Good organ-
izational men keep after their officers.
They must be led to expect their offi-
cers to produce. They must be inspired
to push their officers into action or
push them out. Pressure on the officers
which you can arouse in the members

— 23 —



is the key to success in corporate
work.

5. Accentuate the positive. You will find
it very advantageous if you get the
habit in any given situation of asking
yourself the question “What can I do
about this now?” As the old proverb
goes, “It is better to light one candle,
than to curse the darkness.” There
are always more reasons why a thing
can’t be done. Defects are far easier
to see than virtues. If, as a personal
policy you decide to “throw away the
hammer and buy a horn,” if you ha-
bitually reject the negative approach,
you will find the progressive spirit
growing more and more in your or-
ganization.

6. Make it right. There is a right way
of doing things and a wrong way. If
you can inspire your organization to
“reach for the big leagues,” and by
that I mean that they should try al-
ways for the best way of doing things,
the courteous way, of doing things
through their proper channels, typing
correctly, turning out really neat mim-
eographed materials, drawing up first
class committee reports, submitting
project plans which take care of
everything, and in general making
things right, you will save yourself
hours and hours of labor, your organ-
ization will offer its members more
opportunities for self - improvement,
and it will gain a reputation in the
parish and in the city for its real
efficiency.

— 24



7. Keep it quiet. Your organization may
not be a secret society, but your or-
ganization does have secrets. Above
all, you should strive to promote the
feeling of assurance in the members
of your organization that what goes
on in their meetings is their business.
They should not fear to express their
minds lest they be quoted outside.
Only in this way will you get that
freedom of expression which you need
for a smoothly running organization.
Only in this way will you get a high
morale of confidence in yourself, in
your officers, and in all the members
of your organization.

A discussion of these policies would in-
deed be a good subject matter for your first
talk to your organization. You will cer-
tainly add other policies of your own to this
list. If you keep your list of policies close
by you, and if you bring them up contin-
uously in talking to your group, your organ-
ization will gradually be formed along these
efficient lines. Certainly at the beginning

of each year of activity your policies should
be again explained to the group.

Personal Hints

Make Changes Slowly

One of the things that even the greatest
corporations tell their executives is “Make
changes slowly.” Human beings have an
inborn resistance to change. They like the
rut they are in. It may not be the best rut,
but they are used to it. Any suggestion for
a change that you make will arouse a cer-

— 25 —



tain fear of the unknown and the unfamil-
iar. An unconscious resentment of sudden
change is at the base of most resistance to
effective planning. People simply have to
get used to an idea for a while before they’ll
accept it.

You will have to plan the introduction of
any new idea very carefully. Sketch it out
on a piece of paper. Put down one step at
a time. Talk about the problem here and
there with individuals and occasionally at
meetings. Ask them to think about it.
Sooner or later you may get that most
valuable ally of any executive : a suggestion
from the floor.

It is certainly a mistake to present a
new idea as an accomplished fact. If it
comes first of all as an idea, then as a sug-
gestion, then as a proposal, and gradually
works its way up to an actual motion before
the assembly, it will have a better chance
to succeed. You simply have to give people
the opportunity to get over their natural
impulsive resistance to what is new.

Making changes slowly will, moreover,
prevent you from making many a blunder.
It is hard for one man to see all the angles
of a situation from merely his own position.
If you are open, frank, communicative
about the affairs of your organization with
all the members, you will find that you will
be tapping the brains of everyone in the
organization and all will be with you to an
extent that is otherwise impossible.

Not Anger But Curiosity

There is no doubt about it: you will have
plenty of opportunity as parish president

— 26 —



to “blow your top.” Your natural reaction
to failure on the part of others is that
emotional rise in you called anger. Emo-
tions are energizers. They are given us in
order that we may be able to solve a situa-
tion, to do something about it. When this
emotion goes off in an undirected manner,
we call it temper, or anger. It does nothing
to solve a situation. On the other hand,
if in circumstances of this nature that
would ordinarily arouse anger, you use the
emotion aroused to get curious about what
is to be done now, and how could this have
been prevented, and where did you fail in
this matter, curiosity will take the place
of anger. You will find that you are able to
discuss the matter very calmly with the
individuals concerned. Above all, you will
find that there is a lowering of your per-
sonal resentment. You must be convinced,
too, that the failure of projects is not neces-
sarily a reflection upon the efficiency of your
personal administration. Your curiosity will
lead you to understand the true “why” of
things. The more you understand that
“why” the less irritated you will be.

You and Advice

A good parish president will have to know
how to take advice and how to give advice.
He will have to seek the golden mean. There
is a golden mean between taking no advice
at all and taking so much advice one doesn’t
know what his own mind is. There is a
golden mean between leaving others strictly
on their own and giving them so much ad-
vice that they are not able to think for

themselves.

— 27



In helping others with advice and en-
couragement it is essential that you regard
those who seek your advice as very impor-
tant. Their problem is serious to them, even
though to you it may seem very trivial. It
is asking a lot of you to listen carefully
without interrupting, to question until you
see the problem thoroughly and wholly. It
is asking a lot of you to listen carefully; to
try to bring the individual to see the solu-
tion by intelligent and searching questions.
You might ask him what are the possible
things that could be done. You might ask
him which one of those things might prob-
ably work. You might ask him which one of
those things he thinks he ought to try first.
It is asking a lot, but if it were any easier
to be a good parish president, there would
be far more of them.

And in taking advice from others the
parish president will have to be particularly
careful lest others feel that he is patron-
izing them. If the parish president will
make it his sole desire in consultation to get
all the facts in the case through questions,
to discover what reasons are behind various
courses of action, in brief, to keep the prob-
lem outside of himself and his personal
relationship, to be utterly objective and to
have only one desire, namely, to do the right
thing, then he will be able to make a right
decision and he will have his consultants on
his side.

Saving Face

In the course of his administration, the
parish president will find individual mem-
bers of his organization sometimes totally

— 28 —



in the wrong. Indeed at meetings it some-
times becomes embarrassing because of an
utterly untenable stand taken by one of
the members. The temptation is to “laugh
it off.” But that is very humiliating to the
man concerned. A public humiliation, even
if it is one’s own fault, is a hard thing to
get over.

The Chinese are not the only ones who
make a great deal of “saving face.” We all
do. There are few of us who do not know
we are wrong when we are in error, or who
at least do not gradually come to that
knowledge. If we are humble enough to
admit it, most of us have on occasions re-
fused to abandon the wrong position simply
because there was no way of doing it while
saving face. The parish president must be
on the alert for just the right phrase, just
the right expression of sympathy, the right
part of a person’s wrong stand, to enable
the latter to leave the field without personal
public humiliation, without loss of face.

Public Relations

The parish president will have to give
considerable attention to “public relations.”

“Public relations” is a new name for a very
old thing. People have always been con-
cerned with what others thought of them.
They formed their actions in order that
others may have a good opinion of them. In
more recent times when the great corpora-
tions of the business -world, the great agen-
cies for charitable purposes, the big edu-

cational institutions of the country, began
to be concerned with what others thought
of them, they invented a new name and
called it “public relations

”



“Public relations” has been described as
the art of guiding an institution or an
individual in a course of action which will
gain and retain the favorable opinion of
the public. Naturally, the parish president
will wish to have his organization held in
high esteem by the members of his parish
and by the Catholics of the city and the
citizenry at large as well. He will want
them all conscious of the nature of his or-
ganization, of the kind of services it has
to offer, and the particular contribution
which it makes to the welfare of the com-
munity. It is on these things that the
foundation of public relations is built.

It is beyond the scope of a small pamphlet
like this to take the parish president
through an exhaustive study of his public
relations program. At best we can point out
the need of study in this regard. The
National Publicity Council has an excellent
“How-To-Do-It” series on publicity and
public relations techniques. The parish
president would do well to get for himself a
selection of these from 257 Fourth Avenue,
New York 10, New York.

Your Place in the Sun

Finally, the parish president will seek for
his organization a proper place in the sun-
shine of the bright world of organized
Catholic activity. He will be broad enough
to look beyond the confines of the parish
and to be aware of the contribution that his
organization in its own way can make to
the Catholic welfare of the diocese and of
the country at large.

— 30 —



He will make certain, first of all, that
his organization is well represented in every
diocesan council the bishop has set up for
the coordination of Catholic activities. He
will, moreover, work toward its affiliation
with the proper branch of the National
Catholic Welfare Conference as far as he
can in the particular circumstances of his
administration.

After all, the National Catholic Welfare
Conference is the organization of the bishops
of the United States. It is the truly Cath-
olic organization for, as St. Ignatius of
Antioch once said, “Where the bishop is,
there is the Catholic Church.”

So you are a parish president. It is a
responsibility, yes, but it is an even greater
opportunity. The role of the layman in the
Catholic Church is a great one. The need
of his leadership is acute. Success is surely
his if the parish president will approach his
task with courage born of virtue, with con-
fidence based on grace, and with faith
making everything that he does an expres-
sion of the deep Catholicism that is in
his heart.

— 31



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