Spring 1968

To ask the wrong question often makes impossible the attaining of the right answer.

Thus, if we are seeking to solve the problem brought on by the continuance in office of feeble pastors by asking at what age pastors should be retired, we may practically eliminate from consideration the most significant problem of restructuring the relation· ships that exist between peo· A change in parish pie and curate, between CU· structure is the war rate and pastor, and between to foster the very pastor and bishop. To ask a value the old structure limiting question may lead to was meant to serve. the failure to find the more complete answer that would have been sought by asking a broader question. + Hence, in approaching the question of a theology of the PETER CHIRICO, S.S. parish, we should be careful not to begin by asking the + theology of existing parish structures. It may be that such structures ought not to exist at all. Further, it may be that the parish structure as sucheven an ideal parish structure-is a temporally conditioned affair so that the very asking for a theology of the parish is to imply an answer that at best will be misleading, if not downright false.

To avoid this pitfall we propose to begin not with the parish 89