Contact: Michael O'Neil, Chair
Jonathan Taasan, Parish Administrator
425-747-4450 x5473
[email protected]
The Code of Canon Law establishes that each erected parish of the Church body possesses juridic personality by the law itself and that its pastoral care is entrusted to a pastor under the authority given a diocesan bishop (CIC, c. 515). Through his governance thereby, the pastor is designated as the parish's legal representative and administrator (CIC, c. 532, 1279 §1) and charged to care for the goods of the parish according to the norm of Canons 1281-1288.
Canon 537 specifically applies to the parish the more general norm of canon 1280 which legislates that each juridic person must have its own finance council or at least two counselors who are to assist the administrator, and so states:
"In each parish there is to be a finance council which is governed, in addition to universal law, by norms issued by the diocesan bishop and in which the Christian faithful, selected according to these same norms, are to assist the pastor in the administration of the goods of the parish, without prejudice to the prescript of canon 532.”
THEREFORE, the Finance Council of Saint Louise Parish has been instituted with the express purpose of providing sound business analysis and counsel to her pastor that he, in his sole authority, may best safeguard and employ the temporal goods entrusted to him. Whereas the Finance Council does not enter into areas of policy and mission (which are the prerogative of other consultative structures), it conversely gives rigor to the means, effectiveness, and efficiency in realizing such.