Letter from SJCCC PC to the Community about new members for PC

Dear brothers and sister of SJCCC,

It is only a few days before the beginning of Lent, it is important at this time to keep all of you updated on the steps that we are doing to prepare our community for the canonical status of Mission.

As you may have realized, "to establish and strengthen our Finance and Pastoral Councils" has been one of the most important recommendations that we have received from our Bishop. This is the reason why in the monthly meeting of January, we've decided to nominate one more member to support each of the Councils: Kenneth Wang for the Finance Council, and James Hua for the Pastoral Council.

We realized that to begin planning for the work to set up our "Mission", according to the guidelines of DSJ, we need between three to five more members in our Pastoral Council, to reach total of eight members, if possible. This addition is essential in an effective transition of the Pastoral Council from the Chair board's operational role to a more "strategic and planning role".

After thinking and praying about these issues, we have considered that would be great if the Main Group Leaders of the community could suggest some potential candidates that will go through a discernment process of selection to find new members for the Pastoral Council.

Following our request during our last monthly meeting on February 15th, we received from the Main Group Leaders of the community twenty five names of potential candidates. We have already begun to communicate with them, and we are waiting for their answers on whether they feel called to participate in a prayerful discernment process on February 25th.

We recognize that an ideal discernment and selection process would need more time and with a broader participation of the community, this is what we want to do next time, but we realized that right now we are in transition, still learning about our new situation, and at the same time in need to move quickly to setup our Mission in a short period of time, for these reasons we believe that this approach is the best option for the good of our community at this time.

We have made clear to our potential candidates that the positions of the Pastoral Council are very different from the Chair Board that we use to have before. The main functions of the Pastoral Council are to envision the mission of the community, to establish long-term plans, to advice the priest in the pastoral life, and to be the voice of the community. Together with the assigned priest, the Pastoral Council will strive to make real the ideals of the Gospel in our Chinese Catholic Community.

We have also made clear that this is not an election where the selected are the ones who have more votes, but a "process of discernment" in a prayerful meeting.

We sincerely ask for prayers from all of you for the intentions of our Community, particularly during this Holy Season of Lent. In the following days, we will suggest some possible spiritual strategies to get the best spiritual fruits from the forty Lenten days that bring us to the joys of Easter.

God bless!

Fr. Olivera and SJCCC Pastoral Council (Louis AnPung, Simon Liao and James Hua)