I have worked several decades in Catholic institutions and apostolates and as a result, I have had hundreds of conversations with others who have done the same. There are many blessings and many struggles that go along with working as a lay professional in the Catholic Church. Before I get into the details, let me preface this post with a few thoughts. I have a gift (and a curse) for in-depth critical examination of institutional problems. This means that I can sometimes sound like a naysayer or a pessimist. But, I am neither. Rather, I point out the warts of the Church, because I love the Catholic Church and know we can do better! God certainly doesn't want us to just be ok.

That is the point of this post. To help God’s Church be better. It isn’t just a complaining session.

With that being said, I recently crowd-sourced others who work in parishes, dioceses, Catholic schools, and apostolates. I asked them the following question:

**What do you want your pastors (bishop / parish pastor / boss) to know, but either you have never told them or you don't think they have "heard" you say it?**

Below are the responses, grouped according to topic and edited to remove identity and for the sake of clarity. 
NOTE - I edited some comments for brevity and clarity.

ON JUSTICE FOR THOSE THAT WORK FOR THE CHURCH:

• We have a system that operates in two different ways for two different groups. Lay people can be hired and fired. They are held accountable for their actions or lack thereof. Priests have no real system of accountability and the loafing priest can do what he wants, knowing he won’t “lose his job”. There needs to be a more just system in place.

• Pay your people a just wage, not just a living wage: https://livingwage.mit.edu/

When the response: "I don’t have the money" is given, then advocate for your laborers or don’t hire them. And when people complain that no one is doing the work that you need the laborers to do, you can tell them that you refuse to hire anyone for less than a living wage.

• Just wages. Educate yourself on what a livable wage is in your area, and pay your employees a liveable wage. Don’t expect them to work over 40 hours, and if they need to on occasion, pay them overtime.

• The Catholic Church treating its employees who do ministry jobs treated as a regular 9-5 position is so counter-productive. Not to mention the expectation that since this is work for God we have to offer overtime all the time. I spent so much time away from my newborn and my spouse because I was constantly at work at the Church. I tried to set boundaries and since I worked in marriage and family, I thought they’d be a little more understanding that I’ve sacrificed a lot for their cause and still got little to no appreciation/leeway.

• When people retire or die, hire new people. Don’t just redistribute the work to those of us who remain. Yes, it is difficult to find qualified candidates but we have gifted people in our parishes who may not have the degrees but have the charisms needed.

• Give your lay workers a week for retreat that doesn’t take from their pto.

• Speaking of PTO, we don’t even have it. Do like some companies and tell them to take time when and as they need it. We come to work wanting the Kingdom to flourish so most of us won’t abuse this. And honestly, with the PTO system if someone is unhappy they will abuse it anyway

• If you can’t afford to pay a liveable wage, don’t hire more people.

• I know priests who have balked at paying $30,000 a year as being too much. The family who asked for that lives on food stamps. All of their monthly income goes to rent. The husband of a single income family with two children works there.

• Give laity who work for you a lot of space to have families. After all we preach this, so help them live it.

• Your staff probably think there's not enough money in the parish budget for them to ask for even small things for their ministries. They're probably operating under the assumption that they will either need to fight tooth and nail for money, buy what they need out of their own pockets, or just do without and let their ministries suffer. You need to ask yourself and your staff if that's the atmosphere your parish has with money.

• Hire the staff you need to do the job you need. Don’t always expect employees to give every bit of themselves to the church as if it’s their vocation. Recognize their responsibility to their family.

• To the diocese: use some of the funds you tax from your parishes to redistribute the wealth so that the poorer parishes can also afford to pay just wages.

• Provide childcare for your parish staff. The school teachers got this, but ministry workers did not. 

• The diocese should set the standard of what a minimum just salary is for employees, and advocate for their employees, not be suspicious of or work against them.

ON THE SPIRITUAL LIFE (INDIVIDUALS AND COMMUNITIES):

• We got shamed for going to spend time in our perpetual adoration chapel during work hours. 

• There need to be opportunities (and emphasis) on prayer together as a staff … (an accessible chapel on campus would also be nice).  Current chapel is in Bishop’s residence and we have no access. Nearest chapel is at a church 3 blocks away AND it isn’t always unlocked.

• Don’t claim to be on a mission to bring all souls to Christ when you know full well the faith of former employees crashed and burned to ashes because of your actions, but you have no @#*&$ to give about that and haven’t once reached out to them with compassion.

• Insist your staff pray daily, let their work be the fruit of their prayer. Give them opportunities to go to Mass and adoration during work hours.

• Don’t work them so hard and long with too little help that they burn out. Prioritize retreats and a day of rest.

• Be sure to take your vacation, your days off, your retreat and your sacramental life and daily prayer.

• Unify your staff, pray together, build a culture of prayer and virtue

• If you ensure that your staff are spiritually and emotionally fed, they will feed everyone else for you. That's what you hired them for. Do NOT neglect them.

• I want pastors to know that more attention on the quality of Sunday liturgies will make a significant contribution to the spiritual formation of their people.

• People in the church don’t want to be staff members, employees or parishioners that are disposable or used in a utilitarian way, but discipled and cared for in a very real and personal way.

ON VISION / MISSION / BIG PICTURE:

• The team and the parishioners placed in your care have a desire to be part of something big, something deep, something worth sacrificing for, something worth dying for. “Another day at the office” (or parish) should be transformative and the guy in charge has to either lead that, or partner with someone on the outside that can.

• The Church needs to be challenged and equipped to go out and make Disciples of all Nations (Mt. 28:19). The Diocese and individual parishes must explore its specific charisms and reach out to those beyond its parish boundaries to be radical missionaries for Jesus the Christ - who is the way, the truth and the life (Jn. 14:6). No amount of programming or continuation of the status quo will get it done. Life in the Holy Spirit requires continual change. Our work in the greater vineyard of the Lord for our ministries as disciples may require going out of our comfort zone & that is the point for the apostolic mission of our Catholic Church.

• You have to say no to a lot of good things in order to do the most important things. There's a limited amount of time, energy, and resources, so use those accordingly. Sometimes, the truly important things may not seem important in the moment - such as taking the time to build relationships with everyone.

• Stop worrying *so much* about money. Certainly be smart/responsible with it, but recognize where the true power for carrying out your mission comes from.

• Know your mission. What are you trying to do? Get large numbers participating? Or make true disciples.

• Directors’ meetings should be more frequent than quarterly and they need to look forward (what are we working on) rather than backward (this is what I have done the last three months).

• We had no strategic plan for our parish initiatives and would try to pull together trips like March for life etc so last minute.

• When calling together a bunch of staff a diocesan planning/steering committee for (currently) planning the jubilee year events, don’t come to the meeting with a list events of pre-approved by the episcopal council or the priest council that you simply need to delegate (or use the fact that this planning was started about a year after we were supposed to as an excuse). Also, when starting a year late on planning events for the jubilee year, don’t try to do 400 different events  - do two or three, and do them well.

• On parish level … parish councils should not be rubber stamp committees. Members of parish councils should have a portfolio or area they are responsible for and create a team around themselves for that ministerial responsibility (thus training future parish leaders …Every ministry should have a leadership team (so that if someone gets hit by a truck, the ministry doesn’t fizzle out without their current leader …

• I would love for parish staff to be people actually trained in discipleship training, to train our parishioners to assist in the work of evangelization in our pews and in our communities. Major lack of intentionality and concern for those that are gifting themselves extraordinarily for the parish.

ON THE WAY LEADERS OPERATE:

• Quit creating policies whose sole purpose is to limit civil/legal liability without considering how these policies limit the ability for staff to actually serve the people they minister to. If these policies are necessary don’t impose them without checking how these policies actually impact the ministries of the various offices. (a small example: we can no longer use zoom and must use TEAMs for virtual meetings EVEN THOUGH it doesn’t work for a lot of people who want to participate in these virtual meetings/workshops. Many of us had been using Zoom (often at personal expense) throughout the pandemic. People are comfortable with the system. Now if we need to use zoom, we need permission from the IT director (who doesn’t know what we do in ministry). If the Director of a department deems that zoom is the best tool for the job, why not just trust that director …

• You probably have an HR/Safe Environment/structural system in place that is entirely wrongheaded in its thinking. Most dioceses have arranged those systems not around the word "safety" or "holiness" but around the word "indemnity." You are probably much more concerned with legal and financial repercussions of situations than you are with the well-being of the actual people involved in those situations. Do you think that isn't true? Then have you really examined both your own policies and the actions of your diocese with a critical eye? Do you know for a fact that's not how those things play out in practice? Dollars to donuts you want to think your diocese is good about this stuff but it really isn't.

• You need to foster an environment where healthy and constructive criticism are welcomed alongside praise and celebration. That's hard to do but it's part of your job, and the job of lay ministers and deacons as well.

• First, be holy yourself. Then, lead your parish staff. Teach them to be holy. Teach them to work together and love each other and love the mission. Teach them all to work toward the central mission in all that they do. Squash gossip. If you have staff members who are very wounded people who haven’t begun to heal from those wounds, there’s a high chance they’ll wound your parishioners. Address it. Meet them where they are in their woundedness, show them love, and help them, or discern letting them go or moving to a different position. Don’t allow them to continue hurting your parishioners on a large scale.

• Do NOT constantly tell people "yes, you can do this thing" if their only qualification is that they want to do that thing. You'll end up with people in charge of stuff who have no business being in charge of that stuff.

• Bishops - Hold your priests to the same standards as is demanded from laity. Also, Take the opinions of educated, experienced, faithful laity as seriously as those of clergy.

• What doesn't actually have to be part of your job is a lot of the management work in your parish. You were trained in theology, Scripture, Sacraments, pastoral care - not so much in HR or finance or building maintenance. You can let go of control of some things, and you can tell people "no, I can't be there" or "no, I can't do that" or "that's not something I need to give input on."

ON PASTORAL MINISTRY AND BEING THE BOSS:

• Most of your parishioners don't actually know what's good for them or even what they really like. They only know what's comfortable, and they get upset when that comfort is disrupted. That's how you end up with bad music, corny aesthetics, and lame ministries.

• Your preaching isn’t as good as you may think it is + your improvement in preaching matters more than the most of what you spend your time doing. If you don’t have an objective feedback loop on your preaching, you need one. Catholic preaching is at the bottom of the preaching spectrum across Christianity. 

• Principle of subsidiarity applies to pastors and lay ministers. You are one person who cannot possibly minister to everyone in your parish effectively. Your primary responsibility (after the Sacraments, of course) should be to care for your staff, who outnumber you greatly. Their primary responsibility should be to care for their volunteers/interns/assistants, and THEIR responsibility should be to care for the parishioners.

• Fr - We need to meet regularly so we can be of one heart and mind.

• Priests and laity should have a relationship that is complementary because it is. They don’t just marry the Church in general, each of us are his bride and sometimes the bride's wisdom is better than the groom's facts. Ask any married man.

• While parishes keep the corporate model that doesn't keep up with how to help make employees feel validated or learn to trust each other. In the pursuit of mission there will be disagreement but arguing healthy and productively is not welcome. Pastors don’t get training in how to be good bosses and we are subject to their personalities.

• Taking a homiletics course in seminary does not make you an effective preacher. Study great orators and implement their methods. We’ve got YouTube to watch and listen to fantastic speeches and homilies. Use it to study.

• I want all bishops to know that one half-day per month of open office hours would go a long way to connect the local flocks to their shepherds.

• I had a priest tell me “I am going to the grave tired because of my duty as a priest” in light of my coworker (youth minister) asking for some relief of our expectations as we were swamped and burned out. She was getting married and I had a marriage and a family that were being ignored because the Church came first.

• If you hire someone with no experience, where's the training?

• I'd like our bishops to know that our priests need to be disciples of someone too. I think so many of our priests are turning to their favorite Internet Bishop/cardinal instead of turning to their local shepherds to learn from. We need more disciple-making Bishops. Our priests are also in dire need of pastoral care that the laity cannot give them.

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As a follow-up question, I asked:

**What, if anything, has prevented you from sharing these thoughts with your pastors?**

• Many Bishops and other clergy (though not all by any means) are still threatened by educated, experienced, faithful, laity.

• He’s older and overworked.

• In most situations there simply isn't an opportunity presented to do so effectively. Say for example there's a person in a leading volunteer role in some parish ministry and they're much more of a hindrance than a help to effective ministry. They're a nice person and well-intentioned but just not very good at their roles. What should you do in order to improve the situation while avoiding being rude, insulting, or divisive? There's rarely ever some type of suggestion box or feedback survey or other active opportunity to assess and discuss things. Should you just call the priest and tell them this volunteer sucks? And what should he be expected to do in response to that - fire a volunteer and hurt people's feelings?

• I think more often than not things don't get said when they need to simply because of a social pressure to be nice and not rock the boat combined with no formalized, openly-invited way to submit constructive criticism. That said, I've also been fired for speaking up in a parish before, so that makes me personally skittish about doing it again too.

• In my case the pastor was a different generation and rather stuck in his ways. Could not or would not make the changes necessary for us to be fruitful. I think he had a hard time understanding that the old ways weren’t working anymore.

• I have. I didn’t make any progress.