§ 126. The Assistants and Substitutes of the Parish Priest

The sphere of parish duty is so extensive, and the pastoral obligations so numerous, that it is difficult for a single parish priest to discharge them all, if his parish is too large and scattered, or if he himself is old or physically weakened. In such cases church authority has, from the oldest times, given to such parish priests the assistance of one or more helpers, so that all the pastoral business of the parish in question might be satisfied and so that official parish work could proceed without hindrance. Besides this, according to the geographic position of a place, there often arises a need to appoint there a permanent priest, who nevertheless cannot be placed on an equal footing with the rights of a regular parish priest, because the population of that place is small and because, on account of this and other local circumstances, it is impossible to satisfy all the conditions of a regular parish. On the other hand, an occasion arises when, after the death of a parish priest, a regular parish priest cannot at once be appointed in the parish in question, and then the pastoral service of such a parish is entrusted temporarily to a particular priest, as substitute of the parish priest. Out of these various personal, local, and church-administrative circumstances there arose within the parish organism: a) personal assistants, or chaplains, b) exponed [exponierte] chaplains, and c) substitutes of the parish priest, or parish administrators. The first and the third, that is, personal chaplains and parish administrators, are conditioned by the necessity of the proper development of the parish organism and by the need to remove every obstacle to official parish activity, and hence we find them in the eparchies of all the autocephalous churches; the second, that is, the exponed chaplains, exist only in those churches nearer to the West, from which, in all likelihood, this very institution of exponed chaplains was itself borrowed.

Personal Chaplains, or assistants of the parish priest, are appointed either when a parish is very extensive and populous,[1] or else when a regular parish priest, owing to old age or mental or physical infirmity, is unable to fulfil the parish duties.[2] In either case these chaplains have no independent authority of their own, but perform the respective duties in the parish only in the name of the parish priest whose assistants they are, and on whom they are entirely dependent. They are appointed in the same way as the deacons attached to parishes, except that generally the parishioners in question are recognized as having the right to nominate persons to fill the positions of personal chaplains.[3] The support of these personal chaplains is provided either by the church community, or by contributions of the faithful people, or by the parish priest himself.[4]

Exponed Chaplains were originally priests whom the parish priest of a principal church sent to more distant small places belonging to the parish, which had their own separate church, in order to perform pastoral duties there in place of, and in the name of, the parish priest. Little by little these priests began to take up permanent residence in those small places, began to enjoy regular income from the faithful people of those places, and finally obtained the rights of regular parish priests in the performance of pastoral duties, together with their own particular independence. Apart from their income and their smaller sphere of activity, these chaplains have entirely equal rights with parish priests, and stand, like the latter, in immediate dependence on the district protopresbyters, or on the eparchial central authority.[5]

Administrators of parishes are nothing but temporary performers of pastoral service in a parish that has been left without its regular parish priest. The first concern for such a parish, left widowed, belongs to the district protopresbyter; and the appointment of the administrator belongs to the eparchial bishop. The enjoyment of parish income by the administrator of the parish is regulated by special laws.[6] The service of the administrator ends when a regular parish priest is appointed for the parish in question; but if there exist certain extraordinary external circumstances, some priest may serve as administrator for a longer time.