The Bureaucracies of the Global Church

By Fr. Jerry Pokorsky ( bio - articles - email ) | Apr 28, 2025

We cannot love mankind. Love is personal. Institutional pressures often neglect the hallowed organizational principle of human love: subsidiarity. The concept is simple. Small-scale institutional structures are usually preferable if they prioritize personal encounters, promote human dignity, and solve problems locally. Subsidiarity fosters church attendance. Small is beautiful.

Subsidiarity is on display in small-town life. In the 1960s, the owner of a Sylvania television shop was within walking distance of my home. He sold the finest black-and-white console TVs in the world, except for the Zenith TV shop across the street. The Sylvania shop owner called his Zenith neighbor his friendly competitor. When the Sylvania sales were strong, he directed some of his business to help his Zenith neighbor. Friendly competition did not mean crushing the opposition. A rising tide of prosperity floats all boats.

Fast forward to the 1980s. As a young man, I worked in the corporate offices of a major beer company. We never referred to the competition as friendly. We depersonalized it. Corporate policy aimed to put our competitors out of business and replace their market share with ours. It worked in my hometown. Efficient big beer companies killed our small brewery, and the workers dispersed. I eventually came to my senses and concluded that unrestrained corporate globalism undermines friendly competition and human dignity. The economies of scale are efficient, but often undermine employee morale and cultural tranquility.

The globalism of the Catholic Church essentially runs contrary to the excesses of corporate globalism. Despite her globalist appearance—and many institutional failures—subsidiarity hard-wires the Catholic Church. The salvation of souls is local.

The Vatican—the Chair of Saint Peter—is the smallest country in the world, with the Pope as the leader and chief shepherd, the Vicar of Christ. Every Pope participates in the ministry of St. Peter, neither more nor less. In his office, he is the guardian of the Catholic faith and the minister of unity. His administrative bureaucracy is relatively small. The primary purposes of the Vatican institutions include handing down the fullness of the faith to save souls and governing the Church. By the demands of their office, Peter’s successors are guardians of the faith.

Bishops are the successors of the Apostles. Ordained bishops, with apostolic succession, govern geographical clusters called dioceses. Most American states have two or three dioceses. The bishops’ chancery bureaucracies are organizational necessities. The bureaucracies of the institutional Church exist to serve holy and intimate personal encounters with Jesus.

The local diocesan bishop carves his diocese into reasonable parish territories and assigns pastors to govern those parishes. Individuals living within a parish’s geographical boundaries have rights granted by universal church law. A doctrinal lifeline extends institutionally from individuals through their pastors and bishops to the papacy (the Magisterium).

Our relationship with the risen Jesus through the mediation of the Church and her priests is intensely personal. Every sacrament is a personal encounter. We assemble as a small community to celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and receive Holy Communion.

Priests hear confessions in the name of Jesus—in His Person—by Divine mandate after the Resurrection: “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” (Jn. 20:22-23) Confession is a holy and uniquely personal encounter with Jesus through the ministry of a priest. Individual encounters in the Sacrament of Penance express the Church’s institutional subsidiarity.

Bishops protect their flocks from the wolves of error, teaching orthodox Catholic doctrine, and expect the same from their priests. Diocesan offices, programs, podcasts, and live-streamed Masses have their place but are meaningless without parishes. Catholics encounter the risen Jesus in parish communities. Grassroots parishes of the Church are personal. For Church globalists, small is beautiful for the salvation of souls.

Some may suggest this depiction is simplistic. It is. So are the Ten Commandments. Sin distorts human freedom and Church institutions. Some priests and prelates are wolves in shepherd’s clothing. If a parish priest, because of a busy schedule, neglects individual encounters in the Sacrament of Penance, he violates the Church’s fundamental priestly mission: the salvation of souls, one at a time.

The Catholic globalist institution occasionally suffers from the excesses of corporate globalism. When someone asked Pope John XXIII how many people worked in the Vatican, he famously quipped, “About half of them.” A cynical and world-weary pastor (who will remain nameless) occasionally paraphrases JFK’s (remember him?) 1960 inaugural address: “Ask not what your chancery can do for you. Ask what you can do for your chancery!” Both quips are exaggerations, but anyone familiar with impersonal bureaucracies understands the humor.

If you are looking for an excuse to jump ship from the Catholic faith, don’t give up. You will find one. A man’s dandruff (to borrow a rude metaphor) is often easier to notice than the elegance of his fine clothing. But even a validly ordained priest in mortal sin (God forbid) offers a valid Mass and forgives sins in the name of Jesus in the Sacrament of Penance.

As with any extensive organization, the institutional Church’s struggle with sinful, inefficient, and wasteful Church bureaucracies is ongoing. It extends from the Vatican through diocesan chanceries and to parishes. The distortions spare no organization, secular or religious. But we do not worship Church leaders and institutions or allow defects and failures to distract us from Divine worship or the remedy of God’s mercy in the confessional.

The institutions of the global Church exist to hand down the Catholic faith with integrity to you and me in every generation. Before heaven and earth pass away, we will find the strength of the Church not in the Vatican and diocesan chancery bureaucracies but in our (preferably small) parishes, where we encounter the love of the Risen Christ.

“So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” (1 Cor. 13:13) Small is beautiful—and Catholic.