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Role of Laity in the Church Relentless and pervasive change is occuring everywhere and inevitably the Catholic Church is not immune from this crisis and in many areas has shown a marked reluctance to face up to the reality of the modern situation. That most popular and charismatic prelate, Cardinal Martini of Milan, commented to me a few years ago: "This is 1996, but some people re talking as though it were 1966 - or even 1866." The brilliant American historian, Monsignor Tracy Ellis, has stressed that the Church has paid a terrible price for its failure to keep up with the times. We witness today a most serious decline in priestly vocations, religious vocations of brothers and nuns and so more than ever the Church must - most belatedly - recognise the vast potential of the laity to accomplish its mission. You, the laity, are now, more than ever before, the hope of the Church. You are IN the world and know the world and are better educated and prepared than ever before - you are the hope of the Church. If you fail to meet the new crisis and challenge, all is lost. Don't be afraid of the challenge. The spiritual giants of the past met the various crises of their age with boundless faith and courage. St.Augustine used to say: "When you have said, 'it is enough', you're dead." I think it is no exaggeration to say that never before in the history of the Church has the laity - and especially lay teachers - been so necessary, so absolutely vital, to the survival and growth of the Church. ROLE OF THE LAITY: In the last century an English convert asked his new Bishop what was the role of the laity in the Catholic Church. He got the bland reply: "To pray, pay and obey."!! Archbishop Ullathorne once said to Newman: "Why all this talk about the laity?" and Newman replied: "The Church would look very silly without them"! And Cardinal Newman went so far as to write: "In all times the laity has been the measure of the Catholic spirit; they saved the Irish Church three centuries ago and they betrayed the Church in England." At the Vatican Council, that most progressive prelate, Cardinal Suenens, kept highlighting the vital role of WOMEN in the apostolate: "Unless I am mistaken, women make up half of the human race." And a witty journalist commented: "and women are responsible… for the other half."! For an excellent analysis of the role of women, read the chapter on St. Edith Stein in my book on this website, "Saints Popular and Relevant." THE IMPORTANCE OF THE LAY-TEACHER: You are not just a teacher with a job and a salary, but a teacher OF Christ FOR Christ. In St. Paul's phrase, you are an "ambassador for Christ" and 'dispenser of Christ's mysteries"……According to St. John Chrysostom you are an artist of the most sublime order, not just painting a picture on perishable canvas but painting the image of Christ on immortal souls. Apply to yourselves those challenging words of Cardinal Newman: "God has created me to do him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life but I shall be told it in the next." A sense of VOCATION and DESTINY must be inculcated. Hence a sense of fulfilment: psychiatrists stress that much neurosis is brought on by a feeling of emptiness, routine, non-fulfilment. SPIRITUALITY OF THE LAY-APOSTLE: The old maxim is so true: "Nobody gives what he has not got." To have a spiritual impact on others, we must deepen our own spiritual lives. We ourselves must be imbued with the mind and heart of Christ. Christ must be - and APPEAR to be - the centre of our lives. St. Paul's obsession must be ours - "for me, to live is Christ". And again: "the love of Christ spurs me on." Nothing daunted St. Paul: "I can do ALL thing in HIM that strengthens me." May I again cite St. John Chrysostom, one of the giants of the early Church: "Nothing is more useless than a Christian who does not try to save others. Do not tell me you are poor; the widow's two mites confront you; Peter, too, who said: 'Silver and gold, have I none', and Paul, so poor that he was often hungry. Do not plead your modest circumstances; they, too, were lowly and of humble station. Do not plead your ignorance; they, too were uneducated……Anybody can help his neighbour if he is only willing really to do what he can." BENEFITS OF THE CHURCH: The Church is the prolongation, the extension of Christ but there is a tendency in some quarters to project the Church as a kill-joy, formalistic, legalistic, that his life is a 'vale of tears' but we can hope for a reward in the next! But Christ assured us that He had come that "we may have life and have it to the full." And as you look around and advance in experience of life and the complexities of modern living, the more will you grasp the profound truth of those words of Pope Leo XIII: "The Catholic Church has for her own immediate and natural purpose the saving of souls…..Yet in regards to things temporal she is the source of benefits as manifold and great as if the chief end of her existence were to ensure the prospering of our earthly existence." ('Immortale Dei'). HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE CHURCH: The Church is both divine AND human - sometimes a bit too human, in its limitations of judgement, incompetence, pettiness. Cardinal Lercaro of Bologna wrote about the "vast plain of mediocrity" in the Church. The great theologian, Cardinal Henri de Lubac, S. J., personal advisor to Paul VI observed that "mediocrity thrives in the Church and everywhere the mediocre set the tone of thing.' We shall find, even in high places, small, timid, 'safe' men who argue for delay and compromise, but they deserve the famous words of reproach addressed by Cardinal Pie to his contemporaries: "Prudence is everywhere and before long courage will be nowhere. We shall die of wisdom, you'll see." It is so important that in every situation, every crisis, that we be realists, that we face up to REALITY of the Church - and of people in general. We have to deal with fallen and sinful mankind, not a world of supermen and angels. St. Ignatius Loyola had to remind St. Francis Borgai that we are here to mould "not gold but clay". A teacher gets through to students if the students sense that the teacher, deep down, loves them, is concerned about them. The most powerful weapon in your armoury will always be your PERSONAL EXAMPLE. I like to recall the words that Emerson puts into the mouth of a child addressing his parents: "what you ARE thunders so loudly in my ears that I can't hear what you're saying." So true! OPTIMISM AND BOUNDLESS FAITH IN CHRIST: Provided we pray and put our apostolate on a strictly spiritual basis, we have every reason for optimism. At the Incarnation - which was the humanly impossible - it was the angel who assured Our Lady that "nothing is impossible with God". No matter how limited we are, in ourselves, God can do great things through us - as St. Paul reminds us constantly, and in our day the great Cambridge historian, Dom David Knowles, O.S.B., so truly observed that in every age "the poor and obscure are the unseen pillars of the Church". It will always be thus. With faith - blind, total, implicit - let us advance boldly and make history. We must face the future with broad vision and indomitable courage, born of the faith that moves mountains and a boundless hope in the power of Christ and the ultimate victory of grace. In the magnificent, challenging words of St. Edmund Campion, Elizabethan martyr: "The expense is reckoned, the enterprise is begun. It is of God. It cannot be withstood." |