Vocations to the laity

...And The only trouble with that, points out dom comes from many sources and for those of us who were around for the columnist Richard Cohen, was that this whose strength is greatest when we come beginning of network news and 'saw it barrage obscured some important facts...

...It is out of place have at least taken the first step and put of other drugs is declining...

...sions of painedd concern by Brokaw, or the newspaper shop for the morning pa- Who knows...

...The importance and urgency of this prolegomenon to the October 1987 synod This is not simply a matter of logical task for American Catholicism is exof bishops that will be deliberating in deduction...

...Among the most powerful of these new sources has been the greatly ramified world of modem work, at least to the degree that this work has been intellectuVOCATIONS TO THE LAITY ally and morally challenging...

...Unless it can RECENTLY I spent a stimulating are equal in dignity though distinct in somehow,co-opt the world of work, inweekend in Chicago attending a function, it no longer makes sense to say troducing, in a kind of incarnational symposium with the somewhat that God calls some people to be priests manner, the beyond into the office, facless than catchy title of "National Con- while not calling others to be butchers, tory, and laboratory, religion will consultation on the Laity in the World - the bakers, and candlestick makers...

...to reasoned, step-by-step consensus...

...in a medium treated as half-business, pronouncements of Rather, those expres- And, although I dutifully marched into half-entertainment...

...Apparently a cre- may well draw on the larger experience It seems to me that the hegemony of scendo of reports that the drug crisis had and the regional genius of all America the three network news programs was reached alarming proportions and was and give back to us a sense of ourselves bound to be destroyed by the prolifera- steadily worsening...

...National Institute on Drug Abuse has realm...

...For the higher classes, work hood of all believers - an old Catholic ingfulness, to that degree Catholicism is an end in itself...

...Statue of Liberty demonstrated so disMore and more station owners and man- Many of those addicted to the news are mayingly, the California/Hollywood agers find themselves unable to resist the finding that the lapses occasioned by va- experience...

...As humankind became more Second, the matter of organizational the laity second-class, then the best a lay knowing and powerful, it would have structures...

...If local shows supersede the information solemnly confided by pers I had reserved, I didn't always get those of the networks, no matter how Jennings essential to the citizen's ability through them...

...There are ing on whether the Christian in question callings to the priestly life...

...They warn that the - and they are as in touch as they need to We sold an invaluble national resource loss of the nightly twenty-odd minutes be...

...an almost logical live to work...

...Encupations but to worldly occupations as just work to live...

...exist as such in actual fact...

...We should not be surprised national unity...

...It . is not even enough to set inferior clergy...

...This follows in...

...In this world da...

...This will have to be formu- of religious privatization and linguistic Drug addiction is epidemic...

...Yet, says Cohen, the public sphere and confined to the private ever be done successfully is doubtful...

...In the ABUNDANCE FOR HARVEST modern person's search for meaning, life's center of gravity has increasingly shifted away from the supernatural and towards the workplace...

...To do so in the face of unjust steal from worldly occupations...

...It is a matter of felt experience ceeded only by its difficulty...

...What is required is a ship, a church in which clergy and laity moral theology of economic and organiCommonweal: 520 zational life...

...there are even was on the receiving or the giving end of callings to the lay life, as to a kind of injustice...

...responsibility that lingered in the work of spondents will disappear and, I suppose, For all of August and part of Sep- the first generation...

...But "the when discussing the affairs of govern- the issue on the American Catholic agen- statistics are not allowed to intrude on its ment, business, or science...

...To Christianize the workperson can do is to give a kind of feeble less and less need to call on God to fill in place, it is not enough that the worker imitation of the clerical life in those few the gaps in its knowledge and power...

...but there can be no cal- about reforming organizations with a lings to the life of carpentry or farming or burning hunger for justice in one's heart...

...as a nation of communities whose wistion of cable programs in any case...

...What shared national ex- uneven and amateurish they are, they to evaluate events...

...Our children are at risk...

...Aren't those grave convenient to turn to the evening news...

...There is reason ORCHESTRATED CRISES for concern, yes, but not panic...

...In the world of complex organizations, But given the newer conception of a righteousness combined with ignorance church having a single level of citizen- can be a fatal mix...

...Of several minds: David R. Carlin, Jr...

...In the post-World War II era, lar, there are three great obstacles that laity...

...law...

...We cellor and the side-lining of David Shared experience, as the networks read and hear that their time slots Brinkley...

...I myself defected to the transmit it, is all too often the New York on affiliated local stations are being pre- "MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour" and am experience or, as the celebration of the empted by locally staffed news shows...

...UnfortuTHE NEWS WORTH MISSING nately, this is only one example of the way in which competing journalists ignore complexity and amplify stories beif ATIONAL network news programs ment of Walter Cronkite and John Chan- yond reasonable limits...

...A religious vocabulary is permit- But gratitude is due to the organizers of evidence that the current cocaine ted at home, in church, and in a small the recent Chicago conference...

...They range from corporate In a secular society, religion is expected Connecting religion and work is, you executivess to crossing guards...

...With all due respect to lain for centuries in a back room of the In the nineteenth century, prophets of Ronald McDonald, it is difficult to see museum of dogmatic antiquities...

...DAVID R. CARLIN, JR...

...If there tinue to drift further and further away American Experience...

...ical types being first-class citizens and technology...

...The variety and the regional prime-time advertising dollar...

...to a great extent, they gineers and college professors may live well...

...perience did I miss...

...broader message, which is that there is a worsening crisis...

...And I would wager that they have advertisers...

...clerical, auspices - viewed itself as a as to clerical careers...

...economics and organizational theory as worldly occupations can even be dis- Our safety and security are endangered they do about moral theology...

...addicted...

...beginning to be less than faithful to that...

...Our borders lated by people who know as much about secularization, it is difficult to see how are breached...

...In particuRome on the condition of the Catholic as well...

...cations or trips abroad scarcely affect diversity of life, of creativity, and of Television columnists, professors of them...

...The premise of the Chicago meeting numbers of college-educated profession- First, the social class factor...

...means to an end...

...the eventual disappearance of religion how even the most resourceful theoloIf we view the church as having two (Comte and Engels, for instance) said gian will demonstrate that God calls classes of citizenship hierarchically re- this withering away of faith would be adults to the making of Big Macs and lated to one another, priest and other cler- brought about by advances in science and Chicken McNuggets...

...A glance at the morning headlines, opinion in these United States are blurred communications, and editorial page a five-minute newsbreak on the car radio and lost to common knowledge...

...Such decline of religion over the past few cen- organizational structures . - whether worldly occupations, though they have at turies...

...They epidemic has already peaked and the use number of other settings...

...are in danger of disappearing...

...But far more of the decline has these are found in the particular worktimes been cloaked with religious sanc- been caused, I submit, by the creation of place or in the economy at large - would tions (for instance, through the patron be to practice either voluntary victimsaints of medieval guilds), have no in- hood or hypocritical oppression, dependtrinsic religious significance...

...They fear that the exten- begun to wonder, as I have, whether the that the second generation of commensive coverage of world news now made nightly drumbeat of alarm is good for the tators do not have the sense of awe and possible by the far-flung network corre- nation's nerves...

...Up bring Christian attitudes to his or her hours of a busy week that he or she can to a point this may explain the relative work...

...file clerks and janitors generally manner from the doctrine of the priest- corporate this newly discovered mean- work to live...

...The deterioration of that the conduct of foreign affairs will tember this year I was where it wasn't the sense of public service was inevitable somehow suffer...

...The fear engendered by this kind of Of several minds: Abigail McCarthy reporting is so great, Cohen adds, that Americans seem willing to surrender cherished civil liberties to fight a battle they are already winning...

...If Catholicism cannot in- to work...

...When they return to daily viewing for a mess of pottage long ago when we with Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, or Tom they often have a sense of - "Isn't this turned the marvelous education tool of Brokaw will mean the decline of the where I came in...

...for the lower, it is a doctrine that, until just the other day, had loses its relevance for such persons...

...cussed as religious vocations, let alone by those responsible who are drugFinally, the nature of modern society...

...writers are alarmed...

...American Catholicism has produced vast stand in the way of its realization...

...This gathering are such things as vocations at all, then from the center, towards the periphery of - which was organized under lay, not there must be vocations to secular as well life...

...having heard it all television over to the networks and their "shared experience" which makes for before...

...While was that secular occupations have a reli- als and near-professionals, who experi- middle- and upper-middle-class occupagious dimension and that the religious ence their occupations not simply as tions may be experienced as intrinsically calling of Catholics, therefore, is not ways of making a living but as intrinsi- meaningful and valuable, this is not true simply to clerical and semi-clerical oc- cally meaningful activities...

...Whether it will outrage mounts...

...They don't of most working-class occupations...

...ABIGAIL McCARTHY 10 October 1986: 521...

...peak, its decline began with the retire- The air waves were saturated with alarm...

...Citizen to be kept out of the public and semi- can see, no small order...