Special Supplement The Laity
Doyle, Ed Marciniak, Dolores Leakey, Katharine Byrne, Paul Elie, Gregory F. Augustine, Pierce, Ed Se
..:.4-•:¦¦•Philip J. f't.;.:; Dolores ieekey • Katharine Byrne • Paul EBe» Attgwstine Pierce • Ed Sellner • Sally CttfHteeft • BftxKhaxt • Steven England • William H. McGa*ire# Jr. Kevin Doyle...
...They also seem to believe naively that everything "in-house" will somehow take care of itself, and that the sacramental life will automatically be available to their children...
...That was its strength and why it continues to make waves in 1992...
...It is in matters of sexuality, where their touch ought to be exceptionally light, that members of the hierarchy seem most obtuse...
...theologically undereducat-ed, I stand around the edges of the divisions and arguments in the larger church...
...Paul, Minnesota...
...Aware that we are the church, lay people must keep in mind that in the U.S...
...The Christian era had its share of that sort of thing, as we know from its literature...
...Through them we share one another's joys and troubles...
...Love helps, too...
...Was the church the church when bishops were elected by the people...
...As a global society we are undergoing massive change with migrations of whole populations to new places...
...It is, and will be, I presume, the same as it was 2,000 years ago— to transform our homes, our workplaces, our neighborhoods, our communities, our nation, our world so that they look more like the kingdom of God than the kingdom of mammon...
...It calls for a genuine penitential attitude on the part of the hierarchy for "laying burdens" on the faithful, and an honest ongoing dialogue so the "sense of the faithful" will be heard, and the pain and alienation of so many will be attended to...
...Back in 1977, the Chicago Declaration in its protest against the clericalization of the laity cited these examples: the growing involvement of lay people in church ministry...
...Whatever the cause, the radical dilution of a distinctly Catholic identity is undeniable...
...It would probably do them some good...
...What would I like to do for the church...
...WHERE THE GOSPEL LIVES OR DIES Katharine Byrne ¦ will forego the invitation to think in cosmic terms about the church, choosing to focus briefly on the parochial...
...We are the church"— but why...
...religious liberty...
...I am disturbed by those, clerical or lay, who batter tradition as such, who see the church of the past solely as the bailiwick of sexually repressed misogynists who clutched at power to compensate for the impotence they feared...
...It even goes beyond our children marrying people of other races and ethnic/cultural backgrounds, which is happening with increased frequency...
...Then she saw that they were really women, not men, peasant women as in the old country...
...Those who say that lay Roman Catholics should concentrate their energy and attention solely upon their workplace and vocation "in the world" seem to presuppose that Vatican II was only about transforming society and not church life...
...This active-verb approach empowered many, no doubt, but it obscures the fact that the church is much larger than we are, a proper noun extending behind us in time and beyond us into heaven...
...It is up to all of us in the church, from the youngest altar girl to the oldest bishop, to make that tradition live today by our own choices...
...He said that this was a good principle that applies not only to monastics, but to all Buddhists and Christians...
...Not least, she helps me to improve my ability to serve her—specifically, these days, as a confirmation class teacher...
...Declarations ordinarily emanate from theologians and those associated with them...
...The organizations cited in the Declaration were the result of collaboration between Christians, lay and clergy...
...Neither was subordinate to the other...
...OK, who is the head of the Catholic church...
...Sitting next to me in the pew was a dedicated, talented Catholic woman, an active parishioner, who taught in a public school...
...When the hierarchy speaks with such a voice, as it does far more often than its critics are disposed to admit, it does for me what I want it to do...
...22:11 September 1992 Commonweal...
...If we, who consider ourselves believers, could join her in this worship, each Eucharist would see us leave the church with a deeper sense of connection between all the experiences of our lives...
...I also believe that the distinction that is made between the laity who work "in the world" or "in the church" is a false one that only makes antagonists of those who need each other for mutual support...
...So many of us have lost the sense that it is our efforts and activity in the world—not what we do in, for, or with the church—that define us as "good" or "not-so-good" Catholics...
...Of all of us, I would ask balance...
...Paul Elie, a frequent Commonweal contributor, also writes for the New Republic and Lingua Franca...
...In effect, Merton seemed to say that where leadership is lacking, provide it, and where nothing is being said, let one's voice be heard...
...But the more critical challenge, I submit, lies in the area of collaboration across socio-economic lines on behalf of development and justice for all: the old fashioned common good...
...Recalling countless family gatherings past where children were rationed a glass of warm coke and sent off to occupy themselves, I decided to organize a game...
...Remembering that the Spirit is still with us, it is possible to see not impending chaos but promising growth in what has changed in the modern world, even the secularizing of much that was once the undisputed domain of the church...
...Let me give one small example...
...Jane Lewis Engelke works with the Eastern Connecticut chapter of MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving...
...We believe in Christ and his church and his promise for the whole world...
...Second, take a hint from Hans Kiing...
...To wait and do nothing is to be nothing...
...Will parishioners support a multicultural pattern of liturgies and parish services...
...The two teams, comprised of all bright, Catholic nieces and nephews and cousins, seemed pretty evenly matched...
...Its rhetoric was deliberately designed to trouble theologians, bishops, and their colleagues and to challenge the direction of current trends within the church...
...Learning "to get by" without the Eucharist, as some are now recommending, should not be considered an option, since the Eucharist is not just a private devotion, but a practice that lies at the heart of Christian spirituality and of church life...
...Was its pastoral, practical, and experiential perspective a weakness...
...He is the one to whom attention must be paid...
...sexual love in marriage...
...Isolated white Catholic communities must develop an ecumenical relationship, of work and worship, with inner-city and black churches to gain greater knowledge of their lives, pain, and struggles...
...The third component is that of deepened prayer...
...Try to make all our groups, including church, human and sanctifying, self-reflective and self-correcting, seeking and empowering...
...As lay Christians, we all face financial difficulties, conflicts between family and professional responsibilities, and a love for both our Christian faith and our world...
...The church must be constantly reformed, but we fear that the almost obsessive preoccupation with the church's structures and processes has diverted attention from the essential question: reform for what purpose...
...5. Use that freedom to find— where necessary, create—our important place in the church...
...I subscribe to and try to read the requisite Catholic publications...
...Their world is "a gift and task from God...
...We approached our task primarily as Catholic Christians, only secondarily as priests or laity...
...GETTING A TAKE ON JESUS Steven Englund ver the next ten years, I think a very great challenge for the laity—for the magisterium, too, no doubt—will be coming to grips with the discoveries, conclusions, and implications of the last generation of biblical scholarship and biblical theology...
...To trust in the Holy Spirit to provide is one thing...
...WHO LIVES IN THE VATICAN...
...They were not composing a theological treatise for subsequent exegesis, however friendly, by theologians or philosophers...
...No response...
...With this in mind, let our bishops reinstitute, in a serious way, the discipline of Friday abstinence from meat...
...The criteria of selection were such that honors went solely to persons formally affiliated with the church...
...In the everyday encounters that consume most of our time, we might then be able to keep our new vision sharp, realizing the opportunities for response in totally unexpected places...
...The real revolution in the American church would not be the laity taking over the church, but the laity taking over the world...
...Recently, at Sunday liturgy in an inner-city church in Chicago, the pastor passed out certificates of ministry to honor various members of the congregation, including the teachers in his parish school...
...Another pursues constitutional measures grounded in a natural law tradition, which, while it claims to address all people of good will, can make ultimate sense only to those who share its deeper grounding in Catholic tradition— who often seem scarce even within the church itself...
...the need to "give an account of ourselves...
...Those Roman Catholics who say that we don't really need an institution any more, and that we should "just let it die" ignore what history teaches about the demise of religions and churches that have no structures to ensure continuity...
...Kevin Doyle * Jane lewis Engelke • James It Kelly • Paul E Dinter « Mary O'Neil Good • Kara* Sue Franklin McMahon Commonweal 11 September 1992:11 H BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION In December 1977, a group of lay people, clergy, and religious issued A Chicago Declaration of Christian Concern...
...its value as a well-spring of skills, insights, and spiritual ardor...
...D WHY WE WROTE IT Ed Marciniak he Chicago Declaration of Christian Concern had its origins in a "committee on the laity" established in the mid-seventies by the priests' senate of the Archdiocese of Chicago...
...Those who would lead must follow, mindful that we can hope to rouse the world only because he rouses us...
...If its financial structure is deemed not "viable" in the next ten years, or in the next ten months, by those in charge of such decisions, I know that this church could survive in its essential purpose even if its members met in a storefront...
...Ten years from now, when the Chicago Declaration celebrates its silver jubilee, the need for an intelligent response will be even greater...
...they feel they must address, and sometimes contend with, church teachings that directly affect the life of the layperson—issues like war and peace, economics, the role of women and men in family and in society, birth control, abortion, the relation between morality and civil society...
...Rank-and-file Christians in the last decades of the twentieth century need not beg a theologian or a bishop to furnish them with their work ethic...
...It is these substitutes which are more like the earlier "Catholic Action" as they now enlist the laity in the ministry of bishops and religious superiors...
...Unfortunately however, such rhetoric has introduced one more adjectival division among Catholics, and has sanctioned a curious anti-clericalism within the church in the name of the sensus fidelium...
...Keep reminding those who work for the church that their primary job is to help us do our primary job (and maybe recognize us once in a while when we do...
...But the hierarchy sometimes gets it absolutely right...
...Most of them are 12.11 September 1992 Commonweal H alive today, and continue to be active leaders in industry, the arts, unions, government, communications, medicine, and elsewhere...
...The danger was thought to be the rise of lay ministry, a new phenomenon in Catholic life...
...The National Center for the Laity is an excellent example of lay Christians standing, as Merton recommends, on their own feet...
...Is it any wonder that the departure of these organizations was mourned...
...Kevin Doyle, a lawyer, works at the Alabama Capital Representation Resource Center in Birmingham, Alabama...
...Catherine, St...
...Will parents remove their children from schools where ESL (English as a Second Language) is prominent...
...For, when asked what I consider the most pressing challenge for Catholic laity (as the editor of Commonweal has done) one stands out...
...Formation enables us to apply 14...
...When re-sisters say, "Festina lente, make haste slowly," remember the changes that have been needed for tens or scores or hundreds of years, and have not been made...
...What has helped clear my vision, stopping me short of any easy answers and moving me to keep on seeking, is the true story by Tillie Olsen—author of Tell Me a Riddle— about her own dying mother...
...The Declaration lamented the decline of organizations and groups that, before Vatican II, had been effective supports for the laity in their work in the world and decried the "loss of a generation of lay leaders...
...There are other questions...
...Yet, in truth, there will be no quick or dramatic solutions...
...Personally, I would welcome more research into precisely this question...
...They are concerned about the direction of the now post-post-conciliar church...
...The church, particularly (but of course not only) in its parochial form, does more for me than I can repay or deserve...
...Is the burden of communications on the sender...
...Who is the top guy in our religion...
...Will taxpayers refuse new initiatives...
...Call to Action's reprints of texts from the mass media arrive in the mailbox along with Entertainment Weekly and the latest missive from the folks at J. Crew...
...How we read the New Testament and indeed how we "see" Jesus—our entire Christology—is going to have to change radically, and I fear the process will prove jolting for many of us (it certainly has for me...
...Across the ecclesial spectrum, such as it is, those who would reform the church and the world have sought to do so in ways that often seem only incidentally Catholic...
...We have too much in common to be portrayed—or to see ourselves—as rivals...
...Are there "two laities," those who work "in the world" and those who work "in the church...
...It's possible to celebrate the wonderful modern world and to be countercultural as Christ was, as John Paul II is in his reflections on individualism, consumerism, materialism, on poverty and plenty, on fidelity and faithlessness, solidarity and tyranny...
...She smelled a marvelous smell, heard a neighing sound, and saw three wise men in gold, blue, and 18:11 September 1992 Commonweal crimson robes, embroidered as in her old village...
...What we lay people do not need from the church is to be guilted into solving the clergy shortage by volunteering (or being paid) to take the place of the priests we don't have...
...7. Ask if Jesus was the quintessential rule-maker...or lover and rule-simplifier...
...Ed Sellner teaches in the religious studies department at the College of St...
...What we have associated with the laity's vocation to be a leaven in the world of family commitment, the workplace, political and civic responsibilities, the works of charity and justice, coalesces around today's multicultural revolution...
...Ed Marciniak is president of The Institute of Urban Life in Chicago...
...THE BOY IN A VELVETEEN SUIT Paul Elie o one who was a recalcitrant altar boy in a velveteen leisure suit in 1977, the Chicago Declaration's concern that "so little energy is devoted to encouraging and arousing lay responsibility for the world'' unavoidably brings to mind the Call to Action and its rallying cry "We Are the Church...
...Steven Englund is a free-lance writer who specializes in French history and culture...
...We have nothing to lose but our parochial-school plaids...
...We respected each other as equals...
...For fifteen years now I have been probing the relationship between lay ecclesial ministry (volunteer and professional) and the "worldly vocation" of the laity...
...This mother points to the deepest levels of spiritual community shared by all human beings and the long, painful conflicts that must be resolved among them...
...Fifteen years after the Declaration and three decades after Vatican II, this approach has lost a large measure of its truth and its power...
...The strengths and shortcomings of the Declaration cannot be separated from its signers or understood apart from their experiences and concerns which were not, in the first place, theological...
...One side may champion democratic structures and cultural trends, even when democratic politics and culture are seen as debased...
...The Center has pursued these and related issues through its newsletter Initiatives, several booklets linking faith and work, and by organizing Business Executives for Social Justice...
...At its best lay ministry opens one to Scripture, to doctrine (including social doctrine), and to the depths of prayer...
...Recognize the inherent, flawed goodness of most human beings...
...Still no luck...
...Embrace inevitable change, create needed change, help others relax in the face of change...
...A Jewish immigrant, Olsen's mother had passionately rejected official religion because in her native Russia it had seemed part of her people's oppression...
...Not since the break-up of the Roman Empire have so many people been on the move...
...With a worldwide multicultural revolution underway there is a critical need for an informed and formed laity who can bring the mind and heart of Christ to concrete situations...
...Lay ministry appears to offer men and women in parishes and on campuses ready access to these formative ways...
...Those situations are softened by a shared economic and educational ethos: university degrees and middle-class values...
...In response to this problem, I have imagined emergency airlifts to suburban parishes, showering down copies of The Everlasting Man, Mr...
...Katharine Byrne, a frequent Commonweal contributor, lives in Chicago...
...After all, God encounters men and women individually to seek a personal response...
...Among this jumble of exhortations, the cry and the statement alike seem to be made as against the clergy: we, not the clergy alone, are the church...
...Finally, I gave the answer...
...As an older mother and longtime college teacher, I want to stress the opportunity the moment offers our conflicted church: to help its people grow into free, loving human beings who can respond to this crisis...
...Each morning I hear the petitions of those of us who can speak English...
...The challenge goes beyond our efforts to create multicultural church agendas, which we regularly do at the NCCB...
...We in North America are faced with the distinct possibility that within a decade many of us will lose our most important spiritual legacy, the Eucharist, primarily because of an unwillingness to accept a married clergy, a phenomenon which has been with Christianity since its earliest days and which every Christian church except ours has welcomed for centuries...
...Dolores Leckey is executive director of the Secretariat for Laity and Family Life...
...What about the line the Declaration drew around the vocation of the laity in the world...
...Unexpectedly, such a church sounds very like the image of Mother Church described by the church Fathers, one that emphasizes the responsibility of the varied faithful for each other, their effective and genuine participation, and their authentic and living collaboration in the duties of the community in this world...
...Their responses follow...
...Marion Burkhart lives in Manhattan...
...But what we call the age of faith had much else as well, particularly the habit of glorifying God by seeing his creation as blessed, as crowned by those who reflected his image and likeness in their very fecundity, both physical and spiritual...
...We are well-represented in government, business, education, social service, the arts, labor, law, medicine, the military, and the media...
...That experience was exhilarating, unforgettable, and undeniably Christian...
...We need to develop new vision if we are to make the old tradition alive in our minds and actions...
...Philip J. Murnion (page 23) analyzes the factors that have further blurred a distinction the Declaration was keen to maintain...
...propose the following for our reflection: 1. To be church, know the church as it has been, is, can be...
...But, in addition to commands and prohibitions, our tradition offers unique and rich understandings and sensibilities...
...Do we owe this answer to declining Catholic school enrollments or to decades of catechetical over-compensation for centuries of anti-ecumenism or simply to the cultural assimilation that accompanies economic ascent...
...And we must now be stewards in ways that are more distinctively Catholic than those pursued in the recent past...
...Her experience, not an exception, is one more reason why the anguished concern voiced fifteen years ago in the Chicago Declaration has not abated...
...Or from political revolutionaries...
...They still care for homes and families, manage budgets, attend PTA meetings, and try to meet civic and social responsibilities...
...that having answers to those few questions that are overarching and ultimate is di20: 11 September 1992 Commonweal H vine, and to be thirsted for...
...Still, in his recent book, Christianity and the World Religions, he wisely observed how Islam had retained unity through an emphasis on orthopraxy rather than just orthodoxy...
...GOD'S MATERNAL PRESENCE Sally Cunneen ' e are emerging from a long historical period in which the authorities and forms of religion defined the growth of the people who belonged to it and tried to live by its ideals...
...Since the signers were women and men of influence in the marketplace, they were, in the main, leaders not follow ers...
...Figure out what in today's church is a cultural vestige...
...His is the voice that needs to be heard...
...In these last days of the twentieth century, Roman Catholics stand at a crossroads in which denial of problems only adds to the malaise and only increases the likelihood of further institutional deterioration...
...In short, over the next decade, there will be more reason than ever to go on striving to hope, believe, and trust that the Holy Spirit is present in the church...
...But the scope of the Declaration was clearly delimited...
...More important, we must keep in mind that although we are the church, the church is not ours— not the laity's, not the clergy's, not the hierarchy's, but Christ's...
...The Chicago Declaration was a cri de coeur, expressing our Christian concern...
...The pastoral letter of the American bishops on the economy, a model of its kind, cast light upon the present by enunciating principles mined from the deposit of faith and the wisdom of the past, but left to economists and politicians their area of Christian activity, the incarnating of such principles in the conditions of today...
...As the country priest insisted at the end of Bernanos's novel, "All is grace...
...It's clear to anyone willing to look that there are plenty of vocations to the priesthood if the church will just ordain women and cation shortage we should be worried about is that of good workers in the vineyard—not the churchyard...
...It is well to bear in mind that these laity are not withdrawn from the world...
...Worst of all, such efforts have sometimes allowed lay Catholics to smugly believe they are doing the church a favor by remaining faithful...
...His are the rights that must be recognized...
...its demographic authority...
...As a pastoral theologian, teacher, and writer, I have advocated for years that Roman Catholic laity—no matter where they live and work—be recognized for their competence and be treated as full partners in the life of Commonweal 11 September 1992:17 H the church...
...Our priests are intelligent, loving, inspired...
...But the need for an intelligent, gospel-inspired response to the multicultural challenges of our time demands varied opportunities for formation...
...Exposure to that notion of justice can be life-changing...
...Be aware, make others aware, that the scriptural injunction against laying on heavy burdens was meant seriously...
...Such an undertaking will, of course, occasion some reexamination on the part of parents themselves...
...The Declaration expressed our disappointment that, despite Vatican II, many pastors, bishops, heads of religious orders, other ministers and theologians had become so preoccupied with lay ministry that they were neglecting the responsibility of ordinary Christians for the salvation of the world...
...For a generation the laity has defined itself as against the clergy—and chiefly as against the hierarchy—as a force in American Catholicism, asserting the laity's inalienable rights...
...he knows the cost of food and the number of persons who ring the doorbell asking for some...
...But it is sometimes hard to prove that the country is any better for our presence...
...Ideas like natural law, tradition as a complement to Scripture, and even the Real Presence have no guaranteed currency among many American Catholics now coming of age...
...6. Be less churchy...
...And not all of its authors needed Freud to tell them that the two are intertwined...
...The Declaration concluded by saying: "We are deeply concerned that so little energy is devoted to encouraging and arousing lay responsibility for the world...
...In her dream, shortly before she died, Olsen's mother joined them in this worship...
...We want to talk about wisdom...
...Gregory F. Augustine Pierce is the copublisher of ACT A Publications in Chicago and the past president of the National Center for the Laity...
...Today we are in a crisis—not just of belief but of human and earthly survival...
...The first is that of Scripture study wherein one discovers that biblical justice has a different texture, a different emphasis than English (and American) common law...
...to overlook where and whom the Spirit is providing, quite another...
...11 September 1992 Commonweal Christian principles, theology, and spirituality to the concrete events of daily life...
...While I originally saw The Chicago Declaration of Christian Concern as a healthy corrective to too much concentration on institutional ecclesial problems and not enough on lay leadership in the social, political, and cultural life of our nation, I now find myself increasingly concerned about the survival of the institutional church and our sacramental life...
...Do edicts communicate...
...What would I like the church to do for me...
...Check against Christ's law of love what triggers our responses to people of other races, classes, cultures, sexes, styles...
...It in no way diminishes the magisterium that so many lay people cannot accept Humanae vitae's stand on birth control, for the people of God are part of the magisterium, and special insight into the meaning of the marital act is surely part of the charism of the baptized who have received as well the sacrament of matrimony...
...To pray is to come near to God, and to come near to God is to change, says Evelyn Underhill...
...How these questions are answered—not only in words but in actions—depends to a large degree on the formation of lay Christians...
...so you, the clergy, must devote more energy to rousing us...
...As it went through various drafts, the question was whether to issue the Declaration as a committee of the priests' senate or apart from it as a free-standing, ad hoc group of concerned Christians, priests, religious, and laity...
...we must do the works of life even at the cost of sacrifice...
...The smart little girl whose turn it was looked puzzled...
...This is my church, this is where the gospel lives or dies...
...They speak the word of God and live it, making it known to us clearly, sharing the small joys and many sorrows of this community of believers...
...McGARVEY'S THIRTEEN RULES___________ William H. McGarvey, Jr...
...The uniqueness of the Chicago Declaration was that the great majority of the signers were lay Catholics, women and men highly respected in their occupations and professions...
...One hopes this was necessary and guided by the Spirit (although, given the rhetoric of lay leaders, the touch-and-go state of vocations to the priesthood is no surprise: today's American Catholics are raised from baptism not as Catholics but as lay Catholics...
...Gregory F. Augustine Pierce he greatest challenge to American Catholic lay people in 1992...
...In this new and open posture the church would be less concerned with power and truly become servant and sacrament to the world...
...We who are, or would be church, must deepen our identity in response to the reality and mystery of this world...
...They all take seriously the Christian imperative to be reconcilers and bearers of justice, truth, and peace...
...I lobbed what I thought was a slow pitch: "Who lives in the Vatican...
...Kick me and my fellow Catholics in the butt and tell us to get out there and do what we're supposed to be doing (and maybe recognize us once in a while when we do...
...But are we, society, better off...
...increasingly, however, my concerns reach no farther than my own populous community of diversity and troubles...
...Be aware of what the church has and hasn't taught on, say, slavery...
...Let's face it, we American Catholics haven't done such a great job of it lately—at least judging by the results...
...When she replied, "I'm not a believer," he assured her, "We don't want to talk about that...
...With one exception, none of the laity was on any church payroll...
...This recognition must be more than mere words...
...The pastor does the shopping for the rectory...
...Our greatest challenge today and in the next ten years is to help each other make our nation and our church more responsive to the vital needs of our planet as well as to the deep concerns of those who long for economic stability, educational opportunities, full equality, ecumenical progress, and genuine spiritual growth...
...Lay people, while standing on their own two feet, should stand together in asserting that the availability of the Eucharist continue...
...Mediate friction...
...still, they wanted to study and ponder the new movement...
...The fifteenth anniversary of this "gracious but uncompromising polemic" against "the steady depreciation [since Vatican II] of the ordinary social roles through which the laity serve and act upon the world" provides the occasion for Commonweal's special issue on the laity...
...4. See that living in the American context affects the church's being— mostly for the better, and not only in America...
...The Declaration's, caution that the growing emphasis on lay ministry was a distraction from the laity's transformative role in the affairs of society was kept in view as informal research proceeded...
...Ten years from now...
...For some of us, now and in the years to come, it will necessitate an honesty to admit that we have lived the life of abundance, and a conversion to divest ourselves of this power, to reduce the terrible burden we have placed on the poor and future generations...
...The quiz categories would include: sports, geography, history-politics, science, and religion...
...Kevin Doyle ightfall had moved the party indoors...
...With sympathy but also uncertainty, her older sister volunteered, "You know, like the stuff in your orange juice, the pulp...
...In Europe, Islam is now a powerful presence and Catholic laity must establish new relationships with Muslims sharing schools, social services, public facilities, and neighborhoods...
...Just before her death, however, 01 sen's mother dreamed that someone was knocking on her bedroom door...
...We agreed unanimously that we would go our own way as Christians, on our own authority and responsibility...
...As Christians, they were not reluctant to criticize the conventional wisdom then dominating pastoral ministry...
...She lives in Ledyard, Connecticut...
...I herded the kids upstairs and convened a trivia contest...
...Lay movements like the Focolare, the Cursillo, the Christian Family Movement are all rooted in Scripture, church teaching, and the life of prayer...
...Come in," said the dying woman...
...We must provide for all children: safe homes, spiritual and physical nourishment, and education...
...The Declaration was one of my first pieces of official mail, a kind of alarum that lay people were in danger of losing their way...
...Similarly, why shouldn't the clergy involve itself in matters of worldly concern, so long as its members take note of the charism of the laity, and recognize that this charism evolves with time—that, for example, lay functions will change when the laity becomes far better educated than was the case when some habits of the church were formed...
...each day there are fewer clergy to steward the church for us and serve as our straw men...
...What the Declaration called "the almost obsessive preoccupation with the church's structures and processes" remains so for several groups...
...He is married, the father of five children, and the grandfather of two...
...ON YOUR FEET Ed Sellner In his last public address, Thomas Merton said something that has implications for those concerned about the vocation of the laity "in the world" as well as the vitality of their churches...
...I struggle in deep frustration (but even deeper satisfaction) to try to find fresh and cogent ways of making Jesus' "offer of meaning" understandable and desirable to a group of thirty or so six-teen-to-eighteen year olds...
...The cemeteries of this world are appropriate resting places for countless Christians who spent their lives Commonweal 11 September 1992:13 waiting for cues that never came and summonses that were never delivered, who bided their time looking for others to take the initiative and bear the burden of responsibility...
...This formation has three components, in my view...
...As for the institutional church, there are at least two ways it can better shore-up Catholic identity among the young...
...the clericalization and radicalization of social justice efforts, that is, the tendency of priests and women religious to set the agenda for the laity's social justice activities and to define those activities as lying outside the ordinary life of lay men and women as parents, citizens, and workers...
...Monsignor Daniel Cantwell, its chair, was uncomfortable with the all-clergy membership and decided to broaden the committee to include a majority of lay people...
...As a result they become more sensitized to society's ills and more attentive to human need...
...8. We can be at, or at least regularly visit, the margins where Christ so often lingered...
...It makes it easy for me to do for the church the most significant thing I can do: bear witness to the truth that is in it, and in me...
...Each week now the disparity between income and budgeted bare needs is about $2,500...
...It would be one of the great ironies of history if the era of Vatican II which opened the windows of the church to the world were to close with a church turned in upon itself...
...Lastly, I believe we must develop a more global view and see our interdependence with all people, not just ecologically but as children of the one God...
...depending on each group's viewpoint, they want to save or to stem the spirit of reform initiated by Vatican II...
...Perhaps...
...One of the signers of The Chicago Declaration, he was also a founder of the National Center for the Laity and served as president...
...In observance of this fifteenth anniversary and the rich, diverse, and contentious debate that the Declaration initiated, Commonweal has asked a number of men and women to reflect on the role and responsibility of the laity in 1992 and over the next ten years...
...That which is of primary importance for me from the institutional church is respect for the presence and work of the Spirit in the lives of the laity...
...3. Know that not having all the answers to all the questions all of the time is eminently human and endearingly credible...
...Having justly claimed the laity's rights, those who now speak from and for the laity must more vigorously claim our responsibilities— not as lay people, but as Catholic Christians...
...The Association for the Rights of Catholics, Call to Action, the National Association of Lay Ministry, Catholics United for the Faith might argue that they have good reason for their preoccupations...
...Our children might then hear themselves referred to as different, as "mackerel snappers" even...
...This may be the most crucial for several reasons...
...Insofar as they are "structural," our concerns are about the leaking roof and the heating bill...
...As such it deserves encouragement and support...
...witness the opening of The Canterbury Tales...
...Create community...
...We must shuffle off old scales, burn off the fog of assumptions and stereotypes that limit our receptivity to the world through which the Spirit tries to reach us...
...All took their commitment as Christians seriously—seven days a week...
...My hope for the church is that we shall grow into such a community...
...His own correspondence with the Vatican painted the Swiss theologian as something of a prima donna not terribly concerned with harmony...
...They were worn out, but they had come in, they said, to worship a universal human infant who was going to be crucified into divisions of sex, race, and class...
...Why is Mother Teresa—plain-spoken, orthodox, passionately pro-life—an icon of Christ all over the global village...
...Should it then be surprising that the U. S. "peace and justice commissions" that followed Vatican II and lodged in pastoral centers, chancery offices, or religious orders were unsatisfying substitutes...
...My sense of the church is that of living human beings in touch with tradition, spurred on by such a vision...
...Several of the Declaration's signers joined in the establishment of the National Center for the Laity, which has continued working to keep attention focused on lay responsibility for the world, for politics, for the economy, for neighborhoods, for families, for the workplace...
...We adults were still enjoying ourselves but the kids were getting bored...
...Commonweal' % editors ask about "obsessive preoccupation with the church's structures...
...Be comfortable with newness in general, with the new tools, insights, technologies of our time...
...My church is a large, ornate, and grandiose edifice, conceived in the last days of 11 September 1992:15 H ecclesial architectural excess and not yet paid for...
...These men and women need only recognize the special charism ordination confers—a charism not limited to the forgiveness of sin and the consecration of bread and wine...
...As huge numbers of "different others" move into our neighborhoods, fill our schools, and flood the lower end of the job market, there often is a resistance to shifting resources to meet the needs of the newly arrived...
...HOW WE SAW IT Dolores Leckey he Chicago Declaration and I arrived at the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) at almost the same moment: the autumn of 1977.1 came as the director of the newly established Secretariat for the Laity...
...It was meant to be a gracious but uncompromising polemic on behalf of a cause...
...As we seek to find common ground with other believers who increasingly may not be Christian, our credibility as professing Christians is at stake...
...Strangely, this time of serious financial need coincides with a time of faith and hope and generous giving on the part of our small band of hard-pressed leaders...
...Strong in the awareness of our own personhood, we would be realistically dedicated to the elimination of the multiple crucifixions we see all around us...
...In ever increasing numbers, lay people are working in parishes and church institutions as well as in official church bodies...
...Thus, the blurring of the lines between cleric and lay is 11 September 1992:19 H fine with me...
...What has been lost...
...In general, as I come to know and love my local faith community more deeply, I marvel at, when I do not worry about, the virtually epistemic gulf between the current view of the church promulgated from Rome and the vision that is alive and comparatively well in my upstate Wisconsin parish...
...Given an awareness of that underlying premise, it's easier to arrive at a right relationship not only between tradition and change but also between the clergy and the laity...
...Chosen by the emperor...
...I am distressed in equal measure by the defensiveness of much of the hierarchy and many of the laity...
...His is the sense to which we must be faithful...
...BLURRING THE LINES IS FINE WITH ME Marian Burkhart od keeps his promises: The Holy Spirit was not on vacation from just before Trent until the eve of Vatican II, nor has he been out to lunch ever since...
...Blue, Damien the Leper and Kristin Lavransdatter...
...Only after arriving at some kind of take on Jesus is it possible to expound the church's message, traditions, and demands in ways that prove at all persuasive to (some) teen-agers, the majority of whom are interested, even passionate, about things spiritual but astonishingly ignorant and sometimes apathetic, disaffected, or outright suspicious where the Roman Catholic church is concerned...
...Among lay leaders there is talk of "being church" and "doing church...
...9. Love and befriend ordained clergy...
...How else will we come to understand that the question for Christians is not am / better off than last year...
...Clearly one's own capacity for change and for the reception of others is enlarged, as we stand humbly before God...
...We must work in this time to truly heal the wounds of centuries of racial and gender oppression, by committing ourselves to this effort in prayer, deed, and finanCommonweal cial resources...
...Hopefully the presence of lay ministry in our church with all its attendant preparation will help lay Catholics to look to the mind and heart of Christ as they strive to be in dialogue with very different others...
...We've come to talk to you," the first one said...
...Crew wearers unite...
...Perhaps like Benedict in the fifth century—whose vision and mission grew out of a similar cultural challenge—the laity may find ways and means to form new kinds of community, ones that offer hope to strangers and sojourners alike...
...Late in the game, the team trailing slightly braved the religion category...
...He told an audience in Thailand a few hours before he died that "from now on everyone stands on his [or her] own feet...
...2. Become more comfortable with the fact and idea of change and the pace of change...
...We can usefully reflect on his powerlessness and his power...
...This calls for humility and the admission that the free-flowing and life-giving grace of the Spirit that enriches the community does not have its source in the hierarchy but in God...
...Several recent projects suggest a relationship linking lay ministry with formation for Christian life in the world {see Dean Hoge's work on lay leadership, the Notre Dame Study of Parish Life, and the recent study by Philip Murnion of New Parish Ministers...
...She received no recognition or acknowledgment of her calling as a Christian...
...William H. McGarvey, Jr., is a Philadelphia businessperson...
...We must grow in respect for all life, and be witnesses of this by our lives and our deeds...
...The second component is that of Catholic social doctrine that can help situate the new questions of our time in the great stream of teaching from Rerum novarum to Centisimus annus...
...In the United States our new neighbors are increasingly Hispanic, Asian, and Caribbean...
...usury...
...Biblical justice focuses on the poor and calls for priority on their behalf...
...We cannot just say we are for life...
...The consultative process in the United States that preceded the 1987 Synod on the Laity heightened a portrait of the laity that had been sketched through anecdotal evidence over the years: one of lay people receiving a Christian formation through the medium of ministry...
...Why shouldn't a more highly sophisticated laity act in the worship and governance of the church in roles once reserved for the clergy...
...As men and women engage in liturgical ministries, social action work, and catechetical service, they often become more thoroughly grounded in Scripture, sacramental life, church history, and service to the poor...
...OFF YOUR BUTTS...
...Who will care about the deepening fissures in our society...
...and between those who have homes and those who do not...
...Nuts...
...Yes, our Holy Father tells us contraception is wrong...
...So also did the preceding era, and so does ours...
...At the same time, however, I think it is irresponsible for any of us to ignore recent studies that reveal the "graying" of our clergy, the declining numbers of those in religious communities, the loss of large numbers of Hispanic-American Catholics, the frustration and anger of many Catholic women and men that their opinions and experiences do not seem to matter when it comes to ecclesial decisions that affect us all...
...If contemporary Catholics seem 16.11 September 1992 Commonweal expert in doing things in the Catholic name, we nevertheless must not forget to be Catholic—must not allow policy to displace piety, must not lose our own quirky callings in a generalized zeal to call the church and the world to holiness...
...But other Christians with a sense of personal responsibility recite their act of contrition, pick up the common burden, and then stride into the darkness...
...First, emphasize not only the claim of special teaching authority or a collection of controversial moral precepts that sets our church apart...
...There is another reason, too...
...Generally speaking, the bishops on the laity committee looked upon the new lay roles as the work of the Spirit...
...So we must also be stewards of the church—of God's word in Christ, of the church's long faith, of the Spirit's guidance...
...Sally Cunneen, professor of English at Rockland Community College, is the author of Mother Church: What the Experience of Women Is Teaching Her (Paulist...
...The idea of a Declaration then took root...
...Our best hope is to encourage effective leadership wherever it is found...
...the growth of the permanent diaconate...
...A five-dollar prize would make for competitive concentration, if not quiet or courtesy...
...She reminds us too of God's maternal presence among the poorest of the poor...
...True, we have achieved great power and responsibility in virtually every major sector of society...
...cannot be held captive and "blows where it wills" (John 3:8), residing equally in both women and men...
...Example: Note the insights about control, addiction, denial, openness that fuel the worldwide, twelve-step programs...
...Know that father, sister, bishop, pope are no more the church, and no less, than the laity are...
...We all need to grow in order to become what we are not yet...
...It is a repository of insight into human nature's complexity, the importance of community and contemplation, and personal(ist) dignity...
...This is our challenge as church, to use all our human talents and knowledge to integrate our faith into committed lives wherever we live...
...Obviously it is not the only door to formation...
...Show that you understand the uniqueness of their ministry and their sacramental duties, while showing also—if you can—that you value them as persons...
...Parents, already having to fend off the claims made on our young by a secular consumer culture, must find the time to explain to our children those things they share with other people of faith and those things they do not...
...We the people of God must adopt an "option for the poor" that will allow our government to tax those of us with plenty, so the less fortunate will have an opportunity for life...
...READ MY LIPS: TAX ME_________ Jane Lewis Engelke ¦ view the challenge of being a Catholic in 1992 much the same as I view the challenge that faces America...
...And our most important death has to do with dying to our independence, as individuals, and so coming to life as persons who recognize our interdependence...
...He lives in Waupaca, Wisconsin...
...The priests and religious who cosigned the Chicago Declaration were giving public witness to their support of the concerns expressed by lay Christians...
...These Christians blamed stodgy pastors, cautious prelates, or academic theologians...
...It is an ungodly mistake for rank-and-file Christians to pass the buck and rely solely on a theologian or bishop to supply them with a work ethic...
...All these were invited to the altar to receive recognition...
...It has made us more comfortable with the freedom of God's people...
...They were not clerical "yes" men or women...
...The problem is exactly what the signers of The Chicago Declaration identified fifteen years ago...
...Reflect that their weekly, confession-like practice of sharing flourishes while our practice of sacramental reconciliation is languishing...
...Not only between people of different races and religions, but between those who have jobs and those who do not...
...He implied that each person must assume greater responsibility for the values, beliefs, and spirituality that he or she cherishes, not relying passively upon appointed leaders nor outdated eccle-sial structures to ensure their survival...
...The theology of lay Christians enunciated at Vatican II had already been the operative pastoral theology—among the signers—in the decades before the council...
Vol. 119 • September 1992 • No. 15
