8/27/2021

Vocation of Baptism

It's important to remember what lay persons are not called to do. It's also important to avoid clericalism of the laity. A few years ago when I brought a group of scouts through their Pius XII badge, I asked them about the crisis of vocations in the church today. Their response astounded me: they said the real vocations crisis in the Church is in the pews, with lay people not doing their part. That struck me then as exceedingly wise for teenagers. Given what we know about the decline in matrimony, it seems they were right for many reasons. Vatican II did not give lay people access to power; it empowered lay people to give the world access to the Church. Another fan of Welborn's observations since the motu proprio was released summarizes them succinctly:

Why has the “Lay Moment” we’ve been hearing about for so many decades never quite produced the hoped-for transformation?

One interesting answer to that question was recently offered by Amy Welborn (herself riffing on a worthwhile essay by Dr. Larry Chapp.) In short, instead of getting busy being leaven in the world, the laity have spent the years since the Council mostly arguing over who-gets-to-do-what within the Church:

The Second Vatican Council’s vision of a more deeply engaged missionary Church in the modern world has fallen short so far because Catholic laity settled, fairly quickly, on visibility within the life of the church as the choice definition of living out the baptismal promise.

So, in a blink of an eye, your “engaged laity” was all about having an impact on the life of the Church rather than the world – whether that be through liturgy committees, diocesan commissions, getting to wear an alb when you’re lecturing.

I think this is spot-on. Questions about who-gets-to-do-what in the Church are not unimportant. The abuse crisis has underscored the dangers of an insular, self-dealing clerical culture. And laymen and women do invaluable work in parishes and chanceries everywhere. But struggles about who-gets-to-do-what have a way of reducing ecclesiology to a function of power, thereby supplanting one form of clericalism with another. Empowering the laity doesn’t mean aping the clergy.

The mission of the Church is not the responsibility of the diocesan pastoral center or some committee in the parish. It can’t be delegated or outsourced or professionalized. The mission belongs to all of us.


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