Cathal Barry
Lay people are at the front line of Church life, writes Cathal Barry
The term ‘laity’, according to the Second Vatican Council, is “understood to mean all the faithful except those in Holy Orders and those who belong to a religious state approved by the Church”.
“That is, the faithful, who by Baptism are incorporated into Christ and integrated into the People of God, are made sharers in their particular way in the priestly, prophetic, and kingly office of Christ, and have their own part to play in the mission of the whole Christian people in the Church and in the World,” the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, states.
The Catechism places lay believers in the “front line” of Church life; “for them the Church is the animating principle of human society”, it says.
Therefore, they in particular ought to have an ever-clearer consciousness not only of belonging to the Church, but of being the Church, that is to say, the community of the faithful on earth under the leadership of the Pope and of the bishops in communion with him. “They are the Church,” the Catechism states.
Since, like all the faithful, lay Christians are entrusted by God with the apostolate by virtue of their Baptism and Confirmation, the Church teaches that “they have the right and duty, individually or grouped in associations, to work so that the divine message of salvation may be known and accepted by all men throughout the Earth”.
In a very special way, the Church teaches that parents share in the office of sanctifying “by leading a conjugal life in the Christian spirit and by seeing to the Christian education of their children”.
The Catechism points out that lay people who possess the required qualities can be admitted permanently to the ministries of lector and acolyte. When the necessity of the Church warrants it and when ministers are lacking, lay persons, can also supply for certain of their offices, namely, to exercise the ministry of the word, to preside over liturgical prayers, to confer Baptism, and to distribute Holy Communion.
The laity also fulfil their prophetic mission by evangelisation, according to the Catechism, “that is, the proclamation of Christ by word and the testimony of life”.
Lay people who are capable and trained may also collaborate in catechetical formation, in teaching the sacred sciences, and in use of the communications media.
In the Church, “lay members of the Christian faithful can cooperate in the exercise of this power[of governance] in accord with the norm of law” (Canon 129) and so the Church provides for their presence at particular councils, diocesan synods, pastoral councils; the pastoral care of a parish, collaboration in finance committees and participation in ecclesiastical tribunals, etc.
Lumen Gentium states that the faithful should “distinguish carefully between the rights and the duties which they have as belonging to the Church and those which fall to them as members of the human society”.
“They will strive to unite the two harmoniously, remembering that in every temporal affair they are to be guided by a Christian conscience, since no human activity, even of the temporal order, can be withdrawn from God’s dominion,” the document says.
