The Catholic Register - Readers Speak Out

Written by Guest Contributor,

Newman’s troubles

Cardinal John Henry Newman’s famous article, “On Consulting the Laity in Matters of Doctrine,” to which Bernard Daly refers in his Aug. 31 article, “Church is also where the laity are ,” got Newman into a lot of trouble. In it he argued that during the Arian heresy of the fourth century it was the laity that kept the faith while the bishops wavered. Delated to Rome by an English bishop (not his own), Newman remained under suspicion for 20 years, until Leo XIII made him one of his first cardinals. When informed of his appointment Newman exclaimed, “The cloud is lifted forever.”

R.H. Addington
London, Ont.

Laity on wrong path

In his Aug. 31 article, “Church is also where the laity are ,” Bernard Daly wonders why the “clear teaching about the laity’s special secular vocation is so largely ignored in today’s church?” It hasn’t been ignored just misplaced by a somewhat romantic fascination with clerical duties. This is due to the women’s feminist movement and society’s overall lust for individualism and power. More internally it is due to our bishops approval of this mentality through offering men and women countless opportunities to blur the church taught distinction between the ministerial priesthood and the priesthood of the faithful.

Today the laity, and in particular women, are more active than ever. Only, rather than exercising their talents authentically by “engaging in temporal affairs and directing them according to God’s will” the laity have instead been using their talents largely to gain access to those prestigious positions that “being on the altar” seem to provide. Rather than serve the temporal world they seek to be noticed in the church world.

Today, there are more lay ministers than priests working in Catholic parishes. Roughly 80 per cent of these are women who are trying to balance working in a parish with raising a family. This obfuscation of roles has left the family weakened.

To place the role of the laity in its proper and most profound perspective Vatican II stated that the ministerial or hierarchical priesthood and the priesthood of the faithful, while ordered one to another, “differ essentially and not only in degree.” Lumen Gentium further states that the laity exercise their priesthood, not by distributing the sacraments but “by the reception of the sacraments, prayer and thanksgiving, the witness of a holy life, abnegation and active charity.”

Ruth Fitzpatrick
Scarborough, Ont.

Looking for dialogue

I offer my qualified applause to Bernard Daly for his valiant and gracious attempt to highlight the importance of the laity within the church (“Church is also where the laity are ,” Aug. 31). His comments are a positive and even refreshing step in the right direction. These same comments fall short, however, of articulating a more meaningful role for the laity for a number of reasons.

There seems to be a sacrosanct aura around the church’s undisputed authority as teacher and interpreter of all things religious. In particular Daly notes that the “hierarchy leads in bringing the world the message and grace of Christ.” He notes further that it is the role of the laity to engage in temporal affairs and direct them according to God’s will. Another way of reading this might be that it is the hierarchy’s role to do the serious thinking. It falls to the laity to deliver the message that the hierarchy defines. Within this framework there is little if any room for the laity in regards to the interpretation of the “message and grace of Christ.”

While the notion of Christian dialogue is often postulated, I am at a loss to pinpoint opportunities where it is practised within the Catholic Church. All too often the dialogue is a one-way street. Rather than engaging in dialogue with the laity, we are told and sometimes even instructed what to do and say in temporal affairs. For the record I am not a supporter of the work that Dr. Henry Morgentaler has carried out over the years but I object strenuously when I am instructed to write a letter to my MP regarding his appointment to the Order of Canada. This is hardly the stuff of Christian dialogue.

The transmission mode for the “message and grace of Christ” is — to be blunt — written in metaphorical code and accordingly does not lend itself to constructive or meaningful dialogue. Latin is no longer a living language (and as I understand things it has not been alive for several centuries now) and consequently very few people actually use Latin as a medium of communication or instruction. Even with a Latin translation, however, the language seems to be filled with metaphor that can be read and interpreted in a wild variety of ways. Apparently only those people within the tent, i.e., within the hierarchy, are privy to the key of the code.

While a metaphor is normally intended to help express ideas and concepts, the metaphors that emerge from the hierarchy seem to have exactly the opposite effect.

When will the church hierarchy invite the laity to engage in serious dialogue?

Brad Sinclair
Scarborough, Ont.

Recommend this article...