The coming of age of the layman in the present-day Church can be looked at, as a result of the general upheaval in modern society, from two inter-related points of view. In the first place, present circumstances have reminded us that the Church, even where she seems most settled and at peace, remains essentially ‘militant’: her children, while ‘in’ the world, are never ‘of’ the world. Constant conflict within and without is inescapable for all the baptized. Consequently the Church, impelled by the demands of her missionary task, is ever anxiously urging the layman to become the apostle and the Gospel-bearer that is at once his vocation and his birthright; while the layman himself, now finding himself up against unfavourable surroundings, whether antagonistic or indifferent, is more fully alive to the claims made upon him. For the most part he has not shrunk from this challenge, but rather shown his resolve to turn to greater account the immense riches of the Faith and the Church found in the Sacraments, the liturgy, the Bible, the great spiritual traditions and theology.

In the second place, there can be detected a tendency which would claim for the layman a more specific status in the mission of Christendom. According to this, the layman should assume as his peculiar right and duty those tasks of the temporal order which do not of their very nature belong to the spiritual society which is the Church; he should even willingly take over, within the Church itself, certain functions and responsibilities of which the clergy, to their own advantage, could be freed.