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Article contents
I. History and Horizons of Lay Ecclesial Ministry in the US Catholic Church
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 June 2022
Extract
This theological roundtable has stand-alone articles that are complementary and together trace a flow toward ecclesial participation, of movements of bodies and voices, toward full inclusion in the Catholic Church. These works, taken together, can shed light on the dynamism and development of the church when it responds to pressing social and cultural needs—from official development of structures within the ordained magisterium in response to poverty and economic crises (Yount) to students moving together for change and participatory inclusion (Ahern) and from lay adults forming social action communities for racial justice (Rademacher) and, building on the experience of lay LGBTQ+ Catholics, to demand ecclesial participation (Flanagan). It is movements such as these that call and enact development in the church, and knowing what has come before can prompt our own reflection on what needs to come next and the role of each of us in that.
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Footnotes
The author would like to acknowledge the Lonergan Institute at Boston College for research support and access to their databases and archives during the summer of 2021, as this provided the materials for the Lonergan section of this article.
References
2 Brown, Raymond E., Priest and Bishop: Biblical Reflections (New York: Paulist Press, 1970), 6Google Scholar.
3 See especially 33:8-11 (part of the “Mosaic Blessing”).
4 Cody, Aelred, A History of the Old Testament Priesthood (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1969), 114Google Scholar.
5 Brown, Priest and Bishop, 12.
6 Ibid., 7–8.
7 Ibid., 8.
8 Ibid., 12.
9 Ibid., 13.
10 Michael Dauphinais and Matthew Levering, Holy People, Holy Land: A Theological Introduction to the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2005), 143.
11 Kenan B. Osborne, Ministry: Lay Ministry in the Roman Catholic Church: Its History and Theology (New York: Paulist Press, 1993), 115.
12 Ibid., 38.
13 Ibid., 39.
14 Alexandre Faivre, The Emergence of the Laity in the Early Church, trans. D. Smith (New York: Paulist Press, 1990), 1.
15 Brown, Priest and Bishop, 21.
16 Ibid., 22.
17 Ibid., 41.
18 Ibid., 40–41.
19 Ibid., 41–42.
20 Osborne, Ministry, 109.
21 Ibid., 109.
22 Mary Beth Yount, “Ryan, John A.,” in American Religious History: Belief and Society through Time, ed. Gary Scott Smith, vol. 2, Reconstruction to World War II (Santa Barbara, CA, and Denver, CO: ABC-CLIO, 2021); 244.
23 Ibid.
24 Ryan's perspectives were, of course, partially shaped by Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891), “On the Condition of Labor,” which conveys that all people are entitled to what is needed to cultivate virtue and grow closer to God; this is their due and it should be provided to them. Early hints at his thought can be seen in his 1913 and 1914 debates with Morris Hillquit, the leader of the Socialist Party of America. Ryan points out the “three great economic defects of the existing system are: insufficient remuneration of the majority of wage-earners; excessive incomes obtained by a small minority of capitalists; and the narrow distribution of capital ownership.” See Morris Hillquit and John A. Ryan, Socialism: Promise or Menace? (New York: Macmillan, 1914), 39.
25 US Bishops National Catholic War Council, “Program of Social Reconstruction.” February 12, 1919, https://cas.stthomas.edu/_media-library/_documents/center-institute/john-a-ryan/sttthomas-ryan-institute-1919-social-reconstruction.pdf.
26 Smith, American Religious History, 243.
27 In fact, Ryan earned the nickname “Right Reverend New Dealer” because of his impact on President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal of 1933–1939.
28 Pope Francis, Spiritus Domini, January 10, 2021, https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/motu_proprio/documents/papa-francesco-motu-proprio-20210110_spiritus-domini.html.
29 Pope Francis, Antiquum Ministerium, May 10, 2021, https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/motu_proprio/documents/papa-francesco-motu-proprio-20210510_antiquum-ministerium.html.
30 It is interesting to note the careful footnote in the 1997 Instruction on Certain Questions Regarding the Collaboration of the Nonordained Faithful in the Sacred Ministry of Priests: “‘Any ceremony associated with the deputation of the nonordained as collaborators in the ministry of clerics must not have any semblance to the ceremony of sacred ordination nor may such ceremony have a form analogous to that of the conferral of lector or acolyte’” (note 57).
31 Bernard Lonergan, “Theology as Christian Phenomenon,” in Philosophical and Theological Papers, 1965–1980, vol. 6 of The Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, ed. Robert Croken and Frederick Crowe, SJ (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 244–72.
32 Ibid., 244.
33 Ibid., 245.
34 Ibid.
35 Lonergan introduces it thus: “The Christian apprehension of Christ. They have a similarity, insofar as both are cases of development; they differ because in one case what is developing is natural human knowledge, and in the other case there is developing Christian doctrine” (246).
36 Lonergan, “Theology as Christian Phenomenon,” 244.
37 Examples are “Achilles obeyed the goddess, Homer tells us. For internal process is substituted a divine intervention,” and in the older lyric poets we do not see conveyed “ordinary living as it is internally experienced, but only singular, remarkably intense events in internal living.” The Greek tragedians stepped forward, being “able to think about one's own free will as one does about any other object,” while Sophocles and Euripides took “a series of similar, ever more complex steps that set forth men's inner lives as objects was the work of Sophocles and Euripides” (246).
38 Note that vocabulary expresses thought, and he speaks of “limitations of Homeric vocabulary and Homeric thought with regard to man and internal human process” (246).
39 Lonergan, “Theology as Christian Phenomenon,” 247.
40 Ibid., 254.
41 This is not to say that such a process is mainly how these ministries become formally recognized. In fact, these develop in many ways, as pointed out in the meta-view near the beginning of the article. But it is important to see the potential cyclical elements here: growth in knowledge that stems out of praxis can feed further growth in knowledge that then feeds more growth in knowledge out of that praxis that then feeds more growth in knowledge, which enriches praxis, and so on.
42 Yount, Mary Beth, “‘Shared Responsibility’: Practical Involvement of the Laity,” in Full, Conscious and Active: Lay Participation in the Church's Dialogue with the World, ed. Orsuto, Donna L. and White, Robert S., preface by Seán Patrick Cardinal O'Malley (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2020), 157Google Scholar.
43 US Catholic Conference of Bishops (USCCB), introduction to “Called and Gifted: The American Catholic Laity,” June 1980, https://www.usccb.org/about/laity-marriage-family-life-and-youth/laity/upload/called_and_gifted.pdf.
44 Ibid.
45 Ibid.; see the section “The Call to Holiness.”
46 Ibid.; see the section “The Call to Ministry”: “The clergy help to call forth, identify, coordinate, and affirm the diverse gifts bestowed by the Spirit. We applaud this solidarity between laity and clergy as their most effective ministry and witness to the world.”
47 Ibid.; see the section “The Call to Ministry”
48 Ibid.; see the section “Ministry in the Church.”
49 USCCB, “Called and Gifted for the Third Millennium: Reflections of the U.S. Catholic Bishops on the Thirtieth Anniversary of the Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity and the Fifteenth Anniversary of Called and Gifted,” 1995, https://www.usccb.org/committees/laity-marriage-family-life-youth/called-and-gifted-third-millennium-1995.
50 Ibid.; see the section “Participation in the Church's Life and Mission as the Sacrament of Christ in the World.”
51 Ibid.; see the section “Lay Ministry in the Church.”
52 Ibid.; see the section “Challenges for the Future.”
53 USCCB Subcommittee on Lay Ministry, “Lay Ecclesial Ministry: The State of the Questions” (Washington, DC: USCCB, 1999).
54 USCCB, “Co-Workers in the Vineyard of the Lord: A Resource for Guiding the Development of Lay Ecclesial Ministry,” 2005, https://www.usccb.org/upload/co-workers-vineyard-lay-ecclesial-ministry-2005.pdf, 5–6.
55 Ibid., 19.
56 Ibid., 41. This is one of the four necessary areas of formation.
57 Ibid., 5.
58 Ibid., 58.
59 Ibid., 21.