'A subservient laity'.

Obviously religion is part of life and should have an impact on our view of society and politics; and when the Catholic layman supports politicians whose views are at variance with his own, alarm bells should be ringing and pointing out to serious deficiencies--not only in the parish experience, but in the failure of imagination and vision from the rectory to the bishop's office.

Years of neglect or tokenism have left our parishes filled with a laity so poorly educated in their faith that substantial numbers of them are easily swayed by a dominant pagan society leaving them remote and vulnerable. Lay people lack emotional attachment to their faith and are ready to jump on any new bandwagon of ideas rolling by.

We have only to look at our spending priorities: money goes off in every direction and little is spent on year-round education in the parish, even though one of the fundamental mandates of the Church is to teach.

What the average Catholic gets for education is a few minutes of a weekly sermon which rarely reflects real scholarship or substance and whose themes make so little impression that they are routinely forgotten as soon as the congregation exits the church door.

Nor is there any real dialogue or open lines of communication with the pastor, as the only contact is a weekly handshake at the exit door or an occasional bulletin from the pastor or bishop.

Nor is a diocesan paper controlled by the bishop much help as its blandness and inward focus on church news excites little interest.

What we need is an initiative by the laity in creating a lively and interesting Catholic community paper that not only engages the reader in all aspects of Catholic life, but is given full scope to challenge the dominant secular culture and provide an alternative vision inspired by one's Catholic faith.

I have had the experience of making a string of proposals in writing in the interest of upgrading educational programs in a parish, all of which were simply ignored without even the courtesy of an acknowledgment, as if the pastor was affronted by some impertinent layman telling him how to do his job, or fearful that his authority would be undermined by the initiatives of an enthusiastic laity.

As a result, we have no institutions in the parish designed on a year-round basis to engage the congregation on real matters of consequence that affect our faith. Instead we have all the appearance of a stagnating church that has lost its nerve, with its focus directed inwardly, its parishes intellectual wastelands, and pastors who have nothing in common with the zeal of a St. Paul of the early Church.

A strong sense of community and the life of the mind go hand in hand; and when one is missing, its absence substantially weakens the other.

What we really need today is to create conditions that would awaken a subservient laity from its sleep and in doing so provide new life for the Church.

Ennismore, ON