Smile when you say, 'Starbucks': responses to Eugene McCarraher.

This past May, I participated in a two-day colloquium on lay ministry in the church here at the University of Dayton. Nearly sixty people attended, including twenty bishops, as many theologians, and lay leaders. The group was diverse ethnically and racially; it included liberals and conservatives, men and women whose names the readers of Commonweal would recognize. Eight commissioned papers and the discussion they shaped were devoted to clarifying a theology of the laity, specifically "ecclesial lay ministry," a theology for professionally prepared lay people who work in the church. Discussions were candid, vigorous, at times a little tense, but ultimately very positive.

I had trouble relating this experience and my traderstanding of the laity to Eugene McCarraher's portrait of a "lay revolution" fed mainly by a therapeutic spirituality that has created "a Starbucks Catholicism embodied in a Church Mellow." As I read, I found myself returning to the substance of the research and the tone of the discussion of our May colloquium. McCarraher may be onto something - a segment of Catholicism that is sophisticated, efficient, but soft and affluent. Nonetheless, I believe he overstates both its influence and its negative characteristics. Lay leadership today assumes multiple styles, many more than his narrowly focused portrait suggests. We are witnessing not a velvet revolution, but a valued evolution, one, for the most part, encouraged and supported by the hierarchy. McCarraher suggests as much in his "breezy" history of the growth of lay leadership.

Moreover, the actual profile of this strong and rapidly growing movement of lay ministers (20,000 already employed with over 20,000 now at various stages of preparation) is much more diverse than McCarraher suggests. Some members of the laity, well-paid and highly skilled members of the corporate world, have brought their managerial skills and habits of thought to parish councils and organizations. A similar pattern has emerged at Catholic universities where board members or trustees are typically CEOs of major corporations. Sometimes some of their corporate practices have been misapplied to the university, but at other times, some corporate practices, for example, TQM (total quality management), strategic planning, and budget conventions, have been immensely helpful when they have been applied to some segments of university operations. Similar mixed experiences have been reported by a number of parishes: both helpful and mistaken applications of practices derived mainly from the corporate world.

None of the bishops at the Dayton colloquium seemed threatened by either the rapid growth or the current influence of lay ministers and parish councils. And, yes, many of us, not just bishops and religious, continue to be concerned about the diminishing numbers of priests and religious. The rapid growth in lay ministry should not be thought of as a temporary filler until the number of priests and religious can be built back up again. Rather, we see this valued evolution as a providential development, a talented and generous group of dedicated people meant to share in the leadership of the Catholic church in the coming century.

I believe that McCarraher's picture of a "velvet revolution" creating a "Church Mellow" is overdrawn. He mistakes a part for the whole, a much more complex whole. Moreover, he focuses on that part negatively, caricaturing it as the embodiment of an "upscale, therapeutic agora in values and ethics." I suggest he visit more parishes than he seems to have done, discover in the process many more diverse groups of lay Catholics, and be less shocked by the ways in which our culture has influenced and, as history shows, will continue to influence all of us, even as we stumble and straggle, opposing its excesses and learning from its achievements - all in order to be faithful to the gospel.

Marianist priest, James Heft, is chancellor and professor of faith and culture at the University of Dayton. He serves as vice-chair of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities.