The boy in the velveteen suit.

To one who was a recalcitrant altar boy in a velveteen leisure suit in 1977, the Chicago Declaration's concern that "so little energy is devoted to encouraging and arousing lay responsibility for the world" unavoidably brings to mind the Call to Action and its rallying cry "We Are the Church." Call to Action's reprints of texts from the mass media arrive in the mailbox along with Entertainment Weekly and the latest missive from the folks at J. Crew. Among this jumble of exhortations, the cry and the statement alike seem to be made as against the clergy: we, not the clergy alone, are the church; so you, the clergy, must devote more energy to rousing us. "J. Crew wearers unite! We have nothing to lose but our parochial school plaids!"

Fifteen years after the Declaration and three decades after Vatican II, this approach has lost a large measure of its truth and its power. For a generation the laity has defined itself as against the clergy--and chiefly as against the hierarchy--as a force in American Catholicism, asserting the laity's inalienable fights; its demographic authority; its value as a wellspring of skills, insights, and spiritual ardor. One hopes this was necessary and guided by the Spirit (although, given the rhetoric of lay leaders, the touch-and-go state of vocations to the priesthood is no surprise: today's American Catholics are raised from baptism not as Catholics but as lay Catholics). Unfortunately however, such rhetoric has introduced one more adjectival division among Catholics, and has sanctioned a curious anticlericalism within the church in the name of the sensusfidelium. Worst of all, such efforts have sometimes allowed lay Catholics to smugly believe they are doing the church a favor by remaining faithful.

Having justly claimed the laity's rights, those who now speak from and for the laity must more vigorously claim our responsibilities-- not as lay people, but as Catholic Christians. "We are the church' 'but why? We believe in Christ and his church and his promise for the whole world. Among lay leaders there is talk of "being church" and "doing church." This active-verb approach empowered many, no doubt, but it obscures the fact that the church is much larger than we are, a proper noun extending behind us in time and beyond us into heaven. So we must also be stewards of the church of God's word in Christ, of the church's long faith, of the Spirit's guidance. And we must now be stewards in ways that are more distinctively Catholic than those pursued in the recent past.

Across the ecclesial spectrum, such as it is, those who would reform the church and the world have sought to do so in ways that often seem only incidentally Catholic. One side may champion democratic structures and cultural trends, even when democratic politics and culture are seen as debased. Another pursues constitutional measures grounded in a natural law tradition, which, while it claims to address all people of good will, can make ultimate sense only to those who share its deeper grounding in Catholic tradition-- who often seem scarce even within the church itself.

If contemporary Catholics seem expert in doing things in the Catholic name, we nevertheless must not forget to be Catholic--must not allow policy to displace piety, must not lose our own quirky callings in a generalized zeal to call the church and the world to holiness. Aware that we are the church, lay people must keep in mind that in the U.S. each day there are fewer clergy to steward the church for us and serve as our straw men. More important, we must keep in mind that although we are the church, the church is not ours-- not the laity's, not the clergy's, not the hierarchy's, but Christ's. He is the one to whom attention must be paid. His is the voice that needs to be heard. His are the fights that must be recognized. His is the sense to which we must be faithful. Those who would lead must follow, mindful that we can hope to rouse the world only because he rouses us.

Paul Elie, a frequent Commonweal contributor, also writes for the New Republic and Lingua Franca.