The laity & the shape of things to come.

The clergy should stay in church where they belong and provide the laity with the sacraments and services that support their lives and work in the world." This two-world model with the clergy in church and the laity in society was one oversimplified conclusion some people drew from the 1977 Chicago Declaration. It seemed that just when Vatican II had endorsed the "apostolate of the laity," priests suddenly began taking on this "apostolate" themselves, becoming community leaders, running for political office, and directly confronting the country's economic, political, and military systems in the name of social justice. At the same time, clergy and religious seemed to see the laity primarily as recruits for parish councils, catechetical programs, and other parish and church-based activities. Yet, the Declaration's essential concerns were echoed in warnings from the hierarchy against clericalizing the laity and secularizing the clergy.

What has happened in the fifteen years since the Declaration?

For one thing, it has become increasingly difficult to locate the line separating the world of the laity from that of the ordained and religious, especially where secular services and church mission have become increasingly intertwined. In appraising the current situation we need to look again at the three factors the Declaration addressed: lay involvement in church activities, clergy involvement in secular activities, and church support for the lives and mission of lay people. Then finally, we need to ask: What do recent trends in these areas mean?

I. LAY INVOLVEMENT IN CHURCH ACTIVITIES

In New Parish Ministers, a Lilly Endowment funded study recently completed for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Pastoral Life Center found that over the last generation there has seen a dramatic expansion of lay. employment in the church's pastoral ministry. Half the nation's almost 20,000 parishes now have lay people and sisters (who are lay as distinct from ordained) working at least twenty hours a week in paid pastoral positions. This amounts to 20,000 pastoral ministers, 11,700 of whom are lay in the usual sense. This is in addition to the 96,000 lay people who make up the majority of parochial elementary school teachers and administrators, plus those in Catholic private elementary and secondary schools, to say nothing of colleges and universities, diocesan offices, and institutions and services run by Catholic Charities.

What do these lay and religious parish ministers do? Forty-six percent of the parish ministers in our survey serve as directors or coordinators of religious education; the roles of general parish minister, youth minister, and music director each account for about twelve percent; five percent have responsibility for liturgical life; and the rest are spread among a wide range of spiritual and social activities. When we distinguish between lay people and sisters, we find that the lay people are more likely to be found in religious education, youth ministry, and music ministry while the role of general pastoral minister--approximating the associate pastor position of priests--is dominated by women religious. Another common role is parish business manager he or she handles bulletins, boilers, budgets, and buildings among many other tasks.

In other words, whatever theory you hold about the proper world and appropriate roles of lay people, thousands of them are now part of the formal ministry of the church. These numbers can only increase as parishes continue to replace sisters, 40 percent of whom are over sixty years of age.

The term "lay minister" is used in two senses, one to apply to all those who are part of the formal ministry of the church, and a second to apply especially to lay persons whose work and credentials are in general pastoral ministry rather than in professional disciplines, such as social work, academia, counseling, religious education, or administration, and finance. The National Association for Lay Ministry is the latter group's primary organization. The theological confusion that arises from the more general phenomenon of lay people in pastoral roles is summed up in the disagreement between Avery Dulles who regards "lay minister" as an apt label (a view shared by most of these new ministers), and the late Karl Rahner, Cardinal Roger Mahony, and Bishop Kenneth Untener who have suggested that any lay person who is a full-time parish minister is no longer "lay" in the usual sense of that term. Think of what it means, for example, for a "lay minister" to be acting as a surrogate "pastor" in a parish without a resident ordained pastor. Or think of the growing number of hospitals where a sister is the director of pastoral care (that is, the "pastor") and employs priests for sacramental ministry.

Of course, the complaint of the Chicago Declaration was not directed primarily at recruiting lay people for church employment, but at so strongly stressing lay participation in the church's mission primarily as "volunteers" in internal church ministries, that the lay role in family, work, and world is neglected. But even the volunteer-parish minister distinction has become blurred. Many of the newly employed parish ministers once served as parish volunteers whom the pastor called on to take more responsible positions. Training programs for parish volunteers (both independent ones such as Education for Parish Service in Washington, D.C., and Connecticut, and diocesan-sponsored ones), find that graduates and their pastors often decide they are suited for paid positions in the parish.

So, what has happened to parish involvement of parishioners in church activities? New Parish Ministers, ($11.95, National Pastoral Life Center, 299 Elizabeth St., N.Y., N.Y. 10012) asked both lay ministers and well-informed parishioners whether lay ministers are successful in involving parishioners in parish activities. Our question came from some diocesan leaders with a concern quite opposite to that of the Declaration, namely, worry about a new "staffism," in which expanded staffs of lay people would usurp the responsibilities of parishioners. In fact, both lay ministers and parishioners say parishioner involvement expands. Four out of five parishioners surveyed say that lay ministers have added to the parishes' ability to involve women parishioners in activities (we did not ask for specifics); two-thirds think they are equally effective in recruiting men.

The 1981-85 Notre Dame Study of Catholic Parish Life found that much of the work and leadership of parish activities is in the hands of lay people--a desirable characteristic of many membership organizations. In fact, Peter Drucker has proposed that a primary goal for all nonprofit organizations, including churches, is to "turn donors into contributors," in order to get members directly involved in the organizations' activities and services. This is a problem for a theology of the lay apostolate only if church involvement results in taking parishioners away from involvement in the wider community. Does it? Apparently not. Two-thirds of the parishioners surveyed find that the lay ministers are also successful in promoting parishioner "involvement in the wider community."

Of course, this still doesn't tell us how well parishes enable parishioners to address concerns of family and work. We made an attempt to get at this indirectly by asking if these lay ministers and the women religious on parish staffs improve parish "sensitivity to women's concerns," "...men's concerns," and "understanding of lay concerns," not specifying what these concerns are. (Eighty-five percent of these staff members are themselves women.) A little more than half the parishioners think that lay ministers have improved parish sensitivity to women's concerns, a little less than half think they do as well with men's concerns, and two-thirds of the parishioners think these new staff members have enhanced parish understanding of lay concerns. Parish ministers themselves are less confident about their success in involving parishioners in parish or community life, but they do share the parishioners' estimation that they have enhanced sensitivity to the laity in parish life.

II. PRIESTS AND RELIGIOUS IN SECULAR LIFE

There are no systematic data on priests and religious venturing into secular occupations and the public arena. But a few impressions are worth noting. First, the most dramatic .instances of clergy leadership in public affairs were the U.S. bishops' two pastoral statements, one on the use of nuclear weapons and the other on the economy; in addition, there are their public policy initiatives on abortion. While these involve moral judgments--a widely accepted venue for church leaders--they also involve matters of strategy and, what the peace pastoral called, "prudential judgments"--judgments open to disagreement among conscientious Christians.

Second, the church has become a major part of the "safety net" for people in need of health, education, and welfare services. Of course, these services have always been an integral part of the church's community life. But an important new dimension has emerged over the last two decades. Catholic hospitals and community health services, inner-city parochial schools, and Catholic social services have become important resources for the public in need. People are served irrespective of their religious identity, and without a clear link to evangelization efforts. These health and welfare services as well as inner-city schools introduce a whole new level of complexity.

In these cases, what is the appropriate relationship between the ministries of the church and the secular roles of individual laity working in them? What is the relationship between a specific church mission and the church's contribution to public service when the frameworks and guidelines are defined by the funders (in the case of health and welfare services, tax dollars and third-party financing; in the case of inner- city schools, business and voluntary contributions in the absence of vouchers or other public funding)? On the one hand, how can those in church ministries heavily involved in essential public service, whether they are clergy or laity, not be concerned about public policy, corporate life, and community leadership linked to these services? On the other hand, what then distinguishes church service from any other kind?

These questions have become a matter of intense self examination for many Catholics and even a matter of some controversy for Catholic institutions (the question of AIDS prevention is one, but there are many others). This scrutiny comes under the rubric of "Catholic identity" when it deals with orthodoxy or orthopraxy in teaching or moral decision making. Or it can be a question of a religious order's holding to its rounding charism; for example, the Sisters of Mercy have made serious efforts to assure that lay administrators of their extensive health service network maintain fidelity to their founder's vision. Or this scrutiny can measure these social and educational services in terms of "gospel priorities," such as the preferential option for the poor. Are church institutions reaching those who need them most? Of course, these contexts and concerns are not mutually exclusive but they are distinguishable. And they all show that church, clergy, and religious involvement in the public arena is extensive and complex.

At the same time, it appears that clergy and religious have not continued the trend of the sixties, entering into political and other forums of public life. Two well-known cases of political involvement, Robert Drinan, S.J., and Sister Mary Ann Mansour, for example, were resolved by his withdrawing from political office and by her withdrawing from the religious order. Nor are priests and sisters as prominent as they were during the sixties in taking "prophetic" positions.

One exception to clerical and religious involvement in institutions governed by secular and professional criteria is higher education. Clergy and religious are typically subject to the standard criteria for appointments and tenure in Catholic institutions, and clergy and religious with advanced degrees continue to take positions in nonCatholic institutions.

III. CHURCH SUPPORT FOR THE "WORLDLY" MISSION OF THE LAITY

Do the clergy find ways to be specifically helpful to the life and mission of lay people in the "world?" In what ways do the ministries of the church directly address the challenges of lay life, those of family, community, and work?

There has been a proliferation of family ministries in the past decades. Add to the traditional Pre-Cana Conference the Engaged Encounter weekends and the sponsor-couple programs for marriage preparation, the Retrouvaille program (a twelve-step program) for "hurting marriages," and a variety of programs for single parents as well as day care for children and the elderly. Religious education and sacramental preparation programs have added parent participation to the process. Concern for the impact of social and economic policies on family life is evident in the bishops' recent election year document, "Putting Children and Families First." One could say that the whole of church life--the very existence of a larger community of total acceptance and shared commitment--remains critical as context and support for family life. Andrew Greeley has even found a significant relationship between active church involvement by couples and satisfying marriages. In other words, as another document from the bishops' conference puts it, church support for family life is more a "perspective" on everything the church does than a matter of specific programs.

What about church assistance to lay leaders in community life? While I have no evidence regarding middle class and suburban communities, I suspect parishes in these areas typically are not significant for lay community leadership. But in poor and working-class communities, the church, and particularly the parish, remains the most pervasive source of support for community action and community development. We need not turn to as astonishing an enterprise as that of Monsignor William Linder, MacArthur Foundation awardee, who heads the remarkable New Community in Newark (it employs thousands in its housing developments, residence for the elderly, homeless residence, new businesses, and credit union). Parish leadership in community organizations is more typically exemplified by PACT in San Jose, BUILD in Baltimore, COPS in San Antonio, UNO in Los Angeles, and South Bronx Churches in New York. In these communities, it seems safe to say, there is no greater support for people's efforts to shape local life than the combination made up of parishes, diocesan offices, and the Campaign for Human Development.

When it comes to the work place, whether business, the professions, government, education, or science, it's a different picture. In the past, there was strong support for the labor movement (perhaps as much to stem the tide of communism as to improve the conditions of workers). But with the notable exception of Cardinal John O'Connor's active support for organized labor in all institutions including Catholic schools and hospitals, church support for Catholics in labor unions has become very tentative. In some areas it has turned to opposition to unions in Catholic health-care institutions, cemeteries, and educational institutions.

Some Catholic professional associations persist, while others like the Catholic Sociological Society have died. When it comes to the professions, there is support for those associations most directly linked to religious and ecclesiastical concerns: the Catholic Theological Society, the Catholic Biblical Association, the Canon Law Society, and perhaps the College Theology Society. For historians there is the Catholic Historical Association and the United States Catholic Historical Society, and for those in health care the Catholic Health Association. Other professional associations have opened up to broader constituencies and concerns (for example, the Association for the Sociology of Religion has replaced the Catholic Sociological Society), though I detect some rethinking of this outward turn and concern for specific Catholic identity and questions.

When it comes to the business community, Serra International has been faltering in this country. It seems never to have achieved as much clarity about its goal of helping Catholic businessmen work out their Christian responsibility in the workplace as about its goal of supporting vocations to the ordained priesthood. The Knights of Malta continues to operate but, from the little I know, their work is apparently directed more toward support of the institutional church and public concerns than toward the leadership of its members in their professions and occupations. I know little about Opus Dei's approach to its members, but apparently it is concerned about fostering what it understands to be Christian leadership in public affairs.

Perhaps the initiative that has most fully taken up the cause of the Chicago Declaration is the Chicago-based National Center for the Laity (NCL), whose newsletter and events have been single-minded in their emphasis on the properly lay mission in the "world." In fact, so singleminded have they been that the Center shunned collaboration with the National Association for Lay Ministry particularly during the Synod on the Laity in 1987. The Business Executives for Justice in Chicago, related to NCL, is a recent attempt to encourage reflection on business ethics; the Woodstock Center at Georgetown continues to expand its efforts at fostering reflection among business leaders, as well as among leaders in politics and other public areas about the values and priorities that govern their work.

The Holy Name and "communion breakfast" forms of support for the police, firefighters, and other civil servants have all but disappeared. One exception is the thirty three-year old First Friday Club of Cleveland, which offers its four hundred members who work in the city a luncheon speaker every first Thursday(!). The annual "Red Mass" continues to be held for the legal profession in some dioceses.

Broader efforts to enable Catholics to think through and reflect on the links between Christian discipleship and church membership and their lives as family members, workers, and citizens have been much more episodic. There has been a proliferation of "small groups," gatherings of people to pray and reflect on their faith; the RENEW program, the Charismatic Renewal, and Scripture-study programs like the Little Rock Scripture program are the most extensive source of these groups. Most of them have focused on people's individual lives and personal needs rather than on critical reflection and public responsibility. Nothing like the Christian Family Movement (CFM), the Young Christian Students (YCS), and the Young Christian Workers (YCW), with their observe-judge-act methodology and social analysis, now exists. In their heyday in the fifties they encouraged many laity to get involved in community affairs, public life, and politics. Some few parishes and parish priests have tried to address this need. Father Norman Douglas in Akron, Ohio, has organized groups of teachers, lawyers, and nurses. At Old St. Patrick's in Chicago, John Fontana, a layman working with the pastor Father John Wall, has organized faith-. work reflection groups and retreats under the title The Crossroads Center and Father John Cusick has replicated Cleveland's First Friday Club for workers in downtown Chicago. These efforts usually have a regional reach rather than only a parish one.

At the beginning, I hinted that the clergy-lay relationship is rooted in deeper questions about church and society, religion and public life. One way to approach this is to look at how the church and clergy address matters of sin and virtue and how they address issues of public morality. Sometimes, it seems as though the church's relationship to family life, citizenship, occupation, or the arts and sciences, focuses only on "ethics," and, indeed, a rather negative ethics: what is immoral in these situations. This approach misses the creative capacity of lay persons, the ability and opportunity to help shape the future, to find fulfillment, to make a difference in how the world works. While clear stands need to be taken against sin and injustice, discipleship is more than that and the church must be more than a monitor. How little, for example, the church honors and consults lay men and women and thus fails to offer their creative and constructive works as ideals. When lay people are honored it is usually because of contributions (financial or otherwise) they have made to the internal life of the church, and not because of artistic achievement, innovative efforts in the workplace, or leadership in public education, health, or other sectors of the public arena. The recently disputed Laetare Medal (given this year to Senator Daniel P. Moynihan) has long been one notable exception.

When it comes to public policy issues and practices regarding international relations, economic affairs, and abortion, the church is more constructive. Then it pro: motes human rights, encourages job creation, fosters and participates in relief efforts, poses criteria for economic policy, urges and provides greater supports for families and children, and offers alternatives to abortion.

Nonetheless, there remain serious problems in the relationships between Catholic church commitments and the public involvement of Catholic individuals and specific Catholic institutions. Once the church enters into partnership with social institutions, its health and welfare services regularly run into conflicts between the funders' guidelines and the church's moral teachings and convictions.

What is true for institutions applies as well to conscientious individual Catholics in public life. Archbishop Rembert Weakland has recently addressed this conundrum in the context of politics:

We have not worked out how to be insiders, especially in politics, and remain Catholic. By that I mean that we do not yet see how a Catholic can be elected to represent a constituency, a group of people from an area or district, and respect their wishes and at the same time remain in the Catholic tradition in all things. I sense a real problem in that respect. Must a Catholic cease to represent an area of the country if he or she feels that the majority of a constituency has another set of wishes and desires of the candidate than the church might? (Origins, May 28, 1992.)

What Weakland says of politicians applies as well to those in public education, public health, and many other arenas of public life. We have a deep need for a thoughtful and practical dialogue on all the ways in which church and society, clergy and laity, the Catholic and the public constituency intersect.

Second, the manner in which the church offers its guidance is critical. In the pastoral letters on peace and the economy, the bishops carefully combine clarity about fundamental teaching with equally clear acknowledgment of both freedom of conscience and legitimate disagreement over prudential judgments. Nonetheless, the public image of the church's teaching on many matters suggests that compliance is purely a matter of submission to authority rather than conversion of conscience. Study after study finds that, while Catholics are concerned about the relationship between a gospel-based morality and their private and social lives, many balk at any church approach to morality that is based primarily on ecclesiastical authority. While some people, no doubt, wish to restrict the realm of morality and bracket the role of conscience, other people truly wish to form their consciences, not turn them over to others.

Finally, to add to this already complex analysis, let me propose that we not think of ordination as removing the clergy from lay or secular concerns. Put in canonical terms, all remain Christifideles the faithful of Christ-- even if they are ordained. This came home to me reading John Paul II's Christifideles laici, the document that followed the synod on the laity. For those of us who are clergy share most aspects of lay life treated in this essay. We too are employers, workers, consumers, citizens with the franchise, taxpayers, family members, members of political parties, friends, patrons of the arts, and-- with the recent opening of ordination to some married men--spouses and fathers. What is true of "them" is true of us.

IV. WHAT CONCLUSIONS CAN BE DRAWN?

The lines between laity and clergy will continue to be blurred in many ways: lay people will increasingly be involved in church ministry and parishioners will be called upon, as part of stepped-up stewardship plans, not only to donate money but to contribute to the work of the parish. Church agencies, clergy, and religious will continue to play important roles in health, education, and welfare as well as in shaping community development and public policy. Pastoral ministry must, and I think will, find new ways to help parishioners help each other to integrate discipleship with family, community, and work life, perhaps through a revived and revised observe-judge-act process. In our pluralistic society the church will be impelled by the increasing crises of politicians and service providers to work out relationships that protect the integrity of conscience and honor public responsibility. Finally, the traditional but already diminishing exemption of church leaders and institutions from civil regulations and public accountability will be further challenged and, where appropriate, the church will be required to adhere to public and professional norms for organizational behavior. Ultimately, the authority given to the church to evangelize, to call people to the gospel, and to bring the gospel to our public and cultural life, will require more strenuous efforts to be faithful to the Catholic Tradition that combines: a personal relationship with Christ and the Christian community, an ascetical tradition, and a theology that respects the role of intellect and conscience in Christian discipleship.