What's in a name?

The church doesn't know what to call what laypeople do any suggestions?

ANYONE WHO HAS STUDIED LANGUAGE knows the importance of naming. As the Little Prince realized, to name something is be willing to take responsibility for it--to love it. To not name something allows us to keep the reality at a distance and impedes our ability to relate to it. In the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's, Audrey Hepburn's character is unwilling to name her cat. Her unwillingness reveals her difficulty with being connected and responsible.

The Catholic Church is currently in a naming crisis regarding lay mission.

In the years before and during the Second Vatican Council, the name given to the mission of the laity was the apostolate of the laity or the lay apostolate. These terms referred to a participation in the ministry of the hierarchy. The terminology arose in connection with the Catholic Action movement, a lay movement with strong ties to the official church structure

In more recent years this term has almost disappeared--and, unfortunately, so has a consciousness of the mission of the laity beyond the parish boundary. Although the entire church--clergy, religious, and laity--are engaged in the world, it is the laity who have as their particular field of mission the everyday circumstances of life as family member, worker, and citizen.

The vision of the Second Vatican Council calls for the laity to be the church in the world--a major shift from a view of the laity as passive recipients of ecclesial ministry or as participating in the ministry of the hierarchy. The laity have the central role in God's action in the world to bring about the reign of God, and the hierarchy and all church ministers support that foundational mission.

And yet, we still have not come up with a good name for this mission.

After the council, the term lay ministry or ecclesial lay ministry became popular, referring to laity who participate in various pastoral tasks as delegated by church authority--lectors or cantors as well as fun-time, paid lay leaders committed to church ministry.

The explosion of lay ministry since the council is a great gift of the Spirit to the church. But since the vocation and mission of the laity in their daily life is not one dependent on delegation, the term lay ministry would appear not to be suitable.

Some of our Protestant sisters and brothers speak of ministry in daily life. There are several advantages to this term. It validates the importance of the mission of the laity. It provides a vocabulary for calling the laity to their vocation. And using the word ministry for the laity's role responds to the concern that the role of the laity be affirmed as no less significant than that of the clergy and other ecclesial ministers.

As the late chaplain and activist Msgr. Dan Cantwell once put it, the basic premises that ought to be affirmed are that "priests and bishops are called to Christ's work, but so are lay men and women, and just as indispensably; that the sanctuary is a sacred place, but so is every factory, every workshop, every bus station, every cradle, every bed." Few Catholics have embraced the name ministry in daily life.

An adequate naming of the mission of the laity in daily life must honor the dignity and importance of this mission. It must also be compelling, clear, specific, and attractive. I do not believe Christian service, a term sometimes advanced as a possible candidate, meets these criteria. It is altogether too generic.

Could apostolate of the laity be recovered? The problem with this term is that it might be identified with the old Catholic Action understanding of the laity's mission as merely a participation in the ministry of the hierarchy. Another possibility would be to simply refer to lay mission in everyday life or lay mission in the social order.

In any case, until the reality is named, how will every parish realize that it is meant to be a place for readying the people to be in mission in the world? How will the leaders of the church issue the call to further God's influence in our society and culture through the mission of the laity?

These important questions await the church, the Body of Christ, which has yet to unleash the power of the gospel through the majority of its members.

JUAN L. HINOJOSA, director of the Chicago/ Bolivia Medical Mission of the Archdiocese of Chicago and a la), vocation and mission development consultant.