Catholic Laity and America

J. Brian Benestad,
University of Scranton
Francis X. Maier,
Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Denver

Theology of the Laity
J. Brian Benestad

"What then do you reproach Church leaders?" I said at last foolishly. "Me? Nothing much. To have secularized us" (M. Olivier responds to the country priest in the Diary of A Country Priest by George Bernanos

In this short presentation I will briefly summarize the essential mission of the laity and then discuss the principal obstacles to the fulfillment of that mission.

The theology of the laity put forth by the Second Vatican Council, Canon Law and Pope John Paul II is inspiring and challenging. The Code of Canon Law succinctly identifies the laity and explains their role in the Church. The Christian faithful are those who have been incorporated into Christ and the Church by Baptism, and, therefore, share in Christ's priestly, prophetic and royal office (munus). They have a duty to live a holy life, to promote the growth of the Church in holiness and to work for the diffusion of the divine message of salvation throughout the world. In addition, sometimes the laity even have the right and the duty to alert the hierarchy about matters that pertain to the salvation of souls. In the words of The Code inspired by Lumen gentium.

"In accord with the knowledge, competence and preeminence which they possess, [the Christian faithful] have the right and even at times a duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church, and they have a right to make their opinion known to the other Christian faithful, all with due regard for the integrity of faith and morals and reverence toward their pastors and with consideration for the common good and the dignity of persons (Canon 212)."

Their second principal duty is to leaven in the world by working for social justice and "to assist the poor from their own resources." More generally stated, "Each lay person in accord with his or her condition is bound by special duty to imbue and perfect the order of temporal affairs with the spirit of the gospel; he or she thus give witness to Christ in a special way in carrying out those affairs and in exercising secular duties" (Canon 225).

As part of their duty to pursue holiness and to perfect the temporal order married laity have duties toward their families. The married faithful are "to work for the upbuilding of the people of God through their marriage and their family. ...Christian parents are especially to care for the Christian education of their children according to the teaching handed on by the Church" (Canon 226). The latter is especially crucial for the pursuit of holiness and the perfection of the temporal order. Fulfilling the latter duty is, of course, an important way of acquiring holiness.

Turning now to Vatican II Lumen gentium we find more detail about the role of the laity in the world. The most helpful text is the following: "moreover, let the laity by their combined efforts remedy the customs and conditions of the world, if the mores therein are an inducement to sin, so that they may favor the practice of virtue rather than hinder it" (Lumen gentium). The effect of this kind of work is to imbue culture and human activity with morality, and to "better prepare the field of the world for the seed of the Word of God." In other words, the laity are to work for the amelioration of the mores in every area of political, social and economic life. Where they are successful, people will more easily practice virtue in their everyday lives and more readily let their lives be transformed by the Word of God. Otherwise stated, holiness is more easily attainable in a good regime.

Another passage of Lumen gentium says the laity make Christ known to others, especially by a life of faith, hope and charity. Then it adds, "the layman is closely involved in temporal affairs of every sort. It is therefore his special task to illumine and organize these affairs in such a way that they may always start out and develop according to Christ's mind, to the praise of the Creator and Redeemer" (Lumen gentium, 31).

In Christifideles laici Pope John Paul II talks about the renewal of the temporal order in a very concrete way, so that most Catholics could understand what the Church is teaching lay people about their specific vocation. He says, "Charity toward one's neighbor , through contemporary forms of the traditional spiritual and corporal works of mercy, represent the most immediate, ordinary and habitual ways that lead to the Christian animation of the temporal order, the specific duty of the lay faithful" (No. 41). This is much less complicated than figuring out to solve the malpractice insurance crisis, reforming the legal profession, reestablishing the Catholic identity of Catholic universities, applying just war principles to war with Iraq.

Back in 1988 Pope John Paul II was already aware that the laity were running up against obstacles in the fulfillment of their mission. In Christifideles Laici the pope specifically mentioned two enticing temptations for the laity:

the temptation of being so strongly interested in Church services and tasks that some fail to become actively engaged in their responsibilities in the professional, social, cultural and political world; and the temptation of legitimizing the unwarranted separation of faith from life, that is, a separation of the Gospel's acceptance from the actual living of the Gospel in various situations of the world (No. 2).

Not many would disagree that vast numbers of the laity have succumbed to these temptations and now need to pray insistently for deliverance from evil. Instead of helping the laity resist the first temptation many pastors have been instructing and encouraging them to become active in some church ministry as the admired and privileged way of living out their Catholicism more fully. (You must all have noticed that everything is a ministry these days.) Last spring at the Holy Thursday mass in the cathedral parish of Scranton, PA the monsignor explained that the twelve people on the altar were all active in some Church ministry. No one was chosen who had brought Christ to the work place in an extraordinary way or who had evangelized the culture in some area of life. Homilists generally shy away from explaining how lay people can renew the temporal order. Instead, they explain how lay people can get more involved in lay ministries. The story of this lay responsibility for being a leaven in the world has become a dim memory and is hardly known to young people today.

With all the talk about the role of the laity in the Church at the time of Vatican Council II one might expect more progress in this area. There are, of course, examples of individuals and groups doing wonderful things. In her recent article on the laity Mary Ann Glendon mentioned Communion and Liberation, the Community of St. Egidio, Focolare, the Neo-Catechumenate Way, Opus Dei and Regnum Christi. I constantly hear stories about lay individuals exercising a quiet influence throughout their lives. Nevertheless, one can't help but notice that most lay Catholics are unaware of their opportunities to be a leaven in the world. A Catholic principal of a Catholic elementary school recently told my wife (the Director of Religious Education for the Diocese of Scranton) that it would be discrimination to prefer hiring a qualified Catholic rather than a non-Catholic teacher. Then, the same principal added for good measure that it would also be discrimination to ask a non-Catholic teacher to respect the mission of Catholic schools. Other principals said that with the departure of the nuns from the schools lay people couldn't hope to promote Catholicism very effectively.

At my Jesuit university there is lot of talk about being 'men and women for others.' At first glance this would seem to be a way of overcoming the split between faith and life. This exhortation is, unfortunately, not integrated into a complete presentation of the faith. Just before he died, our most learned Jesuit on campus, Fr. Roy Davis, S.J. (A long time dean at Georgetown University) said to me that at Jesuit universities the mode of presenting and understanding the meaning of being for others was usually not distinctively Catholic.

In the midst of the sexual-abuse crisis in the Catholic Church some of the laity want to ascend higher on the altar steps so that they might begin to share in the governance of the Catholic Church as a remedy for the failure of so many bishops to be true shepherds of the faithful. The newly constituted Voice of the Faithful has as its mission statement "to provide a prayerful voice attentive to the Spirit, through which the Faithful can actively participate in the governance and guidance of the Catholic Church." Especially noteworthy is that there is nothing in the mission statement about the role of the laity as a leaven of the world.

The separation of faith from life is a temptation to which many have already succumbed on principle. One of America's premier theologians, Avery Cardinal Dulles, says that many Americans regard religion as a private matter. He writes: 'Any effort by a church to say what is morally permitted, required or prohibited by the law of God in the spheres of politics medicine, business or family life is resented as an intrusion into alien territory. ... Anyone who sees religion as determinative for secular activities is likely to be regarded as a fanatic. Teachers, businessmen, politicians or judges who let religion impinge in a major way on their professional activities are considered eccentric.'

Back in 1983 I attended a seminar at the University of Virginia on biomedical ethics given by a religious ethicist. After a short time I realized that nothing theological was going to be said. The leader of the seminar and all the participants, whether theologians or philosophers, all talked the same language and it wasn't in the least theological. My experience was not unique. America's most insightful bioethicist, Leon Kass, has noted the paucity of theological reflection by theologians on bioethical issues: "Most religious ethicists entering the public practice of ethics leave their special religious insights at the door and talk about '91deontological vs. consequentialist,' 'autonomy vs. paternalism,' 'justice vs. utility,' just like everybody else." Kass also notes that the non-religious mainstream in the field regard theological insights "as hopelessly parochial or sectarian." To be a player and to be taken seriously religious ethicists conclude that they must limit themselves to the reigning philosophical language and concepts.

The causes of the separation of faith from life are several. The most obvious explanation for the phenomena described by Dulles and Kass is the desire for acceptance and influence in the world of work. People in the business and the professional worlds --including faculty at Catholic colleges, teachers and principals in Catholic schools and staff in diocesan offices-- don't want to be regarded as sectarian or out of step with the way things are done. My wife reported that she was asked by a colleague, a director of religious education from a PA diocese, why she was involved in planning a pro-life conference. "In our diocese," explained the director, "pro-life work is only done by the pro-life office," as if the work of fighting the culture of death was not religious education. At any rate, it was clear that the director of religious education did not want to be visibly associated with the Church's pro-life work.

The question arises why don't more Catholics resist the message that their faith is a private matter. My response looks at both internal and external factors. First, bishops, priests, catechetical leaders and Catholic schools on the primary and secondary level have not done an adequate job in forming the young in the basics of the faith. Being only partially instructed, most parents are not able to impart a thorough and rigorous formation in the faith. It is typical for Catholic college students not to know the meaning of such terms as Incarnation, Redemption, Pentecost and virtue. Hardly any can recognize that there are petitions in the Lord's prayer. With a poor formation in the faith, how could most Catholics recognize an improper separation of faith from life?

Secondly, the instruction and formation in the faith at Catholic universities may succeed in a few institutions, but for the most part, is weak, absent or, in some cases, even detrimental. One program run by the administration of Boston College gives misleading information about sexual ethics to all its undergraduates. Last month a junior resident assistant at BC, Tim Deely, wrote a column in The Heights, the student newspaper, criticizing a program required for all undergraduates, called BC SAFE. He objected to the sexual morality presented by BC SAFE as simply an echo of the mores in our secular society. He said the presentation that he attended assumed that "consent' is the principle of sexual morality, "the thing upon which wholesome sexual activity hinged. Absent are any notions of purity, abstinence, the importance of marriage, or a fuller understanding of human sexuality." Nothing was said about the immorality of premarital sex or homosexual activity. To make matters worse, Stephen Schloesser, S. J. responded to Mr. Deely with another column entitled "Clarification of Church teaching toward homosexuality." His clarification amounted to a denial of the Church's teaching that the homosexual inclination is "objectively disordered" (CCC, 2358) and that homosexual acts are "intrinsically disordered" (CCC, 2357). In order to make his point he embarrassed himself as an historian by taking a statement of Jacques Maritain out of context so as to prove that the French philosopher once gave his moral approval to homosexual relations. Then he tried to show that Catholic sexual ethics is utterly incoherent in teaching that conjugal acts must be open to the gift of life. His criticism revealed that he has precious little knowledge of Catholic moral theology. Fortunately, another Jesuit. Ronald Tacelli, wrote a third column in the same student newspaper, explaining that Fr. Schloesser had misrepresented Catholic moral teaching. In the midst of such chaos how will the average undergraduate leave the university convinced and clear about Catholic teaching.

A third reason why people have trouble relating their faith to their work and other aspects of their daily lives is the difficulty of acquiring the kind of prudence required to make the proper connections. Being a good person does not necessarily give someone the ability to make the kind of prudential decisions that will help his fellow citizens. Aquinas's distinction between ordinary prudence and political prudence helps to clarify my point. He says that everyone in the state of grace has sufficient prudence to do what is required for his own salvation, but not everyone has the political prudence to discern the requirements of the common good. In Aquinas's words, "There is also another diligence which is more than sufficient, whereby a man is able to make provision both for himself and for others, not only in matters necessary for salvation, but also in all things relating to human life; and such diligence as this is not in all who have grace." The acquisition of such diligence may be acquired over time with the right kind of experience and instruction. "In matters of prudence man stands in very great need of being taught by others, especially elders who have acquired a sane understanding of the ends in practical matters." In Thomas's terminology long experience of "singulars" is necessary to become a prudent person. Wise older people with much experience of the world are apt instructors of the young. It logically follows that understanding books written by those who have wisdom on matters pertaining to the common good is an excellent way of seeking political prudence.

A few weeks ago I attended a funeral of a well known and beloved physician in Scranton. J. Robert Gavin suddenly died at the age of 78, not having missed a day of work in 49 years because of illness. People stood in awe in the presence of this man's dedication to his patients. He still made house calls for the infirm and it was not unusual to see him visiting patients at 11:00 in the evening. As they say, prince or pauper received the same meticulous care from this Catholic physician. I don\'92t think he needed any more than prudence to live his life as he did. But, good as this man was, he would not have been able to contribute to the solution of the malpractice-insurance crisis in Pennsylvania without the kind of political prudence of which Aquinas speaks. (At the present moment 40 physicians in Scranton are refusing to do surgery or to take new patients.)

Still another reason for the separation between faith and life is the bad influence of lay Catholics in the limelight. Catholics have heard a steady drumbeat from Catholic politicians et al who say, "I am personally opposed to x but I will not impose my opinion on others, especially my religious opinions." Mary Ann Glendon's comment about this subterfuge is enlightening:

"That slogan was the moral anesthesia that they offered to people who are troubled about moral decline, but do not know quite how to express their views, especially in public settings. ... It is a sinister doctrine that would silence only those moral viewpoints that are religiously based. But the anesthesia was very effective in silencing the witness of countless good men and women. And of course the slogan was a bonanza for cowardly and unprincipled politicians."

That many Catholics could not see the problems with the slogan is surely another sign that their theological and political education is deficient. Even Catholic leaders were not able to show right away the deficiencies of the slogan by means of a few persuasive clarifications. "Only in recent years," Glendon argues, "have some Catholics, Protestants, and Jews stepped forward to point out that when citizens in a democratic republic advance religiously grounded moral viewpoints in the public square, they are not imposing anything on anyone. They are proposing. This is what is supposed to happen in our form of government -- citizens propose, they give reasons, they deliberate, they vote."

Another reason why religiously grounded viewpoints are discouraged in the public arena is the pervasive influence of liberal political theory in academia and in the media. Following in the footsteps of Locke, contemporary political theorists have tried to provide a theoretical justification for excluding religion from the public square. In Political Liberalism John Rawls, for example, argues that there are neutral principles of justice on which everyone can and should agree. These indisputable principles of justice, he argues, can be determined without relying on any theological and philosophical views of the good, about which there is and always will be reasonable pluralism. Once accepted these so-called neutral principles of justice establish the parameters within which citizens are to make moral arguments about public matters. Just as there is an absolute separation between the affairs of the church and the commonwealth for Locke, so for Rawls there is an absolute separation between justice and conceptions of the good, whether theological or philosophical. Michael Sandel's most serious objection to this political arrangement is cogent. "According to the ideal of public reason advanced by political liberalism," writes Sandel, "citizens may not legitimately discuss fundamental political and constitutional questions with reference to their moral and religious ideals. But this is an unduly severe restriction that would impoverish political discourse and rule out important dimensions of public deliberation."

Consider how Rawls's principles of justice work in practice with respect to abortion. Government neutrality on abortion would mean that the political values of toleration and women's equality would prevail and that any moral and religious convictions about the origin of life and the status of the embryo would be bracketed. That is to say, it would not be appropriate or permissible to argue against the legality of abortion on the basis of some comprehensive moral or religious viewpoint. So a neutral principle of justice would require the toleration of a woman's right to choose abortion and would not allow Catholic doctrine on abortion to be debated in the public arena. "In the debate about abortion rights," explains Sandel, "those who believe that the fetus is a person from the moment of conception and that abortion is therefore murder could not seek to persuade their fellow citizens of this view in open political debate. Nor could they vote for a law that would restrict abortion on the basis of this moral or religious conviction." The bracketing or exclusion of these comprehensive views in the public arena would extend to all matters pertaining to justice and rights.

Rawls argues that "the ideal of public reason" requires the exclusion of all comprehensive religious and moral views from the affairs of the commonwealth. Sandel explains, "According to this ideal [of public reason], political discourse should be conducted solely in terms of 'political values' that all citizens can reasonably be expected to accept. Because citizens of democratic societies do not share comprehensive moral and religious conceptions, public reason should not refer to such conceptions." This very narrow understanding of public reason would keep the church out of the public square.

A liberal political thinker who is more tolerant of religion, religious diversity and the presence of religion in the public square is William Galston, a professor of political theory and former Clinton adviser. He even tried to persuade Democrats to allow Governor Robert Casey to speak at the 1992 Democratic National Convention. Not Surprisingly, Stephen Macedo believes that Galston "seems ... to go well beyond giving 'diversity its due' when he advances an interpretation of liberalism as the 'Diversity State,' a state that affords 'maximum feasible space for the enactment of individual and group differences, constrained only by the requirements of liberal social unity.'" Maximum feasible accommodation not only carves out space for revealed religions, argues Galston, but also serves to benefit the liberal state in the long run. Galston believes that the beliefs and virtues taught by the revealed religions will, for the most part, contribute to the viability and unity of the liberal state by supporting its core principles and requisite virtues. Galston welcomes opposition to such tendencies as individualism, egoism and unthinking conformity to reigning public opinions. He even says that Catholics "must reject ... versions of liberalism" that "embrace skepticism or relativism about the human good; ... downplay the role of the state or seek to exclude faith-based arguments from public discourse; [or]... emphasize the prerogatives of the state at the expense of family and associational autonomy." Galston is willing to tolerate whatever teachings that he thinks might unduly burden liberal regimes, all the while trying to persuade groups and Churches not to oppose core liberal principles. He specifically urges Catholic social thinkers both to critique "the expansive and unnuanced account of personal autonomy that is the long pole in a number of liberal theoretical tents these days" and to oppose "exclusionary liberalism." But he also urges Catholics not to use theology or natural law to "impose" on non-Catholics their views on abortion, assisted-suicide or homosexuality. He reasons, "Catholics may be affronted by a legal code that permits acts they view as abominable. But in circumstances of deep moral diversity, the alternative to enduring these affronts is even worse." Galston does not advert to the fact that Catholic social thinkers may see, for example, the legalization of physician-assisted suicide as just one more improper use of choice, and consequently may rightfully attempt -- arguably on the basis of Galston's principles -- to "persuade" their fellow Americans not to go the way of Oregon and legalize it. At any rate, Galston believes the advantages of "maximum feasible accommodation," will outweigh the disadvantages by a wide margin, despite the problems that may arise from improper advocacy on the part of the Churches or anyone else.

Galston is very aware that Rawlsian political liberalism unduly narrows religious liberty and, therefore, argues for maximum feasible accommodation of religion out of respect for religion and desire to promote the good of liberal regimes. Galston knows that religions generally promote the practice of the virtues necessary for the survival of liberal regimes. But even this most accommodating liberal would like Catholics to be silent in the public square on key life issues and homosexuality.

CONCLUSION

Pope John Paul II believes that re-evangelization is necessary to overcome the secularization of societies all over the world. But in Christifideles laici he argues that there is a precondition for this ecclesial work. To imbue societies with a Christian spirit, "what is first needed is to first remake the Christian fabric of the ecclesial community itself present in these countries and nations" (No. 34). The problem is that Catholics are conforming to the spirit of the age; they are being evangelized by the culture. Glendon describes crisis this way:

"But the fact is that far too many American Catholic theologians, trained in nondenominational divinity schools, have received little grounding in their own tradition. [This is a point developed compellingly by Fr. Matthew Lamb of Boston College.] Far too many religious education materials are infused with the anger and disappointments of former priests and sisters who went to work in religious publishing houses because their training suited them for little else. And far too many bishops and priests have ceased to preach the Word of God in its unexpurgated fullness, including the teachings that are most difficult to follow in a hedonistic and materialistic society. [George Weigel has emphasized this point in The Courage to be Catholic.]"

A moving literary presentation of the last point is found in The Diary of a Country Priest. The Dean of Blangermont tells the young priest that the Church is powerless to teach the Christian faithful among the petty bourgeoisie that they should moderate their greed for gain.

"They may be more or less amenable to our teachings as far as, for instance, the errors of the flesh are concerned. ... but what they call 'business' appears to these industrious folk their special preserve, where hard work excuses everything, since to them work is a kind of religion. Each one for himself. That's their rule. And we are helpless; it will take years, centuries maybe, to enlighten their minds and rid them of the feeling that business is in the nature of 'war' with all the rights and privileges of real war."

If Bernanos were writing today in the United States, he might very well have said through some priest that the Church confesses an inability to address the personal autonomy of the faithful in matters pertaining to the culture of life and sexual ethics. At any rate, in so far as theologians, catechists, catechetical materials, bishops and priests fail to do their job well, the laity will have a deficient deformation and will be hindered accordingly in carrying out their mission in the Church and in the world. So, the first step in remaking "the Christian fabric of the ecclesial community" is to reestablish sound Catholic leadership in the areas mentioned above. From all appearances this is going to take quite some time in the United States. Not that there won't be individual bishops, priests, catechists and theologians doing a wonderful job all over the country!

Secondly, the various attempts to keep Catholic views out of the public square must be resisted in every way possible by those Catholics who understand that Catholicism is not and can not be a private matter. Theoretical arguments and political action are both necessary.

Third, adequately formed laity may conceive of their mission as a leaven in the world in two ways, to uproot evil and to do good in a positive way. Tolkien' The Lord of the Rings offers help in understanding the first aspect of the lay mission. In part three Gandalf explains that evil will not disappear if the Ring of Power is destroyed and Sauron is defeated, but must be defeated over and over again in every generation.

"If [the Ring of Power] is destroyed, then he will fall; and his fall will be so low that none can foresee his arising ever again. ... And so a great evil of this world will be removed.

Other evils there are that may come; for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary. Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succor of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who lie after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule."

Tolkien's vision is both inspiring and an education in moderation. It encourages people to realize that their success in uprooting evils will not only benefit themselves, but also future generations (e.g. a ban on cloning). But Tolkien's story also teaches that the victory over evil is never definitive on this earth. You can't ban hatred and injustice, as some social justice advocates naively hope. Bernanos is of the same opinion. His Cure de Torcy tells the younger country priest to give up his fixation about wiping out the devil. Then he adds:

"What the Church needs is order. You've got to set things straight all the day long. You've got to restore order, knowing that disorder will get the upper hand the very next day, because such is the order of things, unluckily: night is bound to turn the day's work upside down-night belongs to the devil."

The positive task of the laity is to practice the spiritual and corporal works of mercy and to use whatever political prudence they have to ameliorate the various communities in which they live (e.g. at work, in society and in the political order). While the latter task is difficult and depends on favorable opportunities and rare qualities of soul, the former can always be carried out in various ways.

Lay Service in the Church
Francis X. Maier

Fifty years ago, in the town where I lived, a truck still delivered the milk to a small gray box on our porch. In those days, nobody got skim milk, and the milk still came in heavy glass bottles. I was 4 and my sister was about 1. Every day we would take an afternoon nap together. And because my sister was always very restless, my mother would pat us to sleep with one of her Irish lullabies.

One day my mother was pouring us some milk just before the nap. The bottle slipped and smashed. The pieces of glass were an eighth of an inch thick -- and as she reached forward to clean up the mess, she slashed open her hand from one side of her palm to the other. She bled all over her clothing. In fact, she could only make it stop by wrapping a thick white kitchen towel around her hand.

Five minutes later, she had us both on the bed, singing one of her lullabies, patting me with her good hand, and my sister with her other bloody red stump. And I remember the German side of my gene code thinking -- in 4-year-old English -- "This isn't logical; that has got to hurt" . . . while my Irish side was saying, "Wow, she must really love us."

Now that story has two lessons, and neither has anything to do with Celtic sentimentality. Here's the first lesson: If you want to know what the lay vocation looks like, this is it. Here's a woman who could have been angry, She could have forgotten about her children to take care of herself. Instead, she attended to us until we both fell asleep.

Every time over the next 20 years that I thought my parents were neurotic or out of touch, every time I got tired with all their talk about God, into my memory would sneak this image. And I would run out of words. You see, you can ignore love or try to evade it. But you can't refute it. There was no "secret formula" to this woman's lay vocation. She was simply trying to love as Jesus loved, in the practical daily circumstances where God had placed her. And in doing that, she shaped lives one at a time. She became the kind of "good infection" Mother Teresa often talked about.

All of you can probably remember similar persons from your own experience, or you wouldn't be here. Lay activism, lay organizations, and lay collaboration in the management of the affairs of the Church - all these things are opportunities to give glory to God. But real lay "power" doesn't reside in money or professional skill or positions of influence within the Church bureaucracy. It resides in a personal witness of holiness. And there's a simple, obvious calculus to this. There is no Church without the Eucharist. There is no Eucharist without the priest. But there is also no priest without committed laypeople who form their sons to listen for God's call.

If we don't have enough priests; if we don't have enough holy priests; we need to examine our own consciences first. The terrible scandal of the past year is certainly an indictment of those priests and bishops who helped create the catastrophe. Nothing can excuse their behavior. But the hierarchy can only be blamed to a point. Dysfunctional, promiscuous sex is hardly a clerical monopoly. In fact, behind all of the lay outrage over the current sexual misconduct tragedy lies a deep ambiguity in the faith and behavior of Catholic laypeople.

C. S. Lewis once wrote that "There is no neutral ground in the universe; every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counter-claimed by Satan." John Paul II once said that, "Against the spirit of the world, the Church takes up anew -- each day -- [a]struggle for the soul of the world." And Henri De Lubac, once wrote that, The Gospel warns us that salt can lose its flavor. And if we - that is, most of us - live more or less in peace in the midst of the world, it is perhaps because we are lukewarm."

I think that's a pretty good description of our mission in the world; and a pretty accurate and unsettling assessment of our current attitude toward it. American laypeople use the language of faith when it suits us -- when we need to reassure ourselves about the meaning of suffering or failure or death. But too frequently we don't really let our faith rule our daily choices, including our political and economic choices. Over the past 40 years, Catholic laypeople have accommodated to American culture very comfortably; in fact, much too comfortably. We've assimilated too successfully. As a result, American Catholics are often much more devout Americans, than we are Catholics. In effect, we're good Catholic Protestants. And that deeply affects not just our personal witness, but also our assumptions about the nature of the Church.

Which leads me to the second lesson of my story: We call the Church Ecclesia Mater for a reason. She's our mother as surely as the woman in my story. The Church continues the mission of Jesus Christ in the world. She suffers for the world, forgives, heals, encourages, corrects and guides us exactly as a mother does. So the sooner we stop calling the Church an "it" instead of a "she," the sooner we stop thinking of the Church as a religious institution or a sociology project, and begin to listen to her again as a mother, the better she'll accomplish her work of changing and sanctifying the world.

We can't love Jesus Christ unless we encounter Him as a living person. And we can't love and serve His Church unless we experience her as our mother and teacher. I think this is always hard for Americans because we have one foot in two very different types of societies. The ecclesial, personal, familial nature of the Church is permanently in tension with the practical, democratic, horizontal, even vulgar nature of American political culture.

But a proper relationship with the Church is especially hard for laypeople who serve within her bureaucracies. When Cologne's Cardinal Joachim Meisner criticized the "structures, commissions, statutes and secretariats" within the Church last month for "obfuscating the faith," the criticism he drew was a pretty good indicator of the truth of his remarks. The Church has always had some version of a bureaucracy, beginning with St. Mark serving as St. Paul's secretary. That's a good thing. The apostles created the diaconate precisely to offload some of their practical duties. In fact, very little has ever gotten done in the Church without some version of a staff.

But it's also true that the more institutionalized Church life becomes, the less effectively it images the Church as mother and teacher. Bureaucratic structures breed bureaucratic attitudes. They sap personal faith by routinizing religious questions into impersonal departments, procedures and ecclesial politics.

Ironically, what laypeople have discovered as they've moved onto ecclesial staffs over the past 30 years is something priests have struggled with all along: When your faith is your job, and you experience every day the warts and sins of the imperfect people who inhabit and even lead the Church, how can you possibly "love" her? In fact, how can you even want to see the Church as a "she" rather than an "it"? Where is God's hand in a pastoral statement that gets cobbled together from 300 comments and unofficial maneuvering and deals?

I think that a lot of laypeople who first come to work for the Church arrive with some sort of baggage, and it usually takes one of three forms. Either they think that working for the Church has a permanent sound track of Gregorian Chant, and they'll escape the conflicts of the secular workplace. Or they think they'll straighten out the inefficiencies of the Church with their secular professional skills. Or they think that they need to help the Church emerge from the dark ages on this or that moral issue, and they'll do that from the inside. All of these attitudes are recipes for disappointment.

The Church is always reforming and always in need of reform. But she is astoundingly resilient in the face of both external pressure and internal idiocy and even corruption. She's been around a long time and seen just about everything human imagination has to offer, both good and bad. So she works by a different rhythm, and serving her well requires some very specific virtues. First among them is the maturity to see that institutional renewal is never possible without personal repentance, personal conversion, personal faith and personal holiness. Programs are good. Personal witness is even better.

The layperson who serves within the structures of the Church needs a vivid daily prayer life to sustain a sense of zeal and mission. When these flag in her internal structures, the ability of the Church to be a leaven in the culture very quickly declines. When you don't pray, you become a cynic; you focus on material results to the exclusion of God's role in the success or failure of your work. Most ecclesial bureaucracies, I suspect, have a higher - not a lower - percentage of practical atheists among their number than the general Catholic population for exactly this reason.

Which is why every lay Church worker also needs to cultivate humility, patience and a sense of humor. Laypeople have, and can have, enormous influence on the direction of the Church. The bishops I've worked for have welcomed and relied heavily on lay counsel. But a lay staffer's role is often invisible, and the results are often indirect and delayed. Laypersons with a low threshold for ambiguity should probably seek work elsewhere. Laypersons who lack the imagination to see beyond the American political and economic way of doing things will be actively unhappy. If the Church really is mater et magistra, and the Bride of Christ, it follows that she is not an elected official, and not an appropriate target for internal pressure groups.

Finally, Americans are a people with a very poor sense of history. Yet this is exactly what Catholic laypeople in general and laypeople working for the Church in particular urgently need. Sin and failure are only frightening when we see them out of context - the context of God's glory and God's victory, of which the Church is a living expression, despite the worst mistakes of her children and even the sins of her leaders. I've been baffled all year long at people who describe the current sexual misconduct scandal as unprecedented or uniquely damaging. It's not that I minimize the scandal - as the father of four children, including three sons, I'm as angry, on one level, as any other layperson. Good people have suffered terribly. The witness of the Church has been undermined. But before we get too badly overheated about this tragedy, we might profitably remember the Renaissance or a dozen other unhappy periods in history when the Church faced the same or worse problems.

Sin is ugly, but it isn't news, even when it comes from the clergy. And if we really want to do something about it as laypersons, the answer isn't a war for institutional power that violates the identity of the Church. The answer is becoming holy ourselves, and letting God use us however He wants, in shaping others.

The conference on Catholic Laity in America was held December 2, 2002 and made possible with a grant from
Pew Charitable Trusts.

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