Laity, clergy have an equal responsibility

One of the major teachings of the Second Vatican Council, and arguably the most significant for the pastoral life of local churches, was the instruction that our dignity as members of the Church comes from our baptism. The document of the Second Vatican Council, Decree on the Laity, taught that because we are baptized “the laity likewise share in the priestly, prophetic, and royal office of Christ …” As St. John Paul II wrote in his catechism:
Jesus Christ is the one whom the Father anointed with the Holy Spirit and established as priest, prophet and king. The whole People of God participates in these three offices of Christ and bears the responsibilities for mission and service that flow from them. (#783)
Each of us, because we are baptized, are called to be a priest, in other words a sanctifier, to be a prophet, in other words to be a teacher, and to be a king, in other words a servant leader.
This teaching of the Council was not a new teaching but, as with much of the Council, it was a return to the sources of the Church — a return to what the early Church taught and lived. As St. Paul wrote 2,000 years ago: we are a priestly people.
This was not a new teaching, but it was a recaptured focus. Our focus before the Council tended to be a little different. Our focus then was often that our dignity as members of the Church came from our role in the Church. I remember in a religious class as a child seeing the Church diagramed as a pyramid with the Pope at the top, then the next layer was the cardinals, then the bishops, then the priests, then the religious, and finally the laity at the bottom. The Council, however, told us our dignity was not from our role in the Church but from our baptism. The Council offered us a new focus in understanding who we are as Church.
This was transformative in the pastoral life of the Church. The laity became empowered to be priests, prophets and kings. For example, when St. Paul VI reformed the Mass, he provided for the laity to proclaim scripture during the liturgy. Prior to then, the proclamation of scripture in liturgy was reserved to the ordained. The readings at Mass were only read by the priest, facing the altar with his back to the congregation and speaking in a language the people did not understand. St. Paul VI allowed the laity to proclaim scripture facing the people and in a language they knew. Prior to St. Paul VI, the distribution of the Eucharist was restricted to the ordained, now the laity could, for example, bring the Eucharist to shut-ins.
It also opened up ministries many other ministries for the laity. I remember standing in the vestibule of one of our parishes. The pastor had printed a brochure of how parishioners could be involved in the ministries of the parish. I counted the ways for the laity to join parish ministries. They numbered 132. What struck me is that almost none of these opportunities existed before the Council. They were ministries of sanctifying, such as being an extraordinary minister of Holy Communion; ministries of teaching, such as being involved in the Confirmation program; ministries of servant leadership, such as serving on the pastoral council. These and most of the other parish ministries developed only after the Council.
The role of the laity was felt throughout the local church. When I entered the seminary in the 1970s for the Archdiocese of New Orleans, every archdiocesan office was headed by a priest. It would have been unacceptable for a lay person to head an archdiocesan office. Whether it was the offices of youth ministry, family life, facilities management, superintendent of schools, development, finance director, permanent diaconate, editor of the newspaper — every office was headed by a priest, with one exception, Catholic Social Services, which was headed by a religious sister. The same was true in the Archdiocese of Mobile.
At that time every Catholic school was led by a priest, sister or brother. It would have been unthinkable for a Catholic school to have a lay person as a principal. In our Archdiocese of Mobile, the first time a layperson was selected to be principal of a Catholic school was in 1974, nine years after the Council.
The examples could go on. In our own archdiocese we have lay-based ministries which are blessings to us all: Men of St. Joseph, Daughters of Mary, Archangel Radio and FOCUS missionaries are but four of them. None of this is to diminish the role of the clergy and in a future article I will speak about how much we need the clergy. Suffice it to say that, although the roles of laity and clergy are different, the Church teaches that laity have an equal dignity with the clergy, and therefore an equal responsibility, to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ and to meet the needs of neighbor. Clergy and laity must stand shoulder to shoulder in fulfilling the command of Jesus to go out and teach all nations. None of us can expect that it is pleasing to God to expect someone else to do this for us.