Judging from comments overheard in the crowd beforehand, many of the 300 people who attended a September 23 panel discussion on the role of the Catholic laity came because they wanted to learn about the major changes in the Catholic Church that would be needed to increase lay involvement, especially as the Church seeks to move beyond the recent clergy abuse scandals. But in fact, no major changes are needed, the three panelists—a priest, a theologian, and an active lay parishioner—all said: The laity already have the theological mandate and the power under canon law to shape the Church; the challenge for laypeople is to realize and act on that power.

"It's not a question of may or might the laity participate, but rather that they must participate in the governance of the Church," Thomas Groome, professor of theology at BC and a national authority on religious formation, told the crowd, most of which, apart from a smattering of students and faculty, seemed to come from the broad middle of the Catholic laity beyond campus. "We should exercise the rights and responsibilities that come with our baptism. Otherwise, we fail to take our faith seriously as adult Christians."

The lively discussion took place in the basement cafeteria of Lyons Hall. (It had been scheduled for a smaller room, then moved to accommodate the large turnout.) Offered through Boston College's Church in the 21st Century initiative, it was to be the first of three nights of panel discussions on "The Laity and the Governance of the Church" sponsored by the theology department. The other two panelists were Rev. Walter Cuenin, the longtime pastor of Our Lady Help of Christians parish, in Newton, Massachusetts, and Mary Jo Bane, a professor of government at Harvard University who is active in her Dorchester parish and who is organizing a cross-parish lay leadership forum in Boston. The panel was moderated by Lisa Sowle Cahill, a BC professor of theology.

Cuenin laid the groundwork by briefly tracing the history of the sacraments of baptism and ordination. For centuries, he said, children were baptized individually and often privately, away from the sanctuary, with the chief purpose of the ritual being to cleanse original sin. But since the Second Vatican Council the meaning of infant baptism has changed, he continued, becoming more communal and less individual. "Baptism marks a person's entry into the Christian community" and to the responsibilities that entails, Cuenin said. "All of us are empowered by the spirit through baptism, which gives every Catholic a share in the priesthood of Christ."

In a similar way, Cuenin said, the source of the power to ordain priests is now seen to come from the "community of the baptized." Changes in the ordination liturgy requiring a congregational response (the saying of "Amen," for example) reflect a growing awareness of the community's role. "While the bishop still presides, there is a sense today that it's the whole Church that ordains," he said. As a result of these theological changes, as well as some demographic ones such as the decline in priestly vocations, the Church, said Cuenin, may have to rethink the sharp distinction it has historically made between the categories of clergy and laity.

Bane began by stressing the difficulties of the current moment for Catholics. "It is an easy time in which to be discouraged and to withdraw from the community, to exit in response to distress," she said. "It's also an easy time to be angry and exercise 'voice' through protests and strident criticism." Neither response, however, is constructive or "consistent with our baptismal calling," she said. "We need to be developing a loyal voice, imagining and bringing into being the Church that our God would have us live in, in this place, in these times." Bane said that by loyal, she did not mean subservient: "A loyal voice is attentive to revelation and respectful of tradition but also confidently prophetic and visionary—and as radical as the voice of Him who lives forever in the Church."

Bane brought a social science perspective to the cause as well. Large institutions, she said, routinely recognize that "human beings are susceptible to the corruptions of power—and that no one person or small group can be as creative or productive as a larger group mobilized in the service of its mission." In dioceses as in corporations, she said to applause, Americans "have learned recently just how much havoc can be wreaked when power and greed are unchecked." If conditions of "participation, freedom, and decentralization" can strengthen secular institutions and serve their purposes, Bane said, then "surely our God, infinitely creative and inclusive, would want us to make use of these human innovations in the service of the most important mission of all."

Groome said that in the Catholic Church laypeople will likely continue to encounter the "roadblock of clericalism"—what he described as an "exclusivist, elitist, clerical caste system, in which priests are held to be like gods" and which stands in opposition to authentic priesthood. Nevertheless, he said, the clergy abuse scandals are "an occasion for all [Catholics] to grow up" and face their obligation. "One of the gifts of this dreadful scandal," he said, "is that it may force us to take upon ourselves the unfinished agenda of Vatican Council II."

An older member of the audience who did not give her name described the pain of having her adult daughter, whom she had raised to be a good Catholic, turn against the Church because of its attitudes toward women. The woman said she and her daughter rarely discussed religious views these days, but that the daughter had called recently to say that she had read an article in the New Yorker about a Catholic parish that was inclusive, open, loving, and progressive.

"She said, 'Mom, if there had been a parish like that when I was a little younger, I probably would have stayed,'" according to the woman. The parish in question, it turned out, was Our Lady Help of Christians, in Newton, whose pastor, Cuenin, sat on the panel. From the murmurs in the room, it seemed that progress perceived in even one parish offered some comfort.

Richard J. Higgins

Photo: St. Ignatius Church, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. By Lee Pellegrini


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