Regarding The Lay Faithful

Peasant Times-Dispatch Issue 44

+JMJ+

Thank you for reading another issue of The Peasant Times-Dispatch, where we explore the life of faith from the perspective of a peasant—we aren’t experts, we aren’t theologians, we are just trying to do our best (and trying to mean it). Last month, we talked about God’s Will.

If you like what you read here, consider supporting The Peasant Times-Dispatch by sharing this post with a friend or leaving a comment telling me what you thought!

Photo by Mike on Unsplash

---

Put Me In, Coach

When a layman sets himself up as an expert on morals he often goes astray: laymen can only be disciples.
- St. Josemaria Escriva

Everyone has a role to play in the Kingdom of God. The word “vocation” gets thrown around sometimes in clerical contexts only. You might also hear people talk about the ‘vocation of marriage’. Vocation has taken an implicit meaning of ‘something you do other than being a layman’. Like the word ‘layman’ has come to mean ‘vocationless’, and I am here to tell you that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

The universal vocation is the call to Holiness. Now, if everyone has a vocation that means no one has one, which means we’re back to square one. But Layman is itself a vocation. You have a role in the Kingdom of God, no matter what you are doing. At a minimum you should be pursuing holiness. Beyond that, you should strive to live out your vocation well—be it holy orders, marriage, or otherwise laity.

When we don’t understand this, we are prone to certain errors of thinking. This makes sense from a logic perspective: if you are missing information, you cannot make good decisions. If you don’t recognize that being a layman is a vocation unto itself, that you have a specific role within the Church in this capacity, you cannot take an orderly role in the body of Christ. It is like if your kneecap thought it was the only bone in your body, and behaved that way, impeding your ability to walk.

It is of supreme importance to understand ourselves within the Body of Christ. How do we do this; how do we metabolize the day-to-day life of the Church? What is our job as the laity?

Harmony

How anxious people are to get out of place! Think what would happen if each bone and each muscle of the human body wanted to occupy some position other than that proper to it. There is no other reason for the world’s discontent. Persevere in your place, my son; there…what work you can do to establish our Lord’s true kingdom!
- St. Josemaria Escriva

Before I address the substance of the question, we need to talk about how jobs work in principle. We all understand, intuitively even if we’ve never thought about it in these terms, that a job has boundaries. I have a certain set of tasks I am required to perform for my employer, that’s a job. But we can break this out into it’s disparate parts to make the idea plain. You have entered into an authority/subject relationship with your employer. Your employer asks you to perform these tasks, and promises not to ask you to perform tasks outside of that scope. You agree to perform those tasks, and promise not to perform tasks outside of that scope. If the job is, say, a ticketing clerk at a movie theater, your scope is limited to selling tickets. Your employer cannot reasonably ask you to jump in the kitchens and start cooking at the in-theater restaurant, that’s a different job requiring different skills, you weren’t hired for that. There’s a limitation on the scope. Likewise you can’t give tickets away for free, or charge different prices depending on how you are feeling—that isn’t your authority.

This thought experiment tells us that authority is delegated down to you, that the authority qua employer relationship cannot exceed certain boundaries, and the authority which you are given to exercise cannot exceed certain boundaries.

This applies to the Church insofar as each vocation has a specified scope. A priest has the power to consecrate and administer the sacraments. A married couple has the power to create children. A monk has the power to pray and work for the good of the Kingdom. It is easy, as a layman, to look at all those things and see them as specific jobs. One’s a chef, ones a ticketing clerk, ones a janitor, ones a security guard. What is a layman?

The vocation of the laity is a general vocation, like the call to holiness. Or rather, it is inseparable from the call to holiness insofar as we have an obligation to pursue the sacraments. But we also have a responsibility of obedience, we have the responsibility of evangelism, and we have the responsibility of charity. You might summarize the three of these in a word, harmony. The laity must be harmonious.

That sounds obvious, but when we start looking at some of the errors we start to see how, as the laity, we can easily be, and often are, less than harmonious.

Errors

When you see people of uncertain professional standing acting as leaders at public functions of a religious nature, don’t you feel the urge to whisper in their ears: Please, would you mind being just a little less Catholic?
- St. Josemaria Escriva

Let’s review some of the ways we can get out of joint as laymen.

Error: It is the Church’s job to serve us, we owe nothing back.

This is simple. The laymen obviously owe Time, Talent, and Treasure to the Church, in ways formal and informal. But we owe other things: We owe the Church new Catholics. The priests aren’t the ones going out into the world evangelizing the public. At the end of every Mass, in some translations anyway, we are given the instruction: Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord. This is non negotiable, the Good News is worth sharing. There are a thousand and one ways to share the good news, but what are you doing, really? Married couples also have a particular obligation to supply the Church with priests. Good priests are raised in good families, and priest shortages are not a failure of the Church, it’s a failure of us. It is our job to provide good priests. Good priests make good bishops. Pope Leo was born and raised in an American home and an American family. There are no longer any excuses.

Error: If I am well read and a student of theology I have some authority as a layman.

This one is common. We see wise and intelligent folk speaking on behalf of the Church with no formal authority from the Church. These can include public figures like Matt Fradd or lesser known pseudonymous figures like Scoot. The intention behind these endeavors is good: it is, in it’s own way, a form of evangelism, of community reinforcement. The Peasant Times-Dispatch is addressed to laity who are already Catholic, Pints with Aquinas aims to be a little more evangelical in its audience though it isn’t without value for the layfolk. The problem comes when these layfolk begin developing a cult of personality around themselves that does not point back to the Church. People who even use their audience to contradict the Church or encourage schism. This is extremely dangerous, spiritually. We cannot construct for ourselves any authority as laymen, we must always remember we are subject to and receive from the Church. If we can remember this, we will never want to claim we have any special authority or insight into the Church—we will remember we are laymen.

Error: If enough of us assemble to express ourselves, the Church has to listen.

How relatable! This seems to be how secular politics functions these days. Angry crowds descending on polling places or writing letters or agitating on social media for some action. But the Church is not structured that way. The Church is a Kingdom. Christ is King, the Pope is the steward, the Bishops are like lesser nobles, and the priests are like mayors of our little parish communities. They are not tyrants, but rather have a filial authority—we call them Father—and are obliged to care for us as a father cares for his children. Sure, the children can demand icecream for dinner, even unanimously, but the Father knows that is not what is best for his children, and must not waver. No amount of popular action carries unto itself any authority within the Church. Our Fathers may, moved by filial piety, seek to satisfy our demands through some appropriate, alternate means—but that does not mean the popular uprising was efficacious, only that the priests and bishops have heard the message.

Error: The Church does not have our best interests at heart, and is faulty, corrupt, or broken, and needs some serious work from us laity if we are going to fix it.

The Church, as indicated above, is a family. And yes, humans can fail us, just as our human families fail us. But the Church is more than merely human, it is a spiritual kingdom also. It has, to use a turn of phrase the kids might understand, metaphysical ‘plot armor’. The Holy Spirit protects the Church from true error. It is as impossible for the Church to teach error as a triangle to have four sides, it’s a contradiction, an impossibility. The Church has survived for 2,000 years and resisted the temptation to error at every turn, no other human organized body has accomplished such a feat! And if you see that there are problems in the Church, perhaps that is a sign that you are uniquely qualified to participate in the correction? We cannot sit idly by while our Church falls apart and satisfy ourselves in pointing it out. We must roll up our sleeves and take care of our Holy Mother if we believe she is sick. It is not THE Church, it is OUR Church, it is MY Church. A problem with her is a problem with me, and I must scrupulously examine myself before I begin to operate on her.

The Glory of the Laity

In that cry ‘Serviam!’ you express your determination to ‘serve’ the Church of God most faithfully, even at the cost of fortune, of reputation, and of life.
- St. Josemaria Escriva

It is an honor to be a layman in the Catholic Church. We have a great gift, a great responsibility to steward that gift, and a great calling to share it with others. We can operate harmoniously with our priests and bishops and with each other, supply for the needs of the Church and, in so doing, enable the Church to multiply the loaves and supply the needs of the faithful in the parish, diocese, and world.

It starts at home, it starts with us. It is important to examine ourselves, as mentioned, and seek to be properly ordered within the Church. We should not be selfish, we should not point to ourselves. In fact, we should seek to supply the needs of the Church without anyone but the priest knowing we are doing it. With a secret audience of God alone, we will know we have served Him well.

Even when laymen disagree on particulars, I think we can agree we all want what is best for the Church and what is best for souls. The disagreements we have are important, but we must recognize that it is not our responsibility to solve them. We take our needs and petitions to Holy Mother Church, and in Her capable hands, with patience, we can watch her weave glorious threads out of all our worries, and return them to us in better condition than we could have ever hoped.

The human Church is populated by fallen humans and built with broken bricks, but the Heavenly Church is eternal, indefectible, and faultless. The yoke is easy, if only we will accept it, and do our part to pull these easy burdens.

Thank You

If you liked this essay, make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss future essays, dropping monthly on the 15th! If you think someone you know needs to read some of what I’ve said, share it with your friends! Otherwise, thank you so much for reading.

AJPM