A body for the laity

by Editor · August 22, 2007

Plans mooted in this issue by Archbishop Buti Tlhagale, president of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC), to establish a conference-wide organisation for the laity in South Africa, Botswana and Swaziland are timely.

Social and geographical realities in the region have so far presented an obstacle to the laity speaking and acting with a common purpose.

This lack of structure has weakened lay efforts to evangelise, and impeded laypeople in expressing their shared frustrations. In many dioceses the laity has been in a position of collaborating fruitfully with their bishops, but this has not been consistently so everywhere.

The bishops of Southern Africa have acknowledged this area of weakness in the local Church, which may well be remedied by the establishment of a lay body.

The hard work begins even before its inception. Archbishop Tlhagale outlined in his opening address to the bishops’ winter plenary session how such a lay body might work. Crucially, it would operate under the auspices of the SACBC.

Inaugurated as a structure within the conference, such a lay body would have immediate access to funding, assuring its operational capacity.

Working within the bishops’ conference, the lay body would also have a measure of direct access to the bishops to represent the views and aspirations of the laity. It would assist in charting the future path of the local Church, as partners of the bishops, clergy and religious (and, one may add, the many non-governmental organisations and institutions operating under the Catholic ethos).

This is broadly the kind of collaboration which the Council fathers at Vatican II had in mind when they advanced the notion of collegiality. The bishops of Southern Africa have long embraced the wider principle of a collegial relationship with the laity. In working with a structure that is representative of the laity, the bishops will be in a position to realise this long-standing aim fully.

Many feel that often collegiality has been exercised on a token level. For example, a refrain of complaints about the synods of bishops has had it that the agenda and the outcome have been determined by the Roman curia, often failing to reflect the priorities or mandates of the attending bishops.

There may be a temptation to likewise act prescriptively with a lay body which operates under the auspices of the SACBC. The bishops are doubtlessly conscious of this temptation, and will surely seek to neutralise it.

The consequences of a lay body being prescribed to by the bishops, or even being seen as such, are self-evident. Without credibility flowing from independence of thought, such a lay body would not be fully acknowledged as speaking for those it would seek to represent, but be seen as being a tool of the bishops.

It would be devastating should such perceptions arise, and every measure must be taken to reassure an often suspicious laity the Catholic public, so to speak that a lay body will truly represent them.

Catholics tend to disagree on all manner of subjects outside the essentials of our faith. A credible lay body will need to represent this richness of diversity as well. A wide representation of experiences and convictions within a lay body would also address Archbishop Tlhagale’s concern that a lay body might be taken over by people with a particular agenda.

A diverse lay body could communicate to the bishops what lay Catholics are thinking and how they perceive the Church. This, in turn, would offer the bishops a scope to address directly the sources of concerns of the laity the people whom the bishops were appointed to serve.