The priesthood of the laity

If one talked about the “priesthood of all believers” or indeed the “priesthood of the laity” before 1965, Catholics would look at you as if you were insane. After all, priests and people were different, weren’t they?

Catholics with more theological knowledge would have been able to say that in baptism every Catholic was in Christ priest, prophet and king. But in practice the Church followed the old medieval dictum, “Pray, Pay and Obey”, when it came to the laity.

Even before the Council, however, things were changing. In 1891 modern Catholic social teaching was launched by the encyclical Rerum Novarum of Leo XIII. While dealing primarily with workers’ rights, Leo also emphasised the importance of lay Catholics taking the lead in public life — in politics and the workplace.  This idea developed into Catholic Action, a collection of Church movements of workers, students, professionals, intellectuals and politicians called to proclaim the gospel in their particular life situations.

At Vatican II Catholic Action was confirmed and given greater emphasis. As the vast majority of the “pilgrim people of God”, lay people were no longer seen as somehow “second class citizens” but as sharing fully in the ministry of the Church, in and through the work they did and particularly through the witness of Christian marriage.

In Apostolicam Actuositatem (1965), the Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, the Council declared the lay vocation, present from earliest times, essential to the Church’s mission. Not only was this necessary due to priest shortages and the growing autonomy of many sectors of society, it was important and good thing in itself!

Lay people were to be evangelisers in what is called the “apostolate of like towards like” for “[t]here the witness of their life is completed by the witness of their word” (Apostolicam Actuositatem,13): doctors with doctors, intellectuals with intellectuals, plumbers with plumbers, home-makers with home-makers, to name but a few. Lived experience outside that of priests and religious was the basis on which laity could connect with those in need of evangelisation on their own terms.

The Council was emphatic that laity could and should engage in the public square. The “political vocation” was not in most circumstances appropriate to priests and religious. In many countries clergy were prohibited from holding political office anyway.

While the Church was not wedded to any particular ideology, the Council recognised that the Church had a duty to speak out on issues that concerned the common good of humankind. Well-formed lay people could and should bring the insights of their faith into the political arena.

The Council noted too that prayer was essential for all Christians, though it should be adapted to circumstances that made it appropriate.

One of the outcomes of the Council in this area was the renewed enthusiasm of Catholics for retreats, spiritual direction and parish missions. The diversity of spirituality one sees today—from the revival of traditional practices through to the thoroughly postmodern!—can be seen as a fruit of the renewal of the laity in the Church. However it’s done, the fact that people are praying should welcomed.

In addition, the Constitution on the Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Consilium (1963), emphasised that worship was not the preserve of the clergy, but of the whole assembly.

The Belgian-born theologian Edward Schillebeeckx OP noted, it “broke the clergy’s monopoly on the liturgy…Whereas it was formerly the priest’s affair, with the faithful no more than his clientele, the Council regard[ed] not only the priest but the entire Christian community, God’s people, as the subject of the liturgical celebration.”

As in the ancient Church, lay people were now participants encouraged to participate in various ministries: lector, acolyte and extraordinary minister of Communion. Indeed, as time passed and with the priest shortage growing acute, many would even be trained as leaders of “Communion services” where priests were unavailable.

The laity has started to come into its own. Laity have become leaders in the Church, many of them challenging the residue of clericalism that many Council Fathers like Emile De Smedt and Leo-Joseph Suenens decried.

This has made many clergy and laity uneasy. But ultimately it has led to a revitalisation of the Church, a Church where one can say with confidence: “We are all Church”.