Living the Call. Michael Novak
The law commanded the death of such a blasphemer.
Yet the Voice in the Light seemed to be saying, “Saul, Saul, when you do this to one of the least of these, you do it unto Me,” as if a new reality lay outside fleshly sight but was vivid as a palm tree shining in the sun: the Lord God lives in each human being, and they in Him. There is one mystical union bonding all humans in Christ so that if you do violence to a human being, you do it to Christ.
This new vision holds that human beings live in two worlds: the natural world and the spiritual world. In the natural world, they live on the same streets, in the same dusty towns, as their neighbors; nowadays they watch the same television shows and sports, munch on the same snacks as everybody else. But they are also living in a spiritual world that draws them ever more deeply in and illuminates for them a truer and more satisfying way to understand their brief human existence, its inner secret, its purpose, its reason for being.
We begin our study in the natural world. The first part of this book is devoted to life in the lay world: work with the poor, or the disabled, or the young, or our secular colleagues, how we can spend our time and energy and talents to work for and improve our Church. This section will profile nine living pioneers among the new laity in three important areas: education, parish life, and lay ministries. Just as the Church teaches us how to live like Christ by offering us incarnate examples, we thought it best to tell a large part of our story through the lives of these diverse and highly instructive practitioners. I can hardly wait until you meet these great people and learn of their inner voyages and their creative work in the world.
The second part of this book is devoted to life in the spiritual world. How can we learn to live in that inner world in a way that heightens our vision of the ordinary? As with everything else, it is best to be taught the fundamentals and then to learn by doing through practical exercises. We offer here just a tiny taste of a larger life to become skilled in. To become at home in.
Bill and I are indebted to our great assistants, Naomi Schaefer Riley and Elizabeth Shaw, for their help in making this project a reality. In addition, Erin Wales provided invaluable administrative assistance, and Mitchell Boersma provided important background research and help in proofreading. We hope this book gives the keen pleasure in discovery to its readers that it did to its authors.
PART I
INTO THE WORLD
CHAPTER 1
Taking Our Knowledge and Putting It to Use in the World
To live in the world as a faithful Catholic today requires strength. From every direction, there is criticism of the Church. The secular culture, and particularly the media, speaks with a surprisingly unified voice against Catholicism. Plenty of the comments are merited, but many are not. And the Church faces significant challenges going forward. But at this time in the Church’s history, we believe that a volume celebrating its great traditions and practices, and looking with optimism toward the future, might be a welcome breath of fresh air.
We would like to provide lay Catholics with suggestions of how to live out their faith in the community, or, as some pastors say, “For laypeople to live out their baptismal call, they should transform the world . . .” In the first half of this book, we would like to lay out some of the seemingly countless options open to laypeople now. The needs of the Church, and therefore the opportunities for laypeople, are truly historic.
First, some background is necessary. While proportionally, Catholics have remained about a quarter of the American population for some time, by simple head count, the Church has grown significantly. Even while the birthrate among Catholics slowed during the 20th century, waves of immigration continued to keep the Church fresh and alive. The Catholic population grew by more than 8 percent every decade from 1950 to 2000.
But the Church’s ability to minister to the faithful has been challenged. During the same period, every 10 years, the number of diocesan priests decreased by about 13 percent and the membership in religious orders declined about 20 percent.
What do these numbers mean for the everyday life of the Church and its flock? Among other things, they explain how it has come to be that 1 in 7 parishes in the U.S. no longer has a resident priest. More and more lay Catholics are waking up to find that their priests, when they are present, are overworked, indeed overwhelmed, by the extent of their responsibilities. Almost half of American parishes share their pastor with another parish or mission. There are also shortages of religious leaders at the 18,500 parishes, 8,500 elementary schools, 1,600 high schools, 245 colleges and universities, and 750 hospitals and health clinics owned and operated by the Church.
Historically, the leadership of these institutions has resided in the hands of the clergy. But in recent years, much of the responsibility for them has been given to laypeople. As former New York Times columnist Peter Steinfels reported in A People Adrift, the transition has been startling: “In 1965, there were no married or single men ordained to be permanent deacons and almost no laypeople employed full-time in pastoral work by the Church. In 2002, there were 13,764 permanent deacons and another 14,000 lay ‘ecclesial ministers’ working alongside sisters in pastoral posts.”
As of the time of Steinfels’s writing in 2003, there were over 30,000 lay parish ministers being paid to work more than 20 hours a week in over 60 percent of American parishes. Almost three-quarters were working full time. The shift toward lay leadership can perhaps be summed up best with this statistic: as far back as 1999, there were almost 10 times as many lay ecclesial ministers in formation (30,000) as there are candidates for the priesthood (3,400).
As this transition has occurred, so has another. Parish life has increased in scale and complexity. According to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, about 22 percent of parishes celebrate Mass in more than one language at least once a month. In their book, American Catholics Today, William D’Antonio, Dean Hoge, and James Davidson note that more than a quarter of U.S. Catholic parishes “are of a size equivalent to what would be considered a ‘mega-church’ in Protestant terminology—they have more than 1,200 registered households and more than 3,000 parishioners.” Also, like the megachurches, these parishes have launched dozens of new ministries, activities for people of all ages, and many offer five or more Masses on any given weekend.
Who is going to take responsibility for all of this?
The growing involvement of laypeople in the Church is not simply a demographic necessity. It is a theological imperative. The underpinnings for this imperative come from all levels of the Church—most important, of course, from the Second Vatican Council. It is often noted that there can be a long lag time—sometimes as much as 100 years—between the end of a Church council and the actual execution of the approved strategies and tactics.
The existence and legitimacy of the role of laypeople is expressed in documents throughout the history of the Church. But it was the Second Vatican Council that laid out this role most forcefully.
In Apostolicam Actuositatem, the Council Fathers of Vatican II state that “our own times require of the laity . . . zeal: in fact, modern conditions demand that their own apostolate be broadened and intensified. With a constantly increasing population, continual progress in science and technology, and closer interpersonal relationships, the areas for the lay apostolate have been immensely widened.”
In the document, laypeople are instructed that “an apostolate of this kind does not consist only in the witness of one’s way of life; a true apostle looks for opportunities to announce Christ by words addressed either to nonbelievers with a view to leading them to faith, or to the faithful with a view to instructing, strengthening them and encouraging them to a more fervent life.” Apostolicam Actuositatem mentions not only charitable work and other volunteering opportunities within the Church community but also pastoral duties, including the “teaching of Christian doctrine, certain liturgical actions and the care of souls.”
In 1988, Pope John Paul II reiterated some of these sentiments in Christifideles Laici, the post-synodal