Collaborators, Informers and Secret Service

Clare Watkins

About a year ago I was asked if I would present a paper on the theology of laity to a conference whose title was “Patterns of Priesthood”, and whose purpose was to “attempt to open up the ground for a discussion of the subject of mirtisuy and communion”. The inclusion of a paper on laity seemed to me then, and seems now, both significant and awkward. Primarily it is a phenomenon to be rejoiced at, in that discussions of priesthood and ministry cannot take place without a thoroughly ecclesial sense of the whole people of God. The point is clearly being made that the theology of laity--or “laico1ogy”-is, like the theology of ministry, or of ordained priesthood, just one aspect of ecclesiology; all these subjects are concerned with looking at what it means to be Church, each from its particular angle. In expressing this we are, of course, indebted to the work of Yves Congar’; in his subsmtial work on laity, he stressed that the purpose behind a theology of laity was fundamentally the reworking of ecclesiology and, in particular, the complementing of a dominant “hierarchology”2. Following in this tradition we can recognise the complexity of ecclesiology, where studies of priesthood, laity, religious life and so forth are distinctive, but not discrete. Our basic concern, whether we are talking about laity, the ordained, hierarchical sfructures or charismatic gifts, is always the same: the Church as a living and structured community, whose identity is found in sharing in Christ’s ministry in a rich variety of ways.

Yet there is still a certain awkwardness involved in talking about laity under the heading of “priesthood”. Theologically we are, of course, a people of priests, a ministering community of charismatically gifted women and men; but we continue to have problems in fiUing together this theology, this faith, and our real life experience of living in and as the Church. For all our liberating and empowering theologies of laity and ministry we remain, in the Roman tradition, bound to a way of looking at the Church as a community made up of more-or-less discrete “states”, or ways of being. It was at that conference a year ago that I began to think that it was this way of typifying ways of being in the Church that was holding back our thinking, and our pastoral action. In this article, I want to make another attempt at setting out a way forward for a theology of

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miristry in the Church- view of ministry which takes full account both of Vatican 11’s theology of laity and of the real situation in our Church communities.

Each one of us is called to minister, as a Christian witness, wherever we find ourselves; this is the basis of all else we say about ministry. I want to stress at the outset that I am not concerned with too particular and odd a group of people. In this article I will be especially focusing on how our theology of laity, in theory and in practice, offers new perspectives on those more or less public and leadership ministries of the Church uaditionally associated with the ordained priesthood.

As the Second Vatican Council’s theology of laity has been received in our communities we have seen the development of certain forms of “lay ministry”, in which non-ordained women and men take on more-or- less official and leadership roles in the Church. At the same time a certain crisis regarding the ordained priesthood has led to fewer men being ordained. Our patterns of public ministry and pastoring are clearly changing, and will no doubt continue so to do; but if such change is to be coherent and consistent we need to examine it within a theological perspective, and offer reflection and articulation alongside the action, to support it and give it direction.

Laity and m i n i s t r y crisis in theology Whilst welcoming this fruitfulness of lay involvement in apostolic activity which, among other things, often involves laity in forms of public ministry-we cannot afford to neglect the real challenges and difficulties that are becoming apparent. From within these Iay activities a deeply rooted crisis is growing; a crisis of language, identity and understanding. I t is a crisis in authentic articulation, which has deep practical implications.

My focus for understanding this crisis is with what might clumsily be called “the lay C1ite”‘hat group of unusually involved laity who feature more and more prominently in the history of laity since the Council. In this group, which is, significantly, difficult to name or define clearly, the pressing need for a new language of ministry and ways of being in the Church is especially evident.

When composing this article I set out to retell the story of laity and ministry from the years before the Council to the present; I found myself referring repeatedly, and with increasing unease, to “the lay Clite”. It seems to me now that these odd people, representative of no one but themselves, are, nonetheless, of peculiar significance in any discussion of contemporary patterns of ministry and community structures in the Church. This significance lies not so much in the group itself, but raher in

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the various tensions and ambiguities of conciliar ecclesiology from which it springs. For, in the end, the crisis of language and identity faced by this lay khte is the gordian knot into which is tied the identities of all kinds of minislries, whether exercised by laity, clerics, or religious.

The term “lay elite” is not unusual in laicological writings; it is frequently used to refer to that group of lay women and men who find themselves in positions of public ministry, leadership, and administration in the Church. This is a shady group of people (at least juridically speaking!): they are not clerics, though often doing jobs traditionally associated with ciergy; nor are they properly lay, in the usual sense, with their ‘‘proper secularity” being complicated through their more-or-less full-time ecclesial occupations.‘ Importantly, this is not a discrete group, easily defined or bounded by certain tasks or bodies; nor can a line be easily drawn between them and “the general mass of laity”. A positive description of the lay Clite might typify them as bridge-builders, who span the gap (real or imagined) between the lay and ordained states as they are commonly perceived. Such bridge-builders are to be found working in formalised “collaborative ministry”, and in less clearly defined roles in the parish-in liturgy, catechesis, secretarial work and so forth. Whatever we make of it, this is the phenomenon of “collaborators and informers” that we encounter when we set about articulating that secret service that is the powerful ministry of all God’s people.

The fact of this lay Clite requires that we reassess our theologies of laity, clergy and ministry in rhe Roman Church in a way that makes proper sense of the reality‘; here is a sociological phenomenon which challenges our understanding of the Church and the Christian life, as classically understood in terms of “states”. In particular, this group of unusual lay p p l e focuses our attention on a highly significant strand of the ecclesiology of Vatican I1 and uses it to hammer at the various closed doors that are part of the reality of today’s Church. It is a group that repeatedly raises the question: This i s what the theology says; what difference does it make? In a living and more-or-less effective way these lay people are working to ensure that we cannot get away with a “pure”or theoretical ecclesiology that makes theological claims that cannot be cashed.

Perhaps the significance of this unusual group of lay people can be better understood when we reflect on that question so often asked of lay people in public ministry: What exactly do you do? It is the question that faces all lay chaplains, pastoral workers and the rest, from fellow lay people and clergy alike. It is a difficult question because it highlights that problem of identity and articulation which is characteristic of the group; at the same time, it is precisely in taking on this question, and attempting to

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forge an answer b it that individual lay women and men are beginning to fashion new ways of understanding Christian ministry, ways that draw on pecullarty lay experience or emphases, ways that employ new terms in our theology of ministry, and dust off old ones and look at them from a new angle.

This in itself is a massively important task for renewing our understanding of Church and ministry. This work of a middle, hazily defined group must force new perspectives to be taken on the more usual ways of lay and ordained living as Church. Once a swng and confident voice has been given to how a lay person, one without sacramental powers, pastors and ministers, the question must be asked afresh of the ordained: What exactly do you do? And at the same time the woman in public ministry, who is also living a “properly lay” life with a family, and mortgage and so forth, can call out as symbol and prophet with the same question of identity to all laity, who live their ministry in less articulated and public ways. At the heart of all this questioning and counter- questioning is the potential for a renewed language of ministry that can, I believe, refresh our theologising on the subjects of laity, priesthood and, fundamentally, the Church.

What seems of paramount importance to me is that we find a linguistic and conceptual framework that makes sense of all the various ways of being Church. It is through undertaking a deep exploration of the tensions most basic to ecclesial life that we can begin to build such a grammar for ecclesiological understanding. The Church is sacramental in its nature; human-anddivine, an organization of men and women, and the Body of Christ. It is in this dynamic of sacramental existence, vitally expressed through the communion of the lives of the baptised, that we can find proper and liberating modes of expression for the social realities of being the Church. As the story of laity and ministry unfolds it becomes clear that it is precisely in this tension of ecclesial realities, where history meets eschatology, that we find the sociological phenomenon of the lay elite. The challenge is to ask of this social reality the questions of theology-questions of identity in Christ, ministry, and Christian living.

Vatican II and laity: caught in a tension. A particular version of the story of the laity, as a pastoral and theological theme drawn frcrn the documents of Vatican Il might be presented as a story of ecclesiological dualism. A story which uncovered tensions and sociological naivete, as well as one which portrayed a Church transformed, with a sense of excitement, liberation, and the bitterness of disillusionment. The roots of our crisis lie in all of this. A more thorough understanding of what it means for lay people to be themselves priests and ministers empowered by baptism is crucial to this fresh consideration. 266

It is widely recognised that the aggiornamento of Vatican I1 saw a transformation of the self-understanding of the Roman Catholic Church, to a more personally-based ecclesiology of the community as Christ’s Body and as the People of God. According to this reading the theology of laity is enhanced by the sense of the lay person as fully participant in Christ’s ministry and in the special gifts of the Spirit. The documents on the liturgy, the Church and the lay apostolate, communicate the message that the lay person is really and significantly priest, prophet and sovereign.

This is a familiar reading of the texts, The fruits of this understanding can be seen in our liturgical reforms and in the increasing activity of laity in various aspects of the Church’s life. But a closer questioning of the various ecclesiological traditions employed by the Council documents is necessary if we are to understand the difficulties arising when the subject of ministry is approached from a lay perspective.

It has been observed that there are at least two clear traditions at work in the Vatican I1 texts! We find the suggestion of a more open “People of God” ecclesiology alongside a clearly retained sense of the Church as a societas inequalis, a hierarchically structured, “perfect society”, with its own God-given authority and chain of command. This, dual ecclesiology emerges, as both “juridical” and “communal” understandings of the Church are espoused.

If this “dual ecclesiology” is recogniscd in the commentaries it could be claimed that little has really been said about how it might affect our reading of the texts. It is this tension of ideas and traditions that provides the context of conflict and ambiguity in which so many apparently straightforward Vatican I1 statements find themselves; this needs to be taken inlo account when we are tempted to refer in a simple way to such statements. One approach, evident in the literature(and perhaps dominant in popular understanding) has been to identify the more “progressive”, open aspects of the Council’s teaching with the “real spirit of Vatican 11”, and regard the more juridical tradition as simply a hangover from the first Vatican Council, included, somewhat unfortunately, to appease the more conservative of the Council Fathers.’

I would claim that there is still a comprehensible and coherent single ecclesiology to be discovered: a properly Vatican 11 ecclesiology, in which a variety of traditions is uneasily held together! This is the context of my account of Vatican 11’s understanding of the laity; it is important for, as we shall see, it makes clear the roots of the problems that face us in regard to laity and ministry.

In understanding the real and powerful basis of the lay state affirmed at Vatican 11, we must be reminded that all that is said of laity is deeply rooted in our identity as baptised into Christ, and so fully participant in his

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office as priests, prophets and s0vereigns.P The rooting of lay life in the Sacraments of Baptism and Confmation is important; here we have a theology of laity, not based on ideals of democracy, nor on practical expedience, but on some kind of sacramental ontology. In this way the participation of all the baptised in Christ’s ministry is made fundamental to whatever else is said about laity, or ministry, or the Church as a whole. As we begin by acknowledging this we could ask “what does it actually mean-what difference does it make-to say that in baptism and confirmation a person comes to share fully in Christ’s sovereign power, prophetic task, and practical ministry?

The teaching of Vatican I1 on charisms must also be taken into account in OUT understanding of the basis of lay life. For, as well as being sacramentally rooted, lay activity is continuously empowered by the Holy Spirit, who freely bestows gifts, or charisms, on all in Christ. These various gifts are showered on men and women in the Church who, through them, are called and enabled to take up particular tasks and ministries; the free exercise of these gifts is described by the Council as “a right and a duty “.*O

This understanding of the sacramental and charismatic basis of lay life clearly indicates a sense of the proper empowerment of lay people; the picture is one of a community of ministering people, united in the mth, each part of the one ministry of Christ. But this is not the whole story. For, having asserted that the exercise of their gifts is “the right and duty” of all the faithful, the text goes on:

Those who have charge over the Church should judge the genuineness and proper use of these gifts, through their office not indeed to extinguish the Spirit, but to test all things and hold fast to what is good. (1 Thess.v 12. 19-20)

Such a call to pastoral discernment and order is in a clear biblical tradition, and is not in conflict with ideas of a charismatic ministering people. However, the clear potential for conflict in the practice of this theology not only represents in a small way the tensions at work in the Council’s ecclesiology, but also gives us our first clue as to the nature of the crisis facing laity today. For, while we rejoice in the theological affirmation of the baptised pemn’s empowerment in Christ and the Spirit, we recognise too the everyday, practical power of “those who have charge over the Church”. To be sure no one can deprive us of charisms bestowed by the SpiriC but should the practical expression of those gifts lead us into the public, structural life of the Church, we will be totally dependent on a hierarchically held power of judgement and facilitation.

Often that hierarchical power will be used to facilitate the public and 268

quasi-official ministry of suitably gifted lay people, and properly ensure against confusion and scandal; but, perhaps just as often, factors other than the movement of the Spirit will dominate clerical discernment, in a way which can lead to painful frustration and (more importantly) a less- than-full testimony to the charismatic heritage that belongs to the whole community.

These tensions of diversity and control, of communal and juridical models of Church, form the underlying pattern for the Council’s other statements on laity. So, when the documents discuss the ways in which laity are priests, they both affirm a powerful sense of God‘s people as fully participant in Christ’s priesthood, and yet fail to suggest how such a theological reality might be expressed within the Church. The priesthood of lay people is not, the Council asserts, simply a diluted version of the ordained priesthood, but rather must find its own proper expression, in keeping with its distinctive nature.I2 The nearest the Council gets to describing this distinctive nature is through a discussion of the task of consecrariu rnundi, the consecration of the world to Christ by the laity, which finds expression within the Church structures through the participation of the laity at the Eucharist.” Even given the liturgical reforms that have taken place since the Council, it seems to me that the nature of lay priesthood is still lacking in powerful concrete reference within the Church’s public life. This is particularly clear when the Council texts compare lay priestliness with that of the ordained ministry:

The ministerial priest, by the sacred power that he has, forms and rules the priestly people; in the person of Christ he effects the eucharistic sacrifice and offers it to God in the name of all the people. The faithful indeed, by virtue of their royal priesthood, participate in the offering of the eucharist. They exercise that priesthood too, by the reception of the sacraments. prayer, and thanksgiving, the witness of a holy life, abnegation and active charity.“

This understandmg of lay participation in Christ’s priesthood seems unavoidably invisible or private-a secret service. Like most secret service this hidden expression of Christ’s priesthood is particularly powerful, and forms the foundation of gospel witness and of the priestly ministry. It is precisely because of this power, and the preciousness of this gift to all God’s faithful that lay priestliness needs some more visible and publicly effective witness in the structural life of the Church. It is an impoverished view of ministry that sees the Church’s witness to Christ’s priesthood simply in terns of the public ministry of the cleric on the one hand, and the “secret service” of the mass of laity on the other. Here we can see how limiting and damaging too simplistic an understanding of the

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“states” of life in the Church can be; after all, lay and ordained priestliness are not straightforward alternatives, but are deeply interrelated and inter- dependent. This mysterious unity and relationship suggests to me that our communal priesthood should be nurtured and expressed in diverse forms of ministry. The theology of Vatican 11, taken as a whole, urges us to explore and witness to this diversity; however, as we have seen, in practice we come up against the reality of a Church which is hierarchically ordered around-if I may say so-the rather peculiar elite of the ordained.

According to the Council’s positive view of laity, lay people are prophets in Christ, spokespeople for Christ. Of particular importance here is the notion of the sensusfidei, that sensitivity to, and appreciation of the faith, by which all the baptised are established as witnesses to the gospel? In article 12 of Lumen Gentim, where the prophetic function of the whole people of God is spoken of, it seems clear that the sensusfidei is in some way related to the Church’s corporate ability to discern and proclaim the word of God for the world

By this appreciation of the faith (sensrcsfidei) aroused and sustained by the Spirit of truth, the People of God, guided by the sacred teaching authority (mugisferium) and obeying it. receives not the mere word of men, but truly the word of God. . .

The semusfidei is here the means by which the People of God are open to the Spirit and to Divine Revelation; it is an “appreciation of the faith” that works through and with both the inspiring Spirit and the mgisterium.16 The article goes on to state that, by virtue of the semusfidei the whole people of God together “cannot err in matters of belier- implying that there is a certain gift of infallibility given to the Church in which all participate in some way. It seems inescapable to me that the experiences, faith and insights of all lay people are here being recognised as contributory to the power of the Church to make authoritative statements. The question then is: how is this expressed in the practice of the Church?

A familiar tension is apparent here. The sensusfidei, which is the great gift of the Spirit to the Church, is, like all ecclesiological charisms, to be understood as working through both hierarchical, public shuctures and in less clearly definable, “secret” ways. This is in accord with what else is said in the texts about the Holy Spirit in the Church. But there is a Miculty with the way in which it is treated here: for the Council clearly identifies the non-public, “secret” service of the Spirit with the laity as such, with the implication that, whatever can be said theologically about the prophetic function of the laity, it does not have a stable, concrete place 270

in the structures of the Church. As a matter of fact the public face of Christ's Church, as it ministers as prophet to the world, is dominated by the ordained.

The picture that is emerging from this (all too brief) examination of Vatican 11's understanding of laity in the Church is one in which lay people are clearly empowered but impractically so. Theologically, lay people, with the ordained (although in an essentially different way) are affmed as fully participant in Christ's ministries and offices. For all that, there is no getting away from the concrete reality of the organizational privilege of the ordained. For the orhned man theological statements about charism, priesthood, prophecy and sovereignty have a practical reference to an effective power of public leadership, decision-making and so forth; such is not the case for the lay person.

At this point in the argument certain voices in my head cannot be ignored. These are the voices of various colleagues, friends, and others(!) who caution me about becoming hooked on power-a theme which not only threatens to dominate my ecclesiology but also, they suspect, concerns me on a personal level. Early on I was warned that if I wote about power in the Church it would be assumed by many that it was because I wanted it. It is true that a great dcal of what I have so far said has to do with inequalities in structural power within the community of Christ, and the need that I perceive for laity to be more properly empowered by their brothers in the hierarchy. Power is, for most Christians, an unpalatable subject, and few of us would admit to being hungry for it. This is, I think, largely to do with a misunderstanding of what power is, fundamentally; it is an odd sort of person who does not wish to effect some kind of change, to make a difference in one area or another, which is, ultimately, what power is about. Certainly power is a complex theme, and particularly so in the Christian context; but as a reality it clearly exists, theologically and sociologically, in our Church communities. And if, in baptism, we come to share in Christ's sovereignty, there must surely be some real sense in which this involves us in sharing in His power-r, if you would rather, in being empowered by Him.

The Council Fathers are, in cerrain details, clear that, among other things, Christ's kingship is active in the Church through a certain practical exercise of social power. It is through participation in that sovereignty that the ordained hierarchy can be described as "teaching and rulingyy1' the people, whilst the pope is affmed as having "full, supreme and universal power over the whole Church, a power which he can always exercise unhindered"*8.There is no coyness about the reality of power here. Laity participate in this Same sovereignty, but in this context it is translated into

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terms of a “royal liberty”, so that:

by serving Christ in others they may in humility and patience bring their brethren to that king, to serve whom is to reign.I9

I have no difficulty here with the important Christian paradox of power as powerlessness and service. The problem is, rather, the way the paradox is used in this ecclesiological context. In identifying the paradoxical, hidden service of Christ’s sovereignty with laity, and the decisive, effective authority of that kingship with the ordained, the Council describes a Church in which, once again, the mysterious complexity of Christian living is subject to a division of labour, patterned by the “states” of life that form the juridical patterning of the Church. Again the theologically and sacramentally real nature of lay life is without public expression in the ministering and leading structures of the Church. Empowerment in Christ is clearly about both service and proper authority, and, I think, a great deal more in addition. The question we must ask with respect to ministry in the Church is whether these various aspects of Christ’s sovereignty can be so straightforwardly associated with particular forms of Christian living, so definitively allocated to different classes within the community of Christ.

There are a number of aspects to this reading of Vatican 11’s theology of laity that require further comment. In particular, I have said nothing about the Council’s account of the lay function as properly “secular”, and of the world. It must be taken for granted in all that I have said that there is a true and deeply significant sense in which the most ecclesially hidden, most secular lay living of the faith is a loud and clear proclamation of the gospel and an invitation to participation in Christ’s ministry to women and men everywhere. In focusing here on the role of laity in the structural and publicly ministerial life of the Church I hope not to undermine that mth; rather, I hope to examine ways in which that “secret service” in the world can be more powerfully witnessed to and enabled to function in the Christian community through the public activity of some lay people within the Church. For now my story must continue with an account of what might be considered the collapse of the theology of laity following the council.

Vatican 11: the beginning of the end for the theology of laity. The Council texts, for all their tensions and compromises, represent the drawing together of a great wealth of thought and pastoral activity which enriched the Roman Catholic Church’s understanding of laity in the fmt half of this century. The documents give authoritative expression to the

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thought of Yves Congar, Karl Rahner, Gerard Philips and others, and so create an open and flexible picture of the Church, which has become normative for our ecclesiology. However, when we look at how the Council’s positive theology of laity has been developed since the 1960s we run, almost immediately, into difficulties and disillusionment.

Little of any real weight has been written on laity since the Council. It is as if the Council summed up once and for all the theology of the lay state; or at least, described it in such a way that it has been difficult to see where to go next. For Rahner, Congar and Schillebeeckx, in their different ways, there has been a shift in focus away from the laity/hierarchy distinction, towards a more overarching concern with ministry and the Church as communitym. For others, notably Hans Kting:’ the response to the tensions of the Council’s dual ecclesiology has been to work on how the Church structures might be reformed further in order to make the its theology more effective in practice. These sorts of enquiry are clearly of relevance to the subject of laity in the Church; but it remains important to ask, why so little on the laity as such?

As early as 1964 the actual effects of the Council’s positive theology of laity were being questioned in a rather angry little book by Michel Carrouges”. Carrouges is particularly critical of what he sees as the Council document’s tendency to absorb the real, practical questions of the lay state into “theological myth”-that is, impractical, though positive sounding statements and doctrine. Such a criticism is clearly in accord with my own reading of the texts; again, the focus is on the question, whaf actual difference does it all make? And so a strong sense of disillusionment sets in. More worrying than this however, is the theological inertia that has resulted; the productive and promising theology of laity developed by Congar, even when given authoritative expression in the Church, has failed to make a difference. Clearly a new approach is needed.

The theology of laity is not just about thinkers and writers, but also about pastoral goings-on; and our story of laity is now complicated and enhanced by the increase in lay activity in the structures of the Church in the decades following the Council. Strangely, whilst the public world of theology has been rendered all but speechless on the subject of laity, increasing numbers of lay women and men have been trying to live out aspects of the Vatican I1 teachings, through participation in pastoral ministry, diocesan and parish work of one kind or another. Sociologically a new kind of lay group is emerging, and challenging theologians to speak anew, not only of laity, but also, and necessarily, of minismy and the ordained priesthd.

Ironically, this lay tlite may have added to the problems facing any

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attempt to write a post-Vatican U theology of laity. “The laity” has never been a clearly defmble, homogenous group, but the emergence of a semi- official group of lay workers has compounded the problem of “who the laity are”, and contributed to the widespread feeling that our categories of “clergy” and “laity” are outmoded. It was Karl Rahner who, before the work of the Council was completed, provoked some irritated reaction from his fellow theologians when he suggested that the lay person who worked full time in the Church was no longer properly lay”; in such cases, he argued, the properly secular context of the lay vocation has been given up, and so the lay person takes on a “quasi-clexical‘‘ status. This argument can be criticised in a number of way?; but I suspect that, albeit rather clumsily, Rahner has here put his finger on an important sociological, and so, ecclesiological, point. For there is a real sociological sense in which laity who take up official positions in the Church are not “laity” in the way traditionally understood by the Church; they are clearly carrying out their vocations in a distinctly different way to that of their “properly secular” brothers and sisters. However, these people are, again, quite different from their ordained and religious colleagues, and remain, in a fundamental sense, thoroughly lay. The question is one of identity which, in turn, is to do with having a way of talking which makes sense of the different ways of being in the Church, and the relationships between them.

One way of understanding this post-conciliar disintegration of a coherent theology of laity is to see it as a necessary and consmctive thing. Such a disintegration might indicate that the old problems of an impoverished understanding of the lay state have actually been overcome. For many people this would seem to be the conviction: that the laity- clergy distinction is no longer relevant to a Church that knows itself as the People of God, and Body of Christ. A Clergy Review (as it was then) editorial of 1977 puts the case like this:

The clergy/laity distinction has set up many false problems for the Church and will go on doing so as long as it is retained, since it represents a principle alien to the nature of the Church. . . .fi

Such an ecclesial ideology is certainly attractive. It appears to liberate us from an “us-and-them” misunderstanding of the Church, and will thus no doubt remain an important critique for those ecclesiologies which choose to persist with the laity-ordained distinction. But I want to argue that such ecclesiologies, and such a differentiation, must go on patterning our talk of Church and ministry, for serious reasons of social honesty.

In a curious, and not immediately apparent way, the desire to do away all together with this laity-clergy patterning of Church is akin both to

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extreme anticlericalism and extreme hierarchology. The centd feature of all these ways of looking at the ecclesial community is that a strong sense of how the Church should be-an ideal-undermines our ability to treat the Chmh as the social reality that it really is. What Seems to me both essential and all too often lacking from our talk of Church and ministry is a thorough realism, an ability to deal with the concrete facts of Church life within our theological perspective.

In this respect the social sciences might fruitfully be employed to inform our ecclesiologies with a proper sense of what human social existence is practically about. In particular, when we talk of laity, priesthood and ministry in the Church, we do well to listen to that sociological realism which accepts that some kind of hierarchy and official leadership is necessary to any large social group, and that this group will be, in some way, marked out from the rest. Once this observation on how human beings work and live together is incorporated into our ecclesiological thinking then we are in a position to deal realistically with the consequences: that the existence of a lay “mass”, differentiated from the organisation’s leaders in a number of socially significant ways, is going to continue to exist in some form or another as the basis for the whole community’s life and work. If, on the other hand, we leap too readily to some ideal of the Church as an undifferentiated People, a community without groupings and hierarchy, the danger is that we will fail to have a properly acute sense of the structural realities that frame our strivings to be that People of God, properly one and equal in Christ. And so, through fear of conflict and tension, we become unable to look with real and active compassion at the inequalities, injustices and difficulties that do exist.

So, to summarise the story so far: I have argued that, in the documents of Vatican 11, a theology of laity was constructed which gives great scope to a variety of ideas of a ministering people- women and men using their diverse gifts to build up the Church, and witness to Christ in the world. However, the context of this theology is the Council’s “dual ecclesiology”, in which the Church is affirmed as both juridical structure and community of God’s people. The problems for the laity lie with the documents’ clear tendency to identify the public and structural with the ordained, and the more hidden semice and witness with the laity. The real power which is atuibuted to lay people in the Council’s ecclesiology is, in fact, impructicul, lacking in concrete reference.

In the light of this reading of the texts the disillusionment following the Council-at least in the area of laicology-becomes understandable. No organization can make statements about empowerment that are not practically expressible, and expect to get away with it. And so. whilst the

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theological theme of the laity begins to disintegrate and merge into more general ecclesiological concerns, more and more individual lay people begin to take some part in the more public and leadership structures of Church life. It is here in the living activity of these “rogue” lay ministries that the theological question about the patterns of Church ministry are being forcibly put. Having myself been apart of that shady phenomenon of the lay 6lite. it seems clear to me that greater articulation of this lived questioning is necessary if we are fully to appreciate what is being asked and w, as a community, search out answers.

Ultimately the kind of rewriting of ecclesiological language that I am suggesting as necessary to the post-Vatican 11 Church is something that takes place, in the first instance, through very concrete encounters, experiences and difficulties. The properly theological task is that of beginning to tap into those living roots of linguistic renewal by listening in; then we can start to draw up a fresh agenda for the systematic consideration of Church and ministry, laity and priesthood. In the last few years I have tried to be such a theologian listening in, trying to find articulation for my own experience as a lay pastor, and attempting accurately to hear what is being said by those lay people whom I have been lucky enough to work with and for. The theological task which must spring from this is one of considerable proportions; nevertheless I want to finish this article with a few jottings which represent some of the pertinent issues which have arisen for me. I believe that a thorough consideration of these, and related themes, leads us into new ways of talking of, and so thinking about, being Church.

Jottings by way of conclusion a) Ministry without ordination. On one level ordination is clearly about sacramental powers. It is such powers that the non-ordained minister has to work without, facing the challenge of developing forms of ministry which do not involve her in saying mass, hearing confessions and so forth. This in itself is important, and no easy task. But there are further, sociological, difficulties with not being ordained: the lay pastor is in no way marked out by the community as a whole, neither formally commissioned nor recognised as especially called to a particular ministry. A lay minister is an employee of the diocese (or parish) until the conrract runs out (or the money). The problem is that this situation gives curious signals. On the one hand the lay pastor is entrusted with a task of enormous ecclesiological significance (for which, incidentally, she may have little or no appropriate training); on the other, she is essentially temporary, and is not seen as having a vocation to public ministry as such. In her training and vocational identity she is, in this way, markedly

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diflFerent from her ordained colleagues. There is here a basic imbalance, or, better, lack of clarity, at the heart of what is fashionably called “collaborative ministry”.

When we talk of ordination-and especially of those who may and may not be ordained-we would do well to broaden and to root in practice our discussions, by recognising the real orgunizutionul privilege that comes from ordination. Being ordained is not only a matter of sacramental powers; the ordained person has the security of a recognised ministry, being marked out by his community and properly equipped by it for leadership and service of particular kinds. My proposed renewal of language would begin here by asking about other ways of “marking out”, of identifying and empowering for leadership, that might be available to the Church community in its search for and appointment of public ministers. b) Ministers as symbols. The postconciliar eruption of lay people inw the realm of public ministry in the Church raises our awareness of the ways in which our leaders and ministers serve a symbolic function. Much has been said from a feminist perspective about the alienating power of a sanctuary inhabited exclusively by men, and a similar consciousness can be detected from within a laicological perspective. For example, our theology asserts the identity of lay people as properly prophets in Christ-spokespeople for Christ; and to be sure, that prophetic function of laity is lived out in a wide variety of ways in our communities. But what is being said within the powerful world of liturgy and symbol, when the only people empowered to preach the Word are ordained and, on the whole, celibate men? If we want our children to grow up believing themselves empowered by the Spirit as priests, prophets and sovereigns, it is surely of the utmost importance that we furnish our symbolic systems, in an everyday way, with living witnesses to this reality.

I have said before in this article-and cannot emphasise too much- that lay people in public pastoral roles are not to be seen as doing what lay people should do. But in being odd, and a bit apart, such laity can, I believe, become an important part of empowering all God’s people to fulfil the supremely difficult vocation of bringing Christ to the world. Our lay ministers are not only a purely practical asset in doing the jobs rhey do; they are also of importance in what they represent and powerfully symbolise-a people in whom the Holy Spirit dwells in an endless variety and mixture of iifestyles, gifts and ways of ministering. c ) Giving voice. In their often painful quest for identity lay people in any kind of public Church service are, without doubt, generating fresh understandings of pastoral ministry and Christian leadership. A great wealth of images and insights are being developed, many of which draw

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on the specifically lay experiences of family, work and "life in the world"; a language of ministry is being formed which draws naturally and fruitfully of the worlds of the mundanity of housework, the irritations of child-care, and the extraordinary mixed blessing which is the eccfesia domestica. However, the nature of the lay Clite-its temporariness, haziness and insecurity+nake it extremely difficult for this continuing, practical work of theology to be widely heard and shared. I have suggested that one of the primary ecclesiological task facing us at present is that of listening in to these lay voices; but to do this properly we must also face the ecclesial task of giving voice to these experiences of ministry-through conferences, journals, publication, commissions, and the like.

There is some exciting and important theology being done, being lived, in our community right now-theology which can, I believe, liberate our ecclesial life and structures so as to serve better the world in which we proclaim and represent the crucified and risen Jesus. The task of enabling that theology to be more clearly heard and articulated faces, in particular and ironically, those in positions of authority in our Church, as well as those with a place in our various ecclesial media. There is a job to be done here: the job of gathering and exchanging stories and experiences which is the beginning of any fresh ecclesiology which hopes to speak realistically and charismatically about the contemporary Church.

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In panicular, Lay People in the Church. (Enlarged version London 1964). See Minkfires et communion tcclesiale. (Paris 1971); pp 10-1 1, and, in English Priest ondLayman. pp 259-261 Londm 1967. It is Vatican II that talks of the "properly secular" nature of lay life, ffi 31. The official line appears to be that lay ministers as such do not exist, although accepting that, if absolutely necessary, cenain lay people can be entrusted with pastoral tasks (See John Paul II's Chrisfijiiles LoicQ.The biggest fault with this approach is, to my mind, its f a k e to deal with the reality of what lay people are doing. Notable among the thinkers are Congar, and Gerard philips for their theologies of laity; as well as those scholars, such as E Mersch, who re-asserted the sense of the Church as Mystical Body in the decades before the Council. For example, see K Macnamara's introductory essays to his Vatican 11: the Comfitdon on the Church. London 1968. The observation is thoroughly investigated by A Acerbi, Due eccleswlogu: ecclesiologua giuridico ed ecclesiologie commune nello "lumcngenfiwn". (Bolog~ 1975). This seems to me to be the position implied in Edmund Hill's book. Ministty ond Authority in the Catholic Church. (London 1988). in which he opposes a "magisted papalist" view with a "ministerial collegialist" understanding. He recognises the presence of both in the Ccuncil texts; but for him this tension is something to be solved, about which sides must be taken. My reasons for such an approacJ! are both theological and sociological. 'Iheologically the authoritative nature of the texts have a unified claim on us which mitigates against a selective reading; sociologically. as I will point out later, it appears that the two major traditims are significant m witnessing to two equally essential aspecrs of real Church life. Apmtoluam Actmiratem 2-3; Lwnen Genfium 30. AA3

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11 LG12 12 LG 10 13 LG34 14 LG10 15 LG35 16

17 LG21 18 LG22 19 LG36 20

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The distinction made here is not meant to imply antirhesis; rather, to witness to the various ways the m e Spirit works within the Church.

I would particularly note here the wo& of Schillebeeckx and, and the postconciliar writings of Cmgar in the area. Hans Kung Structures ofthc Church. (London 1%5). Rather different is L Suenens Coresponsibiliry in the Chwch.(London 1%8) which, again, aims to give practical expression to the Council’s ecclesiology. M Carrouges Le hicat M y t h at realire. (Paris 1W) K Rahner Theological lnvestigatwm vol. II (1963). See Congar in Priest and Loyman pp 301 fk and Philips Achieving Christian Maturity (1%7) pp 177 ff.

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25 Clergy Review Feb. 1977.

Reviews

KARL RAHNER by William V. Dych SJ. Geoffrey Chapman, London, 1992. Pp. viii + 168.

Cornelius Ernst graduated from Blackfriars, Oxford, in 1957 to begin teaching at the Dominican house of philosophy then on the edge of Cannock Chase in Staffordshire. He had been warned by the Prior Provincial, who gave him a copy of the CTS version of the papal encyclical ‘Humani Generis’ (1950), not to dabble ir? la Nouvelle Theologie, which was supposed to include Karl Rahner as well as several French Dominicans and Jesuits. He had discovered Rahner’s first volume of Schriften (1 954) for himself on the wall of foreign theology books which graced Blackwell’s bookshop in those days. Getting his second year of teaching turned into a sabbatical-there had been a change of Provincial-Ernst laboured on his translation of Rahner’s exceedingly complex German and finally, with the patient support of John Todd at his newly founded publishing house, the first volume of Theological lnvestigations appeared in 1961, with Cornelius’ substantial introduction and the allusion to Wittgenstein in the title (Rahner’s intervention in Catholic theology being thus compared with Wittgenstein’s in modern philosophy).

The utterly unexpected convening of an ecumenical council in 1959 of course released the theological energy which had been constrained by the encyclical of 1950. By 1961 Rahner had become chief theological adviser to the cardinal-archbishops of Vienna and Munich. At the Council

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