Acting as a leaven
The Church celebrates St Hilary of Poitiers, a Doctor of the Church, today.
Hilary was a defender of the Divinity of Christ and battled Arianism, which denied the divinity of Christ.
Hilary, in this pursuit, suffered controversy, problems, pain and frustration.
Cardinal Joseph Cardijn, too, had suffered controversy, problems, pain and frustration in promoting the dignity of the lay apostolate. Cardijn, the founder of the Young Christian Worker (YCW), promoted and defended “the specifically lay apostolate of lay people.”
The Vatican II document Lumen Gentium #31 states:
31. The term laity is here understood to mean all the faithful except those in holy orders and those in the state of religious life specially approved by the Church. These faithful are by baptism made one body with Christ and are constituted among the People of God; they are in their own way made sharers in the priestly, prophetical, and kingly functions of Christ; and they carry out for their own part the mission of the whole Christian people in the Church and in the world.
What specifically characterizes the laity is their secular nature. It is true that those in holy orders can at times be engaged in secular activities, and even have a secular profession. But they are by reason of their particular vocation especially and professedly ordained to the sacred ministry. Similarly, by their state in life, religious give splendid and striking testimony that the world cannot be transformed and offered to God without the spirit of the beatitudes. But the laity, by their very vocation, seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and by ordering them according to the plan of God. They live in the world, that is, in each and in all of the secular professions and occupations. They live in the ordinary circumstances of family and social life, from which the very web of their existence is woven. They are called there by God that by exercising their proper function and led by the spirit of the Gospel they may work for the sanctification of the world from within as a leaven. In this way they may make Christ known to others, especially by the testimony of a life resplendent in faith, hope and charity. Therefore, since they are tightly bound up in all types of temporal affairs it is their special task to order and to throw light upon these affairs in such a way that they may come into being and then continually increase according to Christ to the praise of the Creator and the Redeemer.
This view of the lay apostolate, however, is rare.
See
In May 2018, the Australian Church began its Fifth Plenary Council journey, culminating four years later, in August 2022, where 35 motions were put to a consultative and a deliberative vote.
There have been diverging views of Australia’s Fifth Plenary Council, including the role of the lay apostolate.
Stefan Gigacz analysed the Fifth Australian Plenary Council from a Cardijn perspective in August 2021 and noted, “…The collapse in awareness within Australian Catholicism of the ‘lay apostolate’ is evident in the now almost universal use within the church (including on the ACBC website) of the term ‘lay ministry’ (or ‘lay pastoral ministry’). This almost exclusively refers to internal church work and is oblivious to every lay person’s unique and indispensable role in the ‘world’ (as distinct from the ‘church’)…”
Judge
Vatican II and Cardijn had a specific definition and explanation for the lay apostolate from the Bible and Church’s teachings. Stefan had captured this in his book, The Leaven in the Council, and various other places.
Do we agree with Vatican II’s teachings on the lay apostolate?
Do we agree with what Cardinal Cardijn taught on the lay apostolate?
Act
What can we do to understand Vatican II’s teachings on the lay apostolate?
What can we do to promote the teachings of Vatican II on the lay apostolate?
Author
Greg Lopez