When introducing the Springtime of the Laity, I made an obscure reference that I was pretty sure few would get. As predicted, for those who got it, it was a total knee slapper. For everyone else, they just passed over unaware. I think it’s a good starting point to discuss the laity, so I’m going to reveal the knee slapper.
The idea that the laity was “everything… nothing… something” is a play on the words of Abbe Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyes, the French priest and political theorist whose work What is the Third Estate laid out the foundations of the French Revolution. As a faithful Catholic, one cannot help but look at Sieyes and see an awful man who betrayed his faith and launched a revolution that destroyed much. As a lover of history, I love Sieyes, a true survivor who was one of the only voices at the beginning of the revolution who was there at its conclusion. (He was the author of the beginning of the revolution, and arguably the author of its end, having launched the Coup of Brumaire with Napoleon. Yet he outlived them all, living into the 1830s.) In describing the Third Estate, he was of the belief that the Third Estate (all non-nobles and non-clergy) were the true French Nation, and that everyone else were parasites sucking the life out of the nation. It is in this context he says:
What is the Third Estate? Everything.
What has it been until now in the political order? Nothing.
What does it want to be? Something.
I’d like to say the following: If a Catholic author came out today and spoke this way about the Bishops and Rome…. he’d probably be incredibly popular, and his support would transcend your typical ideological factions. If we are to stop such a modern day Sieyes, we should ask ourselves what really is the laity, and why do they matter?
What does the Church say?
If you’ve heard or read any narrative about Vatican II, you will often hear that the laity was something the Council devoted a lot of time to thinking about. True enough, the laity take up an entire chapter of the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, and they issued a seperate decree on the Apostolate of the Laity known as Apostolicam Actuositatem. Yet I think it is incorrect to say Vatican II answers the question of who the laity are, or why they matter. Instead, we find two strains of thought that dominate both. On the one hand, the laity “seek the Kingdom of God engaging in temporal affairs and by ordering them according to the plan of God.” (Lumen Gentium, 31) In this conception of the laity, they are part of the Church, but their business is not the governance of the Church. They pray, pay, and obey, as the old addage goes. Yet they also are called to assist the hierarchy in the governance of the Church (while being light on details) in LG 33. If this sounds contradictory, well… they are. The idea of standardizing the responsibility of the hierarchy and laity as the basis for a new ecclesial compact was a decidedly modern idea that was simply impossible before the technological advancements of the 20th century. (There is even debate over whether this is even desirable with them!) No matter the statement you take from Vatican II on the laity (and that debate continues to this day), they were viewed as important.
Is there more?
However, there could be another way of looking at the laity, and it starts with understanding the definition. In modern parlance, “the laity” simply means those who do not have holy orders. Indeed, Lumen Gentium defines the laity this way. In this sense, the laity are defined by what they do not have. This has not always been the case in the West, and in the East, it arguably never has been. There, “the laity” is rather a description of their origin, from the greek word laos, “the people.” This drew on Old Testament references to Israel being a people called by God, separate and distinct. We think about this imagery when we talk about the priesthood of the baptized, where each Christian has conferred upon himself the office of Priest, Prophet, and King the instant we are baptized. Yet as with all people, there are different roles and responsibilities, and God sets aside some of those individuals for those roles. Likewise, we have certain individuals of the baptized priesthood set aside for higher service and invested with authority from God through Jesus Christ to teach, sanctify and govern. This kind of understanding meets the laity on their own terms and sees the sacerdotal priesthood and governing aspects of the Church as institutions and offices provided by God for the people.
In addition to providing a more harmonious relationship, the laity also assist those ordained in teaching, sanctifying, and governing. As all authority comes from God, the clergy nor the laity exercise sovereignty within their own right. (Unlike Sieyes’ Third Estate, the laity are not a nation unto themselves, nor are clergy foreign parasites, awful as they often are!) In this more biblical notion of the laity, authority is not only something given to the sacerdotal priesthood for the laity’s benefit, but it is the laity who ensure it continues. The sacerdotal priesthood is not self-perpetuating. Apostolic succession ensures there will be valid orders, but it requires the laity to transmit it throughout the daily life of the Church. If teaching were to be done only by priests, we would need far more priests than we could ever ordain. If sanctifying came only through the Sacraments (rather than the sacraments being a uniquely powerful form of sanctification) offered by a priest, then holiness would be contingent upon booming vocations. Finally, if all authority was only exercised directly through the priest, then priests would be micromanagers who would be stifled as boring HR managers. While the faith may be passed down through the liturgy, it is the laity who receive this and help form the community (through the family) in that faith.
In this sense, Vatican II failed when it came to the laity. It described the role of the laity within the Church (with conflicting visions!), it described what the Church owed the laity, but it never actually tried to understand what the laity was on its own terms. Despite this failure, the Council called for the laity to take an increasingly active role in both the world and the Church. That failure became more evident over time as the authority of the hierarchy waned.
Now, in this Springtime of the Laity, the Church needs to begin aggressively tackling this question anew, recognizing where Vatican II failed, and where modern understandings lack.