Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Lay Leadership in the Church

Lay leadership in the Syro-Malabar Church in the U.S.

It is very appropriate at this juncture to speak of the emerging role of the laity in the Syro-Malabar Church. What are the roles of our laymen in the church and how should they get prepared for these roles? Should they remain solely confined to the traditional roles that they have played in the church in Kerala or do they have to go for new ones? Are there resources to help them to discharge their new functions in their adopted country while remaining faithful to their rite? It would be worthwhile to deal with these points even if the treatment is peripheral.

The Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI in an interview he had given to Peter Seewald when he was the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine o the Faith spoke about the role of the Church in the following words: “ We cannot just calmly allow everyone else to relapse into paganism, but have to find ways of bringing the gospel into the spheres of life of those who do not believe….The church will have to develop a great deal of imagination to help the gospel remain a force in public life”(God and the World,p.443).These words of the Holy Father are very relevant when we are discussing the role of the laity in the new millennium.

Everything is changing fast. People are coming closer in ways unimaginable because of the new technologies of communication. Multitasking has become a norm for the young professionals. How to reach these young people? Who are better placed in reaching out to them? Should not the new leaders like teachers, professors, technologists, CEOs, directors etc who are well placed for such a reach-out because of their constant contact with them be helped to have a vision and training to become effective carriers of the values of the Gospel in the milieu in which they work?

In the Postsynodal exhortation called “ Christifideles laici”, Pope John Paul II remarks that the Church “ encourages the lay faithful actively to live out their belonging to their particular church , while at the same time assuming an ever-increasing “Catholic” spirit.” Pope John Paul II asks the laity to be ready for a new evangelization. The Holy Father points out further in that exhortation that as many of the Christian families and societies are relapsing in their faith, the task of re-evangelization falls on the shoulders of the laity.

Similarly, the ecclesiastical landscape here is also undergoing rapid changes. The lay people are at the helm of all the major organizations of the Church in the United States. According to Peter Steinfels, “There are thirty thousand lay parish ministers working in over 60 percent of the nation’s parishes.” They are running “religious education programs, parish liturgy and music, youth ministry, home care for the sick etc.” He points out further that “lay leadership is the future of the church…they are coming to constitute the bulk of theologians, church historians, canon lawyers.”( A People Adrift,p.331)

In this changing world of leadership, the Catholic vision and the Catholic identity of the organizations have to remain steady and constant. John Mudd has pointed out in his article on Lay Leadership (America,July 18,05,p.14) that “ lay leaders must become effective mission leaders” and that they should be aware of “ the mission ,values and identity of Catholic ministries.” They have to be to be the new evangelizers in their professional areas.

It is in the background of these recent reflections of the role Catholic laity, that we have to look at the role of the laity in the Syro-Malabar church. Our lay people are the new missionaries for the Church. It is their commitment to the Gospel, their faith and their attachment to the Catholic tradition that will create an impact for the Church in the U.S. They have to develop their potentials as leaders and nurture their faith in order to become effective as leaders.

Our people are working in many professional fields as doctors, engineers, financiers, educators, nurses etc. The lay leaders should not depend on the clergy for the new role of evangelization; they have to grow and develop receiving their strength from their active participation in the Church. As Michael Downey has pointed out in a book ” Called and Chosen”, the lay leader “ must have 1) the competence in the enterprise at hand;2) a deep passion for the enterprise and the persons served by it and 3) a facility for communication of a specific Christian vision to one’s colleagues.”(p.28)

The lay people in the Syro-Malabar Church have to claim their role in the Church through an active participation in the ministry of evangelization. Whatever is available to the laity in the Catholic ecclesial tradition here should also be accessible to them .They should be able to function as deacons, Eucharistic ministers, lectors, and administrators or supervisors of the temporalities of the Church. More than that, they should also be passionately involved in their secular professions as Catholics imbued with strong faith. A sound formation in the Catholic faith will help them to be its spokesmen in their professions and communities. Doctors, engineers, scientists, business men, educators and health care professionals will then not only excel in their fields but also will be thoroughly formed in their Catholic faith so that they can be the voices of the church in their fields. There should also be more involvement of the laity in the cultural, political and social spheres of the secular society. It is only when our people are adequately formed in their faith they can function as the evangelizers for the Church and act as a strong bulwark against the relapse of our youths into indifferentism, abandonment of the faith or the absorption by anti-Catholic groups.

We have to look forward to day when our laity become active evangelizers in this country , preserving their faith and reaching out to other people--- leaders on whom the Catholics as well as the non-Catholics can depend.

It is with this theological formation of the laity in mind that the Diocese has entered into a partnership with the Dayton University, Ohio, to offer the opportunity to the faithful to study on-line courses in theology. I am sure our people living in different parts of the country will benefit from this opportunity.




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