I read with interest Jack Valero’s article on Bishop Alvero del Portillo (The Tablet, 27 September) but was struck by the phrase that the 1917 Code of Canon Law “considered lay people as receivers of the sacraments, particularly marriage, the sacrament that most distinguishes them”. (Note the present tense). Theological history and practice casts a long shadow.
Valero is right to draw attention to both the universal call to holiness and to mission – but this call is to all the People of God, which includes the ordained ministry. The role of the laity, so forcefully and strikingly presented in Lumen Gentium (12) and Apostlicam Actuositatem (3) has yet to find its full expression within the Church. It has been delayed by the re-emergence of clericalism and perhaps apathy, that has led to a failure to recognise the profound significance of the concept of the priesthood of all the baptised.
Hence we read in the same article that the “clergy’s role is to assist them (the laity) in that mission, fostering in them the holiness that will convert the world”. The subtext would appear that lay people not equal sharers the priestly ministry and mission of Christ but are somehow on the receiving end of the priest’s ministry. But this is clearly not what is taught by Vatican II: ‘It is not only through the sacraments and the ministrations of the Church (sic) that the Holy Spirit makes holy the People of God’ (LG 12) for the baptised are “given special gifts” and “from the reception of these charisms …there arises …the right and duty to exercise them in the Church and in the world.” (AA 3).
Perhaps the full power of the Spirit as recognised in these documents will never be experienced in our Church as long as “grace” and “power” is seen to be channelled through a clerical collar.
Mike Glover, Keswick
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