Often considered to have been a brief episode of community and co-responsibility in the life of the Church in England and Wales, quickly shelved, the National Pastoral Congress of 1980 may have had a more sustained and enduring legacy than is usually recognised

“What is the province of the laity?” Mgr George Talbot famously asked in 1867. “To hunt, to shoot, to entertain … but to meddle with ecclesiastical affairs they have no right at all.” Talbot, a one-time advisor to Pope Pius IX, may have been brusque, but he was making an accurate observation. In the modern history of the Church, the laity have had very few rights: “The simple faithful”, as Cardinal Heenan of Westminster called them, had duties and obligations towards the institutional Church, but no representation within it.
Like many things in Catholicism, this began to change after the Second Vatican Council. Reminding us that the laity share in Christ’s ministry as priest, prophet and king, and urging the active participation of lay Catholics in the apostolic life of the Church, Vatican II acted as a catalyst in the establishment of lay assemblies and representative bodies across the world.

In England and Wales, the National Pastoral Congress was held in May 1980 over five days of sunshine in Liverpool, then, as now, the most heavily Catholic city in England. In a video message to the Congress – itself a startling novelty, at a time and in a city where few people had video players – Pope John Paul II described it as “an initiative which bears witness to the variety of gifts in the Body of Christ, and to the vital mission of all baptised persons in the Church”.