Lay Initiatives

Ed Peters has often pointed out that worthwhile initiatives in the Church are frequently started by lay people and only later taken up by the clergy.

Here’s another example of that principle.

L’OSSERVATORE ROMANO, THE SEMI-OFFICIAL VATICAN NEWSPAPER.

EXCERPT:

Cardinal Bertone said "that it is due to some lay faithful, animated by a strong missionary motivation," that the newspaper "was able to take its first steps and begin its activity with courage, presenting the genuine face of the Church and the ideals of liberty that she proposes and incarnates."

The cardinal said the "succession of historical events shows that, in the past as in the present, to spread the Gospel message in all realms of society, to promote and defend the ideals of authentic liberty, truth, justice and charity, the Church needs the action, creativity and charism of the laity."

And given L’Osservatore Romano’s venerable age of 145, the lay initiative that started it was long before Vatican II and in an age in which Catholics even more than today reflexively allowed clerics to undertake religious initiatives.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

One thought on “Lay Initiatives”

  1. This insight — along with Jimmy’s earlier post about the Vatican wanting theologians to kick around subjects in order to explore all the implications before weighing in — is a valuable corrective to a complaint I have heard leveled against the Catholic Church for being too top-down/centralized/hierarchical. It’s not like the hierarchy does everything itself, or even wants to. The hierarchy has an essential buck-stops-here sort of role to play, certainly, but much of the dynamism and creativity in the church comes, and has always come, from the laity.

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