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.
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.