Today the Holy Father said what His Holiness has said time and time again:
There is still a widespread temptation to think that the promotion of the laity — in front of so many ecclesial needs — passes through a greater involvement of the laity in the ‘things of priests,’ in clericalization,” he said.
Lay men and women, the pope added, do not need to be “anything different from what they are through Baptism because the laity are “a richness for the catholicity of the church.”
But, His Holiness does not connect the dots and say what these clerical things are? For example is opening the once minor orders of Holy Orders to men and women laity the clericlalization of them? Help me out on this.
Then tied to the clericalization of the laity, His Holiness says this about “synodality”:
A true synodal path comes from making concrete choices that give way to the action of the Holy Spirit, not from following spur-of-the-moment concepts that adhere to the latest trends, Pope Francis said.
“These choices, in order to be feasible, must start from reality, not from the three or four ideas that are fashionable or that have come up in conversation.”
I am not sure how I would interpret these two paragraphs. Shouldn’t all “synodality” start with the Deposit of Faith? Should it not start with the handing down and handing on of Scripture and Tradition as the Church has developed in an organic way through the centuries under the guidance of the Holy Spirit?
And involving not ordained in making Magisterial Teachings into doctrine, shouldn’t that remain the domain of the Pope and the Bishops in union with him or even the pope alone?
Isn’t it the clericalization of the laity to make them into a consultative legislative body?
Don’t get me wrong. The only reason that popes were able to infallibly declare that Our Blessed Mother was Immaculately Conceived and that she was assumed body and soul into heaven is because the Church, both clergy and laity believed these two doctrines since the early Church Fathers. There was no consultation or vote taken from the laity to dogmatize these two doctrines. And the Holy Fathers who infallibly defined these two doctrines into dogmas did not make anything up out of whole cloth!
Let’s start with the REALITY of the Deposit of Faith and we would have the confusion we have now with synodality in Germany and even the synod on the Amazon highjacked by the Germans that made the Holy Father so mad.
Read the rest:
Pope: Synodality must be based on reality, not fashionable ideas
- Apr 30
4 comments:
Ministries, not "minor orders," are open to men and women as a result of their Baptismal dignity.
If, as you seem to do, think that these minor orders are rightly understood as the bailiwick of the ordained (clerics), then you might be able to say there is a clericalization of the laity.
But if Baptismal dignity is the basis for the opening, then, there is no "clericalization" going on.
The fact is that lay women and men have fulfilled the role of lector and acolyte for a few decades now without it being installed in what was considered until a few months ago exclusively for those preparing for Holy Orders. My question is, and no one yet has answered, are we now to have exclusively for lectors and Eucharistic Ministers, those laity formally installed in these new clericalized laity roles? Do you know? I don't. And thus, to what purpose is this?
And then, if as you say these ministries are not a clericalization of the laity, what is????????????????????????
It is likely that Paul VI envisaged the new lay ministries of lector and acolyte as not being simply transitional, as was the case with the subdiaconate and the minor Orders. Henceforth a man only entered the clerical state when he received deacon's Orders. A few years before, he had established the permanent diaconate. EMHC should only be used in extenuating circumstances and do not constitute a ministry as understood by the 1972 Motu Proprio, although an instituted acolyte is ex officio an EMHC and in addition may assist in purifying the sacred vessels.
It has never been the case that people acting as lay readers or altar servers require formal installation, and this has not been changed. I was still serving Mass in 1965 and on a weekday was called upon to read the Epistle, Gradual and Alleluia in English. Until then they would have been read by the celebrant at the altar in Latin.
If substituting for a cleric, to the extent of wearing clerical choir dress, amounts to 'clericalization' then it has been going on in nearly every parish for hundreds of years.
The problem is not the clericalization of the laity, but the creation of a two-tier laity. On Good Friday we pray for 'all orders and degrees of the faithful' - for our bishop, for all bishops, priests and deacons of the Church, and for the whole of the faithful people. At some stage ICEL introduced a new category: 'all who have a special ministry in the Church'.
Note the word 'special' which in English has connotations of superiority. The whole phrase is not in the Latin, and the corrected translation has wisely and significantly dropped it.
In Ministeria quaedam Paul VI explicitly states the ministries of acolyte and lector are not to be reserved solely to those preparing for ordination. These ministries were removed from the clerical realm, by the change in when one becomes a cleric, and assigned to the laity wether they be pursuing ordination or not. Perhaps this development could be considered a de-clericalization of these ministries rather than a clericalization of the laity. It may be difficult to argue clericalization when the ministries are proper to the laity.
For years some US diocese have been instituting male acolytes who are not preparing for ordination. The only thing months old seems to be the inclusion of women as candidates for these ministries.
-RF
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