The Cardinal Prefect of the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life opened the work of the conference “Pastors and Laity Called to Walk Together” until February 18 in the Vatican. From economic administration to civil and canon law, from the arts to communication, from evangelization to charity: these are some of the areas where the contribution of the laity inspires enthusiasm and creativity
Antonella Palermo – Vatican City
The need for bishops and priests to consult the laity before taking any important initiative in their own diocese or parish, and the delegation to the laity of ecclesiastical duties that by their nature do not require the presence of clergy. These are the two aspects that Cardinal Kevin Farrell, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life, examined in his speech to the Presidents and representatives of the Episcopal Commissions for the Laity, protagonists of the conference held in the Vatican: “Pastors and lay people are called to walk together”.
Promotion of integrated pastoral care
The three-day appointment, which began on February 16 and ended on February 18 in the new Synod Hall, is the result of the November 2019 Plenary Assembly of the Dicastery, in which the need to deepen the responsibility of each baptized person in the Church became clear. The aim is to sensitize both pastors and lay believers to shared responsibility. The logic of the “delegation” or “replacement” of the lay person is in fact reductive, the cardinal insists, and must be overcome in the context of what Pope Francis said on that occasion, when he stressed the importance of unity within the people Farrell explains that his department seeks to promote this model of “integrated pastoral care” and positive collaboration.
From February 16th to 18th, an international discussion with 210 delegates from all over the world will take place in the new synod hall under the title “Pastors and lay people called to go …
The Church is not a federation but a unified organism
This active presence of the laity in the Church, the cardinal clarified, does not detract from their primary mission of being leaven and leaven in society and in the ordinary settings of life: work, school, media, culture, sports, politics, the economy. “These must, of course, be seen as ordinary areas of lay Christian witness, while avoiding a rigid and exclusive perspective that altogether excludes the laity from active participation in Church life,” he says. Referring to point 55 of the document of the International Theological Commission “Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church”, Farrell specifies the specificity of the Church: not a federation but a single organism, a common subject.
The drafting of resolutions is a synodal task
It is the Conciliar Constitution Lumen Gentium that offers the formation program in this horizon. In point 37, the Prefect addresses two aspects in particular. First, the need for the pastor to apply what the Commission document (n. 69) provides, where the “decision-making” phase is distinguished from the “decision-making” phase: “The elaboration is a synodal task, the decision is a ministerial one Responsibility”. It is then a question of entrusting the laity with some tasks for which they show greater competence, zeal and creativity than priests and consecrated persons, who, according to Farrell, resort to more traditional and less “inconvenient” methods and practices can.
Areas where lay people can express zeal and creativity
The cardinal presents some examples ranging from economic administration and finance to civil law, and for those who have dealt specifically with canon law, “think, for example, of nullity cases; the field of biolaw and bioethics, especially for those lay people who come from medical school”. In addition, it refers to the field of dialogue between science and faith (especially for lay people coming from academic training with a scientific orientation), to social communication, to art as a place of witness and evangelization. Then there is all the commitment to evangelization “on the street” or in the various “social environments”: Farrell recalls that in the dicastery he directs there are numerous associations of believers, born precisely from the missionary impulse of some lay people have emerged ready to bring the proclamation of the Gospel in places where people meet and work: university campuses, military environments, the world of sports… The recommendation is that parish priests should not fail to “to oversee and accompany all these initiatives of the laity,” Cardinal Farrell concludes – but always have great confidence in their discernment and in their fidelity to the Gospel of Christ and to his Church”.