The Christian Vocation
The emergence of the layman
When a child is born, a new, independent reality reveals itself to the world. But the child has, in fact, been in existence already for some time; though outsiders know of him only as a change in his mother. She knows, however, that he is real, that he is not herself, and that in a sense he is more independent before birth than afterwards. Before birth he took what he needed from his mother's body, whether she was willing to give it to him or not; afterwards, if she forgets to care for him or neglects it, he dies. And the transition between the two states is painful and fatally dangerous both for the mother and for the child, though it is a transition as natural as life.
Something like this describes what is happening in the Church today with the layman. Laymen have been in the Church from the very beginning; they were conceived at the moment of the marriage of the world with God. But until quite recently, they have been in the Church; and though the Church knew of their existence, and so did the laymen, they appeared as part of the body of the Church itself. And the Church mothered them, giving herself to them, shielding and protecting them, and occasionally listening to the stirrings within her.
But the labor pains began not too long ago, with Theologians like Yves Congar pointing out the special role that laymen have, the Christian function that only they can perform properly. And the pains have grown more severe and more frequent, and the fear of death has been upon the Church--and on the laymen in it also.
But I think this stage has been passed, and now our voice--so much like squalling, so often--is heard in the world. And the Church looks at this wrinkled thing and wonders whether this infant is going to grow up to be a good son, or will become a monster, destroying both himself and her. It can happen.
Like all children, the layman is, in one sense, fully developed, and in another not yet anything. He is independent now in one sense--an obvious one: he can follow his own conscience and he knows it--but in another and more subtle sense more dependent than ever. How do we find what the Holy Spirit wants us to do? The experience of Protestantism should teach us that we can't simply rely on our own unguided perception of inner promptings. There is more than one spirit operating in this world, and the one that most looks like an angel of light is apt to be the wrong one.
But the Church depends on laymen now too, if for no other reason that there is a real sense in which we have escaped the kind of control the Church used to have over us. We have become aware of ourselves as realities in our own right. But if we continue, as we have begun, to look at ourselves one-sidedly, and try to seize total control over ourselves, we are doomed as Christians, and the Church is in for a regression perhaps greater than it has ever experienced before.
We face the dilemma of all new life: it is impossible to go back to the womb, and it is equally impossible to strike out on our own just because we can now breathe on our own. We are bound to resent the Church when she tells us not to do what we want to do, or even what we think is best for us to do. But how much of this resentment comes from the Holy Spirit, how much even from reason; and how much is it the tantrum of an infant who will have his way no matter what the consequences? We feel much; we do not know much.
I think we had better get rid of the notion that the layman has at last come of age. We have not; we have merely come out of hiding, and have a long way to go before we can dare to call ourselves mature. Everywhere we show the signs of childishness, and it is the wise child who knows he is a child. We speak out on questions we have not studied, and are amazed when we are patronized by those who have studied; we want "dialogue," by which we mean that those in authority are to "listen to" us, by which we mean that they are to do what we want. The sign of this is that we complain that there is no "dialogue" when we very clearly lay out our position before a Bishop or the Pope, and they don't change anything because of what we said. We accuse others of "only seeing part of the issue," when they don't act as if the part we see so clearly were the whole story. We interrupt, because we are afraid that if we do not, we will not get our side into the discussion.
On the other hand, it is a wise parent who knows what a child is. The Church is not fully aware of potential we have, and should not act as if it is. We do have a different point of view, and even if it is stridently expressed, we should not for that reason be ignored. We can be guided, but we can no longer be "formed"; our mold and form is within us, and it cannot be transformed into someone else's idea of what it ought to be. Many of us are more learned--even in sacred matters--than the clergy who are our pastors; we read, we examine, we think; and we can no longer be simply told the naive tales that convinced us centuries ago. We are persons, and though we can be commanded and threatened, we develop when we are persuaded, and even more when we are left alone, dangerous as this may be.
Ultimately, it is up to us laymen what we become. We are, to be sure, independent; the Church, as I will say later, is a guide each of us has for forming his own conscience, not something that has ultimate control over our lives (a dangerous statement this, but one that has always been held).
We are the ones who know ourselves from within, even though this self-awareness is very vague still. In some respects, the Church knows more about us than we do; but it does not know in the same way, and does not know, by any means, all there is to know. But in any case, since we are free, our growth and the direction of our development depends on our own knowledge.
When a child reaches adolescence, he stops finding out what he is potentially, and makes the decision to be what he wants to be. We laymen have not yet reached this happy state of anguish; we have a great deal to find out about ourselves as Christians first. We are like the boy who wants to be a fireman without knowing concretely what it means to be a fireman or what he is and whether this life suits him. One who decides to live a life before he has some real knowledge decides to live an abstraction; and his dream shatters against the unforeseen reality.
What I think we need, then, and what this book is about, is a certain objectivity and balance in matters Christian. We need fervor and eagerness, to be sure; but I submit that our present condition supplies that without any artificial effort to drum it up. What is really the pressing need now is knowledge: knowledge of what we now are, knowledge of what we ultimately can be; knowledge of how we can get there; knowledge of how fast we can travel without falling down; knowledge of how we fit in to both the Church and the world; and knowledge of what is likely to happen depending on what course of development we take. We are bound to take some course, and it will be a good course only, I think, if it is an intelligently chosen one.
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