EXCERPT: John Allen, Jr.’s new book The Future Church: How Ten Trends Are Revolutionizing The Catholic Church offers a journalist's wide-ranging analysis of current global tendencies and their impact on 21st century Catholicism. Much of it reflects realities I have witnessed or heard about or even predicted. But reading the chapter on “Trend Five: Expanding Lay Roles” felt like looking into a mirror image, or even a self-portrait.
Allen begins by describing "the spirit of lay activism stirring in today's church" with anecdotes about two women engaged in lay organizations, and notes "no one in officialdom drew up the plans...and their founders didn't ask anyone's permission.” This reflects my own decision to pursue theological studies: arriving at Harvard Divinity School in 1970, I assumed I would be a lone Catholic alien in a historically Protestant school. It turned out we Catholics were the largest group of students there (this remained true into the 21st century) -- and no one knew why. The school had not recruited Catholics, and our Bishops had not sent us. We just started showing up. Our best guess: what was “stirring” was the Holy Spirit.
Allen notes that "lay empowerment" was too often seen to mean laity holding church positions rather than taking their baptismal vocation into the world. But he now sees that trend cutting the other way:
The growth market for lay leadership won't be reformers seeking to alter official structures and teachings, but rather activists willing to take those things for granted, at least for the time being, in order to get on with the business of saving souls and changing the world.
For me, this reflects my own ambition to mobilize laity for activism, not primarily for reform. That was the common thread as I moved from working as a religious education director to running the Lay Ministry Training Institute, to acting as newspaper editor, to entering private practice in church consulting. Although I generally focused on parish life, and although I personally favored reforms in some church teachings and practices such as celibacy and women's ordination, my professional aim was always making parishes more effective in their mission to the world -- parish as change-agent.
Allen claims the future will emphasize what he calls “Pentecostal Catholicism”:
The growing sector of what one might call Pentecostal Catholics means that an increasing number of laity see themselves as commissioned to act as teachers, evangelists, and activists on the basis of charismatic inspiration rather than formal ecclesiastical authorization.
This has certainly been true for me. While I never joined the Catholic Charismatic movement itself (as my parents did), I had to build my own ministry outside of "formal ecclesiastical authorization.” I have been free-lancing now for nearly twenty years, and routinely tell my parish-based clients: "I do not represent any church officials, and I have no authority here except what you give me. I work for you."
When Allen warns that "the more successful a Catholic initiative becomes, the more hierarchy frets about its independence," my alarm bells go off. These days I mildly tell people, "I have two reputations," glossing over troubled waters: getting fired by two pastors and one bishop; being blackballed by diocesan officials; learning that Bernard Law (whom I had never even met) was questioning both pastors and bishops about my loyalty and orthodoxy; twice being summonsed to the Vicar General’s office, at Bernard Law’s behest, for velvet-gloved threats: ("We would hate to have to tell pastors they could not hire you!").
In my twenties, thirties, and forties, such hierarchical "fretting" took its toll on me and my family (not to mention my income), but by now -- especially following Bernard Law’s fall from grace -- I see my battle scars as badges of honor.
There are still days, amid these tough Catholic times, when I wonder what I've accomplished in nearly 40 years of lay activism. But as I look in Allen's mirror, the self I see reflected in it makes this much crystal clear: these years have been lived on a frontier that no past generation of Catholic laity before us ever approached -- and it is, moreover, a frontier we laity continue to open up toward that “Future Church.”
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