Fall
Ministries A passion for ministry
By PATRICIA LEFEVERE
By virtue of its entry requirement
-- baptism -- lay ministry may be the oldest profession in Christendom. But in
the nearly 2,000-year history of the Catholic church, laywomen and men have
long taken a backseat to the ordained in terms of power, prestige and pay.
Today, though, the shortage of priests and religious, the call to
lay vocations and the ever-deepening theological understanding of the role of
the laity since Vatican II (1962-65) have combined to give new purpose and
promotion to lay ministers. In calling for a renewal of the churchs
mission and of all its ministries, the council envisioned all of Gods
people -- priests and laity -- moving on a journey toward a realization of the
reign of God.
So it was not surprising to hear Chicago Auxiliary Bishop Gerald
Kicanas tell 250 lay ministers gathered in Hunt Valley, Md., in May that
you matter mightily to the church. No one in the room doubted
Kicanas, one of seven bishops on the U. S. Bishops Subcommittee on Lay
Ministry and spiritual adviser to the National Association for Lay Ministry,
which marked its 25th anniversary in Maryland. The organization advocates and
supports professional lay ministers.
One of the initiatives coming out of the bishops
subcommittee will be the first regional listening session drawing together lay
ministers, clergy, theologians and the bishops of Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas.
Forth Worth, Texas, Bishop Joseph Delaney has called the gathering in San
Antonio Oct. 1-2.
What permeates every discussion by the bishops is a fear
that promoting lay ministry will lead to a decline in priestly vocations,
said Irene Dymkar, executive director of the Chicago-based National Association
for Lay Ministry. She suspects there are many reasons why the priesthood
isnt attracting young men and that lay ministers should not be
scapegoats for the shortage.
Kicanas told the conference in Maryland that fear of blurring the
lines between the ordained and nonordained is unwarranted as the more lay
ministers can be valued and promoted, the more it will prompt vocations to the
priesthood.
Not all bishops feel that way. Often bishops have remarked how
surprised they are to discover how genuine are the vocation stories of lay
ministers, Dymkar told NCR. The future for lay ministry can only be
improved as laypeople pursue relationships with individual bishops and share
stories of their own vocation call.
God is calling the laity to minister in and outside his church,
said Suzanne Elsesser of Larchmont, N.Y. The Holy Spirit has imbued us with
confidence. We are passionate about our mission. An enthusiasm for
the church among the laity, especially among parents, can boost vocations to
the religious life, she said.
Lay ministers are committed to their vocation, she said, and
regard it as distinct from work or a job. They want to work in a collaborative
setting, whether that be a parish, the chancery or in the secular world. As
Elsesser sees it, the primary mission of the laity is to empower others
for marketplace ministry.
Elsesser, along with Trinitarian Br. Loughlan Sofield of Adelphi,
Md., addressed the National Association for Lay Ministry conference, reviewing
where the organization had been over its 25-year-history and where it was
going.
Some 30,000 Catholics are employed at least 20 hours a week as
catechists, parish administrators, directors of religious education, pastoral
associates, formation directors, parish life coordinators, parish business
managers and catechumenate program coordinators. Lay ministers also work as
musicians, liturgists, pastoral counselors, social justice ministers, spiritual
directors, parish nurses, lay missionaries and ministers to youth and to the
elderly in multiple ministerial settings. Their ranks quintuple when the number
of laity working in Catholic hospitals, schools, nursing homes, soup kitchens,
with AIDS victims and as chaplains to prisoners, the sick, college students,
travelers and seafarers is added.
About 9,000 of the 35,583 Catholics currently enrolled in lay
ministry formation programs will conclude their education or receive diocesan
certification this year and thus be eligible for full- or part-time ministry
positions. Elsesser, who is the regional director of the Ignatian Lay Volunteer
Corps in the Bronx, favors mentoring programs and internships to assure that
these graduates are recruited into church work.
Many lay ministers have found themselves unable to get work
commensurate with their skills, experience and education or to retain jobs,
especially when a new pastor arrives. Frequently those with families and school
loans cant live off a lay ministers pay.
Dymkar often finds priests fearful that lay ministers are
trying to take over, rather than just trying to use their God-given
skills to serve Gods people. She finds this and the living wage
question (see compensation story) to be serious justice topics for lay
ministers -- issues that could send young lay ministers into other fields.
Addressing insecurities
A sign of light filters through, however. She sees it
in the close association that the National Association for Lay Ministry has
with the National Federation of Priests Councils. Together the two groups
have produced a video, A Call to Collaborative Ministry. Members of both
organizations work hard to address the core insecurities some priests feel
around lay ministers.
Dymkar noted that at least 10 percent of the National Association
for Lay Ministrys 1,000 members are clergy. They exude confidence
in who they are as priests and are not threatened by lay ministers.
An ongoing question among the emerging lay ministers is what to
call themselves. Both Elsesser and Sofield favor the term lay
ministry. Elsesser thought that the older term, the ministry of the
laity, could also be used when speaking of those engaged in church work.
However, increasingly many in the hierarchy as well as the laity prefer the
terms lay ecclesial ministry and lay ecclesial
minister.
The terms were used throughout the 1999 report of the
Bishops Subcommittee on Lay Ministry, titled Lay Ecclesial Ministry:
The State of the Questions. Dennis Beeman, who chairs the National
Association for Lay Ministrys board, thinks lay ecclesial
ministry ought to define a corps of professional, educated and
spiritually formed laypersons and not simply all baptized persons. For Beeman,
director of Christian Formation in the Richmond, Va., diocese, Christians might
better be called disciples by virtue of their initiation into Christian life at
baptism. Some persons with particular gifts and skills are called to be
ministers, he told NCR.
Sofield hoped that future lay ministers would resist the
pull of becoming too ecclesio-centric. The author of
Collaboration: Uniting our Gifts in Ministry believes there is too much
engagement with internal church matters, too little with the church as mission.
He referred to the U.S. bishops 1995 pastoral, Called and Gifted in
the Third Millennium, calling the document not prophetic, but
subversive. It declares that everyone is called to the ministry and
gifted by God. Its sinful for a person or an institution not to let
the other person use his or her gifts, the brother said.
Yet Sofield pointed to a research project hed done with 32
leaders in business and law. The persons studied view their work in the world
as their ministry, he said, but they dont believe the church supports
them in their ministry. Members of the group were disillusioned with
their church because when they attend church meetings, conversations
arent about how we can change the world but about who will do
what.
Questions about lay ministers identity will continue, Dymkar
predicted. Lay ministers dont know who they are. Across the United
States there is no uniformity of role definition or title and no
standardization of educational and formation requirements. As a result, lay
ministers cannot easily move to another diocese, or even at times to another
role in the same diocese.
However, the National Association for Lay Ministry and the
national catechetical and national youth ministry federations are developing
competency standards that they can present for approval before the
bishops Commission on Certification and Accreditation. The bishops
own Subcommittee on Lay Ministry remains a springboard for discussion of what
lay ministry is.
Rite of passage
Lay ministers have often expressed the need to hold commissioning
ceremonies to give them a rite of passage into their chosen vocation. Dymkar, a
lawyer, remembers her own swearing in and admission to the New York State Bar.
She wonders why lay ministers often dont know when their ministry
began or if it is valid. The National Association for Lay Ministry, along
with Mercy Sr. Amy Hoey, who is project coordinator for the bishops
Committee on the Laity, hope to develop prayers and rituals to recognize the
roles of lay ministers.
The unequal access to education for lay ministers poses an
obstacle for many. Dymkar invited anyone to stand in line in the bookstore of
the Chicago Catholic Theological Union and watch a seminarian or nun sign for
books while the layperson shells out $100 of his or her own money.
With the high cost of many graduate schools, a lay student without a
scholarship can pay in excess of $30,000 in tuition for a masters in
divinity degree, plus room and board.
The good news, Sofield said, is that the University of Notre Dame
offers a free masters in divinity program to anyone accepted who can move
to South Bend, Ind. More than 500 have gone through the program, and some 50
have given at least a year of their life to mission, he said.
Across the country, funding for education is slowly becoming more
available. Two-thirds of all dioceses have some kind of lay formation program
in place. In many areas, dioceses are beginning to share the costs of graduate
school tuition in return for a commitment from the student to serve the local
church upon graduation.
Although more than 300 formation programs exist for the laity
nationwide, lay ministers often have to piece together our spiritual
formation, Elsesser said. She wanted more retreats, days of recollection
and regional meetings of laity for spiritual sharing.
Many lay leaders who spoke with NCR by telephone or in
person at the Maryland conference expressed great hope for the coming role of
lay ministers. I am extraordinarily optimistic about the future of lay
ministry, Bishop Delaney said.
We cannot be ignored, Dymkar said. There are too
many of us -- she estimates well over 100,000. We are everywhere --
in parishes, diocesan offices, hospitals, schools and wherever God calls us to
feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, visit the sick and the
imprisoned.
She said that lay ministers will continue to support each other
and strive to define ourselves, rather than look for affirmation from the
institutional church. We have come too far in our faith journey. There is no
turning back.
Patricia Lefevere is NCRs special report
writer.
National Catholic Reporter, September 7,
2001
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