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PDF versionLaypeople are the future of mission work
by Tom Roberts on Jun. 28, 2010
23rd in the series
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URBANA, ILL. -- Twenty-six years ago, Susan Nagele, just out of medical school, took a leap into the relatively unexplored territory of lay mission work when she joined the young movement of Maryknoll lay missioners. A three-year commitment grew, year after year, until it became her life’s work, a vocation that drew her simultaneously to the front lines of war in Sudan and to the quieter pursuit of a deeper interior journey.
Longevity makes hers an unusual tale, but foreign mission work is one of those staples of U.S. Catholic life that is shifting because of increased involvement of laity and changing needs in the field. The initial impulse to involve laypeople as active missionaries at Maryknoll, a peculiarly American organization, was provided by the reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) and its emphasis on the roles and responsibilities of laypeople within the church.
Read the full report here: Emerging Church: 'Laypeople, future of missions'
Kind of a Catholic Peace
Kind of a Catholic Peace Corps, 50 years after Kennedy.
Lay people, the future of the
Lay people, the future of the entire Church. The days of the cappa magna wearing feudal lords and their presbyteral allies is waining rapidly.
This was a good outcome from
This was a good outcome from the Council. The increase in the opportunity for lay people to serve in the way they are best qualified and needed. Let's stay out of the liturgy and Magesterium. We are truly not needed there.
Sorry Mitch, to say "let's
Sorry Mitch, to say "let's stay out of the liturgy and Magisterium" is to give credence to the extreme and defunct clericalism into which Benedict is trying to pump new life. Let's all go back to the 10th century?
The laity are the Church and they belong in the area of liturgy, governing, and ruling now more than ever.
"Lay people, the future of
"Lay people, the future of the entire Church. The days of the cappa magna wearing feudal lords and their presbyteral allies is waining rapidly."
You are missing half the equation. "Involved lay person" does not automatically mean a "progressive, gender inclusive, NCR subscriber"
Many of the laity actively invovled in the church are conservative and the programs that these lay leaders pour their efforts into reflect their conservatism.
What the Church in the US,
What the Church in the US, especially the hierarchy, is becoming is a sad extension of neocon, bible belt, Bush inspired primitive pentecostalism. Progressives, "gender inclusive NCR subscribers" and others are becoming increasingly aware of this phenomenon and need to speak out against it everywhere they can.
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