Ganito Noon; Paano Ngayon?

By Fr. Ronald Lunas, STL
(Part 4)

In the Modern Times. It was in the Modern times when the laity were “rediscovered” by the hierarchy and theologians.

Humanism, Reformation, and the French Revolution ended the Middle Ages and begun the Modern period. They also brought in a new organization of the political world, more discoveries, the transition beyond the borders of Christian West producing the epoch of emancipation, i.e., the period f the world set free from the Church tutelage. In effect, there was in the 19^th century the waning of the official Church (the hierarchy) as well as the realization that the Church (which has been identified with the hierarchy) has become isolated from the Modern world.

Prompted bye the above-mentioned situation, the hierarchy began to rediscover the laity. It came to realize that this portion of the Church, being educated the politically aware, could promote and defend Christian interest in a secular society and be formidable moral force in the increasing pluralistic world. Laymen in France, England and Germany, for example, sought to bring Catholic influence to bear on the important social issues of the day. An important outcome of this grass-roots lay movement was the papacy’s (Pius XI and Pius XII) official acceptance and the promotion of Catholic Action. A definite mandate was given enabling the laity to cooperate with or even participate in the hierarchy’s own apostolate. Pius XII in his encyclical Mystici Corporis frankly  acknowledge the fact that the laity has an obligation to the Church’s total mission. The laity can be delegated by the hierarchy to function and share in its responsibility.

But theologians saw something more in the laity. As they took new interest in ecclesiology, they began to view the laity in a very different light. In the retrieval of the patristic vision of the Church as an organic fellowship of believers with Christ as its head, those in the Tubingen school of theology (Germany), in particular, underscored the equality of all the baptized. The biblical scholar’s discovery of the Church’s view of itself as the new “People of God” also helped to confirm the dignity and importance of the laity as full members of the Church by virtue of baptism.