AS you recently said (CL 5/8/01), ‘A vocation need not require becoming a priest or religious. There are many other ways in which to serve God.’
As someone remarked, ‘We are called to be sent.’ In a certain sense there is one vocation – the universal call to holiness as explained in the Vatican II document on the Church (‘Lumen Gentium’, ch 5). But there are many missions and ministries, not least being those of Catholics and other Christians active in the world.
That used to be called the ‘lay apostolate’. Through their baptism and confirmation – their christening – the laity are commissioned to that apostolate by the Lord himself (LG, n 33). In other words, the laity are called by God to burn with the Spirit of Christ and to exercise their apostolate in the world as a kind of leaven (Vatican II, Laity, n 2).
The urgency of the matter was proclaimed by Pope Leo XIII in his famous 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum on the condition of the working classes. That urgency has been reiterated by successive popes and most recently by John Paul II in such documents as his 1988 apostolic exhortation ‘Christifideles Laici’ on the vocation and mission of the laity faithful to Christ both in the Church and in the world.
With that background, I was saddened that The Leader’s special supplement for Vocations Awareness Week 2001 included nothing about the vocations, missions and ministries of non-ordained and non-religious but nevertheless christened members of the Church who are otherwise called ‘laity’ (Catechism of the Catholic Church, n 934).
An excellent item on this matter by Good Samaritan Sister Clare Condon may be accessed at www.adelaide.catholic.org.au
I personally feel that once the dignity of all christened Catholics has been fully restored and revered within the Church, vocations to the priesthood and religious life may very well regain their former attractiveness.
GRAHAME FALLON Woody Point, Qld
