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  2013-03-24    Darlene Starrs, Canada blogger 

Pope Francis to empower the laity?

 

I read the following passage from an interview with Cardinal Bergoglio (Pope Francis), from 2007. The title of the article is:  What I would have said at the Consistory  

This is the passage that consumed my attention:  

Their (lay people) clericalization is a problem.  The priests clericalize the laity and The laity beg us to be clericalized…It really is sinful abetment.  And to think that Baptism alone could suffice.  I’m thinking of those Christian communities in Japan That remained without priests for more than two hundred years.  When the missionaries         Returned they found them all baptized, all validly married for the Church and all their Dead had had a Catholic funeral.  The faith had remained intact through the gifts of Grace that had gladdened the life of a laity who had received only baptism and had also Lived their apostolic mission in virtue of baptism alone. One must not be afraid of Depending only on His tenderness….

          

Cardinal Bergoglio makes it quite clear from this quote that ‘baptism’ is the sacramental door that permits the Catholic Christian to perform liturgical ministries, that would have  been considered the sole responsibility of the clergy.  He does not mention, Holy Eucharist, but he most definitely affirms the ministerial competency of the laity to baptize, to marry, and to bury. In Cardinal Bergoglio’s view, the people have been “clericalized” and so they believe that they cannot do these things, and that it must be Father, so and so who conducts these services and rites.  

Whether he mentions the Holy Eucharist or not, it seems to me, that we do have to be very careful about assuming that we have for instance, a shortage of priests, and because of that shortage, we will not have Eucharist or any of the other sacraments.  I have maintained that it is among the laity that we have all the ministers we need, and it seems I am not alone in that belief, assuming Pope Francis remembers these words of his, if not in his mind, in his heart.  

Cardinal Bergoglio has already said as Pope Francis, that he considers clericalism to be a primary problem for the Church. (paraphrasing)  I had wondered what he meant by this.  Certainly, he is opposed to the “pomp and pageantry” of the Church, but it would appear that he is also opposed to the laity believing that they are excluded from conducting rituals that are central to our faith and faith communities.   

Please, please, God, is my plea, that Pope Francis stands by his words in this interview from 2007, because he gives me great, great, hope, that the laity, who supposedly are considered central to the Church, will indeed be empowered, to embrace more, of what it is, to be Church.

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