Towards a 'new deal' for the laity in the Church's legislation

Abstract

Anybody familiar with the active and important roles that the laity played in the life of the Church during the first few centuries of its life must feel that, for quite some time until very recently, the laity have been getting rather a raw deal in the Church. For many centuries it has become the accepted practice in the Catholic Church not only to insist on the distinction between the clergy and the laity as a fundamental distinction willed by. Christ, but also to reduce the laity generally to the status of passive recipients of the clergy's pastoral ministry and to provide of the material needs of the clergy and the Church. With rather dry humour it has been said that the laity in the Church has been reduced to performing the functions of praying, of obeying and of paying.