Magisterium of the Laity

Crisis of the Hierarchy

 According to St. John Cardinal Newman, in the Arian controversy, a majority of bishops (with exceptions like Athanasius) fell into heresy and the orthodox faith was preserved by the lay faithful. Our own situation may be approaching that of the catastrophic 4th century. Our magisterium is in crisis. The entire German Church is in apostasy and scattered bishops around the globe are primed to follow a path, called "synodality," off a cliff into heresy. 

Where do we, who intend to be loyal to the real Magisterium, look for guidance? Certainly not to the confusing, volatile papacy of Francis! But we  have burning, radiant lights to guide us.

Bright Lamps: John Paul and Benedict; Faithful Priests; Loyal Bishops/Cardinals

1. Legacy of John Paul and Benedict, as the authentic interpretation of the inspired Vatican Council, abides as a fresh, creative but loyal expression of our Tradition. It is, perhaps, fitting that Benedict remains alive, however quiet and reserved, as a sacramental reminder that his guidance abides with us.

2. Priests now in their fruitful years were formed by those two popes. Polls show younger priests becoming more conservative while the laity move in the opposite direction. We are blessed by many wise, humble priests serving us quietly in the trenches.

3. In the hierarchy we have clear, firm voices of Truth: Chaput, Mueller, Burke, Sarah. Beyond this small, prophetic remnant,  the majority of bishops/priests remain loyal to our legacy but are muted and silent for a variety of mostly honorable reasons.

Subdued Voice of Priest/Bishops

The authority, credibility and confidence of the hierarchy has been compromised by a series of cascading crises: sex scandal and failure in accountability, financial chaos in Rome, internal polarization and confusion, the hostility of a West gone secular, and a theologically confusing and administratively inept papacy. Stripped of unity, authority and clarity, loyal priests and bishops mute their voices for understandable reasons:

- Loyalty to the pope as authority and center of unity. 

- Classic Catholic aversion to polarization and disunity. 

- Inclination to embrace what is best in this papacy.

- Ambivalence or uncertainty about the issues at stake.

- Avoidance of progressive hostility.

- Fear for their own well-being as priests. There is a servitude of obedience built into the priesthood, even beyond the spiritual vow. The career, opportunities and flourishing of a priest lie very much in the hands of his bishop .Disfavor in the chancery jeopardizes his most precious ministerial aspirations. This kind of servitude is unknown to us laity: a lawyer, accountant, or mechanic unhappy with his boss can get another job. It is not so easy for a priest! Another woe for the priest in this era of scandal, shame, hostility and the Dallas Charter.

Emergent Magisterium of the Faithful Laity: Non-Clerical, Largely Non-Academic

4. Last among our burning lamps:  the "magisterium of the laity." Normally, the role of the laity is to receive, and then live, the Truth as declared by the hierarchy. But we are in a time of crisis. Vatican II has been called  the "council of the laity."  Arguably its most resonant theme is the call to holiness of everyone, including the laity. Holiness is closeness to God, strength in Charity, but also firmness in Truth. And in our age clear witness to Truth seems to have become largely the mission of aware lay people. It is the lay who have received the Magisterium who are now echoing it, as the papacy and much of the episcopacy are asleep at the wheel.

Lay Catholic Intellectuals 1900-60

We have had sterling lay teachers in the past. My own intellectual formation (1965-72) was largely under the remarkable cadre who brightened the early 20th century. A golden age for the lay, Catholic intellectual: Von Hugel,  Blondel, Bergson, the Maritains, Gilson, Pieper, Sheed and Ward, Maurin, Mounier, (Russian Orthodox) Soloviev and Berdyaev, K. Stern, the Hildebrandts, Peguy, Claudel, Marcel, Chesterton, Dawson, (Anglicans) Lewis and Elliot,Waugh, Bernanos, Mauriac, Taylor, Girard, Unamuno, Ortega, Del Noce, Schumacher, Percy, Tolkien, Greene, Belloc, Muggeridge, Flannery O'Connor, Leseur, Catherine Dougherty, Sigrid Undset, Speyr, Day, Houselander, Anscombe, (later consecrated and canonized) Stein. 

These were not professional, academic theologians. All were philosophers, often home-spun and amateur. They contrast sharply with the sterile, abstract, rigid scholasticism that prevailed in the clerical academy of seminaries at the time. They tend to the pragmatic, mystical, phenomenological, existential, imaginative, engagement with culture-history-politics, and combat with fascism, communism, and bourgeois modernity. These reinvigorated the best of the past and prepared the authentic genius of the Council. 

I am not sure that the lay Catholic intellectuals of the last 50 years ago equal those of the previous half century who mentored me. But their role is more important because of the crisis within the hierarchy.

Magisterium of the Theologians?

Some time after the Council, there was talk about "the magisterium of the theologians." This is understandable: the Council was the heyday of the theologians, almost all clerical. The bishops were guided by their "periti" in a posture of remarkable episcopal docility; but theirs was the final voice. The theological guild fell, in critical mass, off a precipice, immediately after the Council as  they interpreted the Council in a disconnect from Tradition and surrendered themselves (with exceptions of course) to a culture turned catastrophically secular. At the time, Avery Dulles, with his usual clarity and good sense, identified an appropriate, collaborative, magisterial role for professional theology that is neither superior nor alternative to the papacy/episcopacy. Currently, the Catholic theological guild remains a source of confusion and dissonance in its disconnect from foundational Catholic truths.

Lay Voices of Clarity, Certainty, Authority

The contemporary lay voices which clarify and illuminate our Church operate largely outside of the hierarchy and the academy. They are down-to-earth, firmly grounded in the Deposit of Faith, prophetic and filled with the Holy Spirit. They aspire to think within a ambience of worship. 

Kiko Arguello stands alone (although with his partner-in-mission Carmen) as a distinctive prophetic voice like John the Baptist in the desert. He is surpassed in our time only by John Paul and Mother Theresa. Neither ordained nor academic, he is a spiritual genius. 

Leaders of the lay renewal movements have articulated a variety of innovative-yet-,orthodox expressions of Catholicism, organically connected with Tradition and loyal to the Magisterium yet engaged with culture. In particular, Ralph Martin and his partners in the Charismatic Renewal have collaborated with what is best in Pentecostalism and Evangelicalism to develop a fresh-but-traditional faith in opposition to a now hegemonic Culture of Death .

The John Paul Institute for the Family and Communio journal in D.C. are surrounded by a small, vigorous, brilliant family of scholars, mostly lay, who channel the authentic Magisterium of John Paul and Benedict to the U.S.A. They embody the Balthasarian "theology-in-holiness."

A number of conservative Catholic publications are radiant with faithful, lay Catholic thought: First Things, Lamp, Crisis, Touchstone, New Oxford Review, EWTN, National Catholic Register, The Catholic Thing. Along with these we have mainstream Catholic journalists (Ross Douthat, Matthew Dougherty, Sohab Amari) who argue politics but adhere to the moral magisterium of the Church and express it with flavor and zest. 

The Symphonic Alliance

These voices are not an alternative or challenge to the hierarchical magisterium, but an alliance with it. They echo it, with distinctive emphases. Let us consider the Church, with Balthasar, as a symphony, a miracle of harmony and melody. A multitude of sounds, each distinctive, all blending into a singular form of beauty. The composer-producer-owner is, of course, Jesus our Lord with the Father in the Holy Spirit. The foundational soundtrack is already there in Scripture and Tradition. The conductor is the dual pontificate interpreting the Council. And each of us has a distinct, but not dominating role.

The thinkers discussed here, those in both the earlier and later 20th century, represent what Balthasar famously called "lay style" of aesthetics. In his view, clerical-academic Catholic theology after St. Thomas weakened in its reception of the radiance and splendor of Revelation as it separated into an academy cut off from worship, prayer, and the sanctity of everyday life. Such theology tended to become abstract, sterile, detached, disincarnate. It has been up to the lay style to engage created Beauty and the Creator himself in a vernacular at once poetic, mystical, pragmatic, historical-yet-ontological and engaged with culture-politics-family.

It is striking that the very best, indeed the definitive hierarchical/magisterial theology of our age is hugely influenced by lay, cultural thought beyond the boundaries of academic and clerical theology. John Paul, Benedict, Balthasar, and Giassani are all influenced by Scripture, Tradition, St. Thomas and the return to the sources...but also to phenomenology, Goethe, music, poetry, fiction, and the vernacular of lay culture.

Currently, our heavenly symphony is discordant due to a conductor (papacy, episcopacy) become divisive, distracted and disoriented. How crucial it is that the lay faithful echo...in clarity, serenity, and vigor...the original heavenly score!