Academic literature on the topic 'Apostolate of the Laity'

Abstract This article addresses the political engagement of Catholic students in the Netherlands during the inter-war period. Recently there has been an increased academic interest both nationally and internationally, in juvenile and radical Catholicism in the inter-war years. In the Netherlands, the magazine De Gemeenschap and the girls’ movement De Graal are important examples of the radical Catholicism of the youth. Though the religious activism of these Catholic youth groups has been studied extensively, we still do not know much about their involvement in politics and more specifically, their interaction with the Catholic party. This article looks at how the activation of the laity affected the political engagement of Dutch Catholic students. Based on ideas about Catholic Action and the importance of a lay apostolate for the rechristianization of society, Catholic students established new groups for religious and political activism. As these groups were neither installed nor controlled by the hierarchy, they formulated alternative political interpretations of Catholicism. Thus, the youth challenged the religious legitimacy of the Catholic party, whose politicians listened to them only reluctantly.

Currently, the formation of lay Catholics is one of the key tasks of the Church. The Synod of Bishops, Towards a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, and Mission, convened by Pope Francis, served as a reminder of this. In its new format, i.e., phased consultations and meetings, the Synod calls for the involvement of lay Catholics in listening to one another and recognising directions for the Church renewal. This emphasises the need for an ongoing effort to form the faithful. There are many suggestions in the Church for the formation of lay Catholics. Franciscan spirituality, which continues to inspire and attract people, is one of these suggestions. In his teaching, the current pope likes to refer to St. Francis of Assisi, drawing from his writings and example of life. This work aimed to present selected elements of Franciscan spirituality that seem useful in the formation of lay Catholics for their service in the Church and the world. Six elements that can be drawn from rich Franciscan spirituality were analysed and they seem relevant for today’s Church: fidelity to the Church, openness to the world and rejection of its evil, apostolate “in via”, promotion of the laity, poverty at the service of the Gospel, and openness to the people rejected by society. The discussion of these elements is preceded by a synthetic presentation of the nature and purpose of the formation of lay Catholics.

As the other articles in this roundtable suggest, Catholics in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century were able to draw upon a long tradition of lay involvement in various lay apostolates, the renewed teaching on the role of the laity proclaimed at the Second Vatican Council, and the worldwide presence of forms of international lay organizations, including Pax Romana and Catholic student movements. Additional contributions to this discussion could easily include some of the other official and institutionalized forms of lay involvement that proliferated in the twentieth century—the rise of various new ecclesial movements such as Opus Dei, Focolare, and the Communità Sant'Egidio; the Catholic Family movement and other forms of lay-led renewal at the national and parish level that pursued the conciliar vision of the universal call to holiness with enthusiasm and persistence; the entry of thousands of laypeople into ministries and teaching roles previously restricted, in practice if not always in statute, to the ordained and to members of religious communities; and the particular roles of lay Catholics with historically oppressed or marginalized racial and ethnic identities in finding a voice in postconciliar Catholicism.