Religion & Law

Here's some interesting background on this issue from a reader (who incidently has an interesting post on the geographical distribution of the 7 deadly sins at his blog):

I have had some experience as a lay brother in a clerical religious order, and can perhaps provide some insight into the dynamics of lay leadership and priestly leadership.

 

First, the fact that a lay brother is being cassated as a major superior of a clerical congregation (Maryknoll is, at root, an association of priests) has nothing to do with the broader governing authority of the laity. It simply means that, in a society whose mission is clerical the governing authority should be held by a cleric. Now, in other congregations and orders, such as monasteries in the Benedictine tradition, or the various Franciscan orders, the mission of the order is not clerical and ordination is not (theoretically) the norm; so a non-ordained members have and continue to be made superiors and major superiors. Further, there are no requirements for lay associations, such as the Legion of Mary, to have clerics involved in governance. For organs of the Church whose mission is essentially lay in character, the governing authority is appropriately held by (and sometimes restricted to) the laity.

 

Now, perhaps the Maryknoll Missioners should re-write their foundational documents to reflect the changes in their membership and sense of mission; but unless they do so, they remain essentially a clerical congregation, and appropriately require major superiors to be clerics.

 

I would note that this also extends to the office of Pastor in a parish. The purpose of the parish is essentially a clerical one: to unite the faithful in the sacramental presence of Christ. So an ordained person is rightly required as the highest authority in the parish. But, in this country, we have tended to associate the parish (or the diocese) with the whole of the Church. There are many acts of the Church, works of charity and service and education and so on, which are not properly the acts of a parish. These are, appropriately, led by lay persons or non-ordained religious.

 

Moreover, the entire governance of the secular sphere is the appropriate realm of the laity. To this end, ordained clerics are forbidden to hold secular political office.

 

In short, the question is not one of a "restrictive view of the role of lay persons," but one of the nature of the governance required by a given organization.

I'm not sure that this explanation of the governance documents answers some of the larger questions Susan and I have about Church attitudes toward the role of the laity, but it does help explain this particular situation.