Priests and Laity

Vatican II called the laity into deeper service with the Church and through the partnerships that developed between priestly orders and lay people; a leavening within the secular world was brought to a level not seen since the golden age of Christendom.

What the laity can bring to the mission work of the Church is captured in this book review of a Harvard researcher who becomes a cop on the street for a year or so, then writes about it, and Cop in the Hood is probably much more connected than your average academic study of police work; but still lacks the true strength the sanctified laity can bring to the table, noted in this final paragraph by the book reviewer, a street cop:

“One must admire Mr. Moskos for his willingness to walk in a police officer's shoes for 20 months. But it is important to remember, while reading "Cop in the Hood," that though he wore the badge and carried the gun, in his heart he was still a researcher foremost, not a police officer. He lacked the attribute that marks out the genuine cop -- that rare and inexplicable impulse to run toward gunfire when other sane people are running away. It is an attribute that may be described and analyzed at Harvard, but it is not often found there.”

That “rare and inexplicable impulse” only comes from a lifetime of devotion to a vocational calling that, within the lay world, corresponds to that which marks the vocational priest, and together they can work much more effectively within the world,. against the aims of the prince of the world, than either can alone; the essence of Vatican II.