Cardinal Offers New Style for Priest-Lay Teamwork

By Ross Parrish, Mobile, Ala. - St. Ignatius

Often, we sit back and allow our local parish priest to do all the work while we stroll through our secular lives.  Cardinal Stanislaw Rylko recently spoke on the collaboration between priests and lay people. The Men of St. Joseph allows us to clearly see the role we can play in our Church. These remarks, in particular, seem to resonate within me.

“At your service”

Cardinal Rylko reflected on the service that movements and communities offer to oftentimes vast parishes. With movements, he noted, the "risk of anonymity" can be "effectively contrasted by a micro-structure of small Christian communities that live the faith with intensity."

These communities, he clarified, "do not put themselves in competition with the parish, and even less so, are they an alternative to the parish. Rather, they represent a great pastoral possibility to be received -- because every environment in which 'adult' Christians are formed, aware of their own vocation and mission, serves the cause of the Church and of the parish."

"Hence," the cardinal continued, "from her ministers the Church expects sensitivity, openness and cordial reception of these new realities which bear -- in the life of so many Christian communities -- truly blessed fruits of conversion, holiness and mission."

I felt the need to share this article with everyone not as a pat-on-the-back, but as a word of encouragement.  After reading this article, I have never been more proud to be a member of this awesome community.  So let us continue to “live the faith with intensity”, not for our own gain, but for Christ’s.