I know a few dangerous men. One of them dons an apron monthly and makes hundreds of pancakes. Another trains adolescent boys on how to use a compass and other skills to survive in the wilderness. Yet another organizes a weekly prayer schedule for vocations.
All of them, you might have guessed, are lay members of my parish. Some are retired, and all are old enough to be grandfathers. But the longer I’m Catholic, the more I’ve realized how integral they are to the survival and perpetuation of Catholic life in America. Without the volunteer efforts of these prayerful, virtuous men, our parish would lose much—if not most—of the community and culture that binds it together across generations. As we contemplate this new year, it’s worth considering in what ways we contribute to the survival and growth of the Church.
The spiritual potency of the laity was something St. John Henry Newman understood in a way that few in the 19th century did, as Oxford scholar Paul Shrimpton expertly explains in his new book, “The Most Dangerous Man in England”: Newman & the Laity. That amusing honorific derives from a statement from papal chamberlain George Talbot, who wrote to the archbishop
