cormacburke.me.ke

[The members of the laity are projected towards the world, with a proper mission in no way subservient to the clergy.]

            --------------------------------

          Last week, giving the 1992 Warrane Lecture at the University of New South Wales, Mgr. Cormac Burke, Judge of the Roman Rota, the Church's High Court, said that lay Catholics should avoid a clerical mentality, and noted that one is bound to get the role of the laity wrong if it is defined in clerical terms. He insisted that the proper role of the laity, according to the Vatican II, is not to try to "take over" clerical functions by jockeying for "power" in the Church, but to get out into the world - both to sanctify one's own secular job there, doing it out of love for God and to the best of one's human abilities, as well as to sanctify the world itself, drawing people to Christ by example: human honesty, integrity and hard work, sincere friendship, married and family life lived faithfully.