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Cultivating vocations to the priesthood; supporting marriage and the family; renovating the fabric of ecclesial communities; fostering the role of the parish; and promoting associations at the service of the Church: these are “the necessary and providential contributions of the laity to the life of the Church” called for by Monsignor Paolo Rabitti, chairman of Italy’s episcopal Commission of the laity, in his “Letter to the Lay Faithful” issued on 26 May. “Praying for vocations and counselling adolescents to open themselves to the multiple calls of the Spirit” is the task, in the first place, “of the family”, points out the bishop. It will then “be the convincing witness of the life of the laity as spouses and parents on which will depend the spread of the Gospel of life in the world”. “The participation of the laity” is also “precious and irreplaceable in identifying and promoting forms of permanent and really prophetic forms of service” on the territory. Rabitti also asks the lay faithful to cultivate “simultaneously the sense of the parish and the sense of the diocese”, and to place “this basic bond at the basis of any involvement in particular groups or movements”. He further appeals to the laity “to help us to read the map of our time and to contribute effectively to promoting a new model of life” capable of striking the right balance between obedience to the law and the gratuitousness of the gift”. This synthesis, concludes the bishop, must “also traverse political action”, which is a “noble and irreplaceable form of service to the human person and to the promotion of the common good”. In response to the current “period of great changes, we especially feel the need for a new evangelization” that can only be “effective and credible” if it be enacted as mission of “the whole Christian community”. “The task of the proclamation and witness of the Gospel in fact concerns us all”, but assumes “a specific connotation in the life of the lay faithful” due to “the special contribution they are called to make in their role” as laypeople. This co-responsibility of the laity was called for by Vatican Council II but, as Msgr. Rabitti points out, has not always “had proper realization” and is characterised “by contradictory signals”. In this regard, “a careful and balanced analysis of the reasons for delays and ambivalences” is needed, if they are to be removed “with the contribution of everyone”. The Letter thus underlines the importance of “communion” within the Christian community, made “organic, operative, divine and human” by the Eucharist. To realise this communion and bear witness to it in the world as “a genuine gift of life” exhorts Msgr. Rabitti . “it is indispensable to abandon that strange and mistaken attitude that makes the layperson feel more like a ‘client’ than an actual co-participant in the life and mission of the Church”.
