The Baptism occurred last Sunday at St Hedwig's Parish in the Catholic Diocese of Essen, in the Ruhr region of Western Germany.

I had no particular expectations on this issue. Still, the fact that a lay person, especially a woman, can baptise my daughter has excited my whole family," said Carolin Winkler, the young mother.

With a degree in theology, Elvira Neumann is a parish animator, bereavement support person and member of a team of three lay people who, together with a priest, are responsible for running the parish.

"In the past, I did the preparation with the families, but I had to leave the celebration itself to the deacon or the priest," she said.

"Now, I accompany the families to the end. It's a very powerful feeling and a real honour."

The Diocese of Essen is the first in Germany to allow lay people to baptise.

It is something that canon law allows in emergencies, and Bishop Franz-Josef Overbeck said the priest shortage created such an emergency.

"We are reacting to a difficult pastoral situation," he explained.

The move is in line with a Vatican instruction in 2020 on the pastoral conversion of parishes.

Further south, the Diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart announced it would soon allow lay people to celebrate the sacrament of Baptism.

The changes in Germany are not without theological debate.

The reforms are part of the politicisation and secularisation of the Church, says Fr Joachim Heimerl.

He says this is not the way to ensure the administration of the sacraments and will likely mean priests and deacons will hardly ever baptise again.

He's predicting the laity will "seize it and defend it against the clergy."

Heimerl is also opposed to Germany's Synodal Path.

Also critical is Michael Seewald, professor of dogmatic theology at the University of Münster.

He labels the emergency measures as "fictitious".

He warns that the move could lead to a two-tier baptism where a priest would preside at a "real ceremony", and others will do it "on the cheap."

The professor is labelling the move merely as "a political symbol that is only a consolation prize and a placebo for women who cannot be ordained priests".

Catholic dioceses in Switzerland already permit lay-led baptismal services.

Source

• la-Croix International

Like many other parishes in Boston faced with an ever-worsening clergy shortage, St. Mary of the Angels did not have a priest in residence.

Rather than allowing the creaky 19th-century Victorian estate house that doubled as the church's gathering space to stand empty, the parish made the decision to open the doors to laypeople.

I moved into the parish house and into an anomalous existence: I was a 24-year-old woman living in a Catholic church.

In exchange for my bedroom above the office, I helped clean the church on Saturday mornings and set out the coffee and donuts—a veritable second Eucharist—after Mass on Sundays, dutifully cutting the pastries into quarters in an attempt to feed as many people as possible on the parish's nonexistent budget.

I compiled the church bulletin and taught fifth-grade catechesis and performed a litany of other odd jobs and pastoral tasks.

In return, I was given a rare gift: the chance to experience the life of a parish from the inside out.

St. Mary's was unique in two respects.

First, it was profoundly diverse.

Built in 1906 to serve the Irish and German working class in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood, it had, for decades, sustained a vibrant community of African American, Afro-Caribbean, Latino, Southeast Asian, and Euro-American parishioners.

A significant portion was first-generation immigrants. Even more striking were the ties of friendship that united members across boundaries of race and culture.

Second, laypeople were the heartbeat of parish leadership.

People weren't just involved. They were empowered.

In some ways, they had to be.

There was no full-time pastor, and no money to pay a large staff.

But the tradition of collaboration was born of more than necessity.

After Vatican II, St. Mary's established an interracial parish council of laypeople who put forth a bold agenda for change at the once isolated, struggling church.

In 1969, they transferred the church's financial accounts to Boston's only black-owned bank in an act of solidarity with the neighborhood's growing African American community.

Collaborative leadership among the parish's laypeople, religious sisters, priests, and neighbors intensified in the 1970s and '80s, when St. Mary's became the epicenter of community peace-building against a rising tide of youth gang violence.

In 2004, when the Archdiocese of Boston targeted more than 80 churches for closure or consolidation, St. Mary's was one of only a few to successfully protest its shuttering.

Parishioners organized a community campaign to convince the chancery that the parish was too vital to the stability of the neighborhood to close.

St. Mary's was a parish that, as the Jesuits like to say, ruined me for life.

It ruined me for clericalism, for racism, for xenophobia.

Most of all, it convinced me that when it comes to building humble, accountable, inclusive Catholic communities, another world is indeed possible—not in a small, self-selecting alternative community of like-minded individuals, or in the kingdom of God, but in an ordinary city parish here and now.

I thought of St. Mary's as I read James Carroll's provocative cover story in the June issue of The Atlantic.

The piece is a kind of lament, an excoriation of the Catholic Church's capitulation to clericalism.

In theological terms, clericalism—the elevation of ordained persons over the laity—is not only an unintended consequence of history, but also a social sin, an idolization of power perpetuated by a constellation of social structures and cultural practices. Continue reading

• Susan Bigelow Reynolds is Assistant professor of Catholic Studies at Emory's Candler School of Theology
• Image: Emory: Chandler School of Theology

The German cardinal's motivation is his firm rejection of clustering parishes to resolve Germany's shortage of priests.

The shortfall of priests in Marx's archdiocese of Munich and Freising is clear.

He says of its 1.7 million Catholics, there was only one candidate for the priesthood this year.

Furthermore, he says not all the priests in his archdiocese are in the position to run parishes.

Giving lay people parish leadership roles would mean reconsidering and reorganising the requirements for admission to the priesthood, he says.

To test his idea, Marx has announced plans to run a pilot project using a selection of parish leadership models.

The positions would be full-time and staffed by lay volunteers.

Marx stresses the importance of retaining individual parishes. He says by using lay parish leaders, the Church's local presence will be guaranteed.

This "is most significant," he says.

"We would waste a great many opportunities if we were to withdraw from our territorial roots. It is a case of remaining visible locally."

Marx says his views are supported by the Second Vatican Council's "priesthood of all the faithful" and canon law.

Source

• La Croix
• LifeSite
• Image: Catholic Herald