Customer Reviews

To Hunt, to Shoot, to Entertain: Clericalism and the Catholic Laity

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This book constitutes an excellent companion to other works from Russell Shaw, such as "Understanding Your Rights: Your Rights and Responsibilities in the Catholic Church." Yet, to understand and appreciate what Pope John Paul II called the "clericalization of the laity & the laicization of the clergy," I believe readers would be best served by going straight to "Christifideles Laici." Be that said, Shaw's perspective in "To Hunt, to Shoot, to Entertain" can be understood by these lines from "Understanding Your Rights":

*"As for the laity, their first responsibility is to understand that they have serious obligations in conscience to work on behalf of a social order informed by justice and charity....As Vatican II says, 'Let the layman not imagine that his pastors are always such experts, that to every problem which arises, however complicated, they can readily give him a concrete solution, or even that such is their mission....enlightened by Christian wisdom and giving close attention to the teaching authority of the Church, let the layman take on his own distinctive role' (Gaudium et Spes, 43)....the apostolate proper to the laity lies in and to the secular world....This point is in danger of being obscured when a spirit of clericalist elitism leads large numbers of lay-people to seek jobs in the ecclesiastical bureaucracy, in the belief that it is a 'higher' calling than the calling to bring Christian values to bear upon secular professions and jobs" (pp. 87 - 102).

*"If young people have problems making commitments, ...one reason may be that adults...have failed to tell them that they have personal vocations" (p.210)

*"the 'vocations shortage' is a myth....What is in short supply among Catholics is the awareness that everybody has a vocation....Parishes and Church-related institutions across the United States are pining for more lay involvement and vitality, but hardly anybody talks about 'apostolate' of the laity in and to the world....American who describe themselves as Catholic number about 60 million. Yet who would seriously suggest that authentically Catholic views are reflected in the law...to a degree at all proportionate to the influence one might reasonably expect....lay ministry is only for some; whereas all lay people, without exception, are called to take part in the apostolate in and to the secular world....as Pope John Paul [incredibly] remarks, the great danger comes down to this: 'Being so strongly interested in Church services and tasks that [they] fail to become actively involved in their responsibilities in the professional, social, cultural, and political world' (Christifideles Laici, 2)...." (pp. 135 - 151).

Shaw absolutely recognizes that the seeds of true renewal lie within the authentic Christian family. As per Pope John Paul II, "The future of humanity passes by way of the family" (Familiaris Consortio).