NEW ROLES FOR LAITY?: Radical ideas from England

Auxiliary Bishop Vincent Malone of Liverpool, England, might be hearing from the Vatican soon. In a new book of essays, "Healing Priesthood: Women's Voices Worldwide," he offers two radical suggestions for the Church: letting women hear confessions and allowing lay people to administer the Anointing of the Sick.

As reported by Catholic News Service, Bishop Malone said that women going into confession should have the option of talking about their spiritual health with a female confessor, just as they can choose to discuss their physical status with female physicians. (It is likely that he came to this idea in part from his role as episcopal liaison to the National Board of Catholic Women of England and Wales. He is the only male contributor among 25 essayists in the new book.)

"It is not difficult to conceive circumstances in which a female minister could more appropriately than a man be the receiver of the humble confession that opens a soul to hear the glad words of the Lord's forgiveness," the bishop wrote.

Similarly, he noted, the Church could "think of the possibility that a lay man or woman attending a sick person could not only pray with them and pray over them, but [also] pray the Church's most solemn prayers...with sacramental anointing."

In making his argument, the bishop points out that while the Church decrees that only priests may administer most of the sacraments, lay people confer the Sacrament of Matrimony on each other during a ceremony witnessed by a priest or deacon; and, in emergency cases, laity can baptize.

He knows that current canon law forbids both of his notions for expanding lay involvement in the sacraments; but he hopes that by "making a little murmur," he will cause people to ask: "Is this worth thinking about?"

The problem, however, is that sometimes the Vatican doesn't like people even to think about such things; in the bishop's words, Church tradition often seems "to inhibit the freedom to engage with difficult questions." However, he continued, "within any tradition, it is a refined art to distinguish between what is at the heart of the principles it enshrines and what is simply the current, perhaps variable, practice surrounding those principles."

Bishop Malone insists that his ideas are not meant to provoke disobedience among the faithful. "Rather," he writes, "they are a quiet reflection on what is meant by healing priesthood."

His suggestions are intriguing. And those who would dismiss his ideas as being the fantasies of a young bishop should know that he is 71 and has been a priest for almost half-a-century.

(9/4/03) [[In-content Ad]]