The Second Vatican Council unleashed a wave of lay participation in the church—and there’s no turning back.

Joan Higgins remembers when things began to change at her San Francisco parish. "It was 1968," she says. "We had a new young pastor who was very forward-looking. He turned around the altar, moved the tabernacle to one side, and instituted a moment of collective silence for reflection after communion." The young priest also introduced another innovation: a parish council.

"Then he left to get married," says Higgins with a laugh. "We got a new pastor who was very conservative. He moved the tabernacle back behind the altar, got rid of the moment of silence, and abolished the parish council."

A few decades earlier, the changes instituted by either of the new pastors might have been met by a collective shrug of the parish's shoulders. In those days, Catholics--mostly second- and third-generation immigrants--were more concerned with putting bread on the table for their families than debating the placement of the tabernacle. In the heady years after the Second Vatican Council, however, Catholic laypeople were more inclined to give voice to their desires for and disappointments with the church.

"My husband, Bob, who served on the parish council, was very upset about it being abolished," says Higgins. "He held a meeting at our house with a lot of men from the parish, and they had a long conversation about what to do." Higgins, for her part, was at least as concerned about the elimination of the moment of silence after communion. "I thought it was very important for us to reflect on what had just happened at the Mass," she says. "So I wrote the pastor a letter to complain. He actually called me up to talk about it, and we had a good conversation."

A growing ferment

It is an exaggeration--but not much of one--to say that the role of the laity in the Catholic Church has changed more in the last 75 years than the last 750. Seventy-five years ago, when this magazine was first published, the Mass was in Latin, and laypeople did not read from scripture or distribute communion. "Religious education" consisted of classes in Catholic schools taught primarily by sisters wearing habits.

Nevertheless, to suggest that laypeople had no role in the life of the church of that time would be mistaken. Catholic parishes had a rich network of lay associations--confraternities, sodalities, service organizations--that played an important role for a church of immigrants seeking a foothold in American society.

"These associations served a useful purpose," says Jay Dolan, author of The American Catholic Experience (University of Notre Dame Press) and professor emeritus of history at Notre Dame. "Catholics weren't necessarily well regarded by the broader culture. They were able to develop a sense of confidence by joining and participating in these organizations," says Dolan.

By the mid-20th century, however, it became clear that many lay Catholics were seeking a broader role in the life of the church. After the Great Depression and World War II, church leaders encouraged laypeople to help rebuild their societies. Catholics were obtaining college degrees and entering the ranks of the professions. They were reading and talking about their faith.

"The theology of the mystical body was enormously important," says Dolan. It stressed that every Catholic was a member of the Body of Christ and was called to make Christ present in the world. In 1943 Pope Pius XII embraced this theology in an encyclical, Mystici Corporis (The Mystical Body), where he wrote that laypeople "ought to have an ever-clearer consciousness not only of belonging to the church, but of being the church."

The most significant lay movement of this period was the Christian Family Movement (CFM), founded in 1949 by Patricia and Patrick Crowley. While the name might suggest a support group for married couples, the CFM's actual focus was on Christian social action in the world. CFM encouraged the formation of small groups of married couples who would use a three-part method: observe, judge, act.

"The people involved in CFM believed that they had to make it easier for people to have good family lives," says historian Jeff Burns, the author of Disturbing the Peace: A History of the Christian Family Movement (University of Notre Dame Press). "They understood that economic and social conditions in the broader society had a large impact on family life."

By the early 1960s, notes Burns, more than 50,000 couples were involved in the Christian Family Movement. Because couples tended to cycle in and out of the group, the actual impact was much larger. CFM eventually went international, becoming particularly strong in Latin America.

More than three lines

Shortly after his election in 1958, Pope John XXIII announced his intention to call an ecumenical council, a gathering of the world's bishops that quickly became known as Vatican II. In a 1962 letter to the pope, Cardinal Léon-Josef Suenens of Belgium called "for a major statement on the position of laypeople in the church. The Code of Canon Law devotes a mere three lines to them!"

As it turned out, the laity received far more than three lines at Vatican II. "Almost every document deals with the laity in some way," says Dolores Leckey, author of The Laity and Christian Education (Paulist Press). Sancrosanctum Concilium (Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy), for instance, called for reform of the liturgy in order to promote the "full and active participation" by the entire assembly. The council also adopted Apostolicam Actuositatem (Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity), which called the laity to discern the gifts given to them in baptism and to use them in service of the church's mission.