Episcopal Press and News
Seminary Professor Proposes 20th Century Catechumenate
Diocesan Press Service. May 29, 1974 [74162]
Isabel Baumgartner, Editor, The Tennessee Churchman
KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- An Episcopal theologian proposes that, to enable lay people to do ministry today, the Church might well restore the catechumenate -- the three-year period of Biblical study which, during the earliest Christian centuries, preceded Holy Baptism.
The Rev. Charles L. Winters, Jr., Th. D., professor at the School of Theology of Sewanee's University of the South, told a ministry conference which closed May 16 at Roanridge Conference Center here that "ministry now, if it is to be effective -- let alone true -- has got to be the ministry of laity, not simply of hierarchy."
Dr. Winters acknowledged that the traditional focus of ministry functions in bishops, priests, and deacons made sense, in fourth century western Europe when all the known world had become Christian.
"It was all very well then," he said, "for clerical people -- literally, those who could read and write and work with figures -- to minister to lay people who had neither these skills nor theological knowledge."
But he cautioned that today "we may be trapped into mistaking custom for dogma, the customary for the divine. Custom has changed many times and will change many times more; it is doctrine that is unchanging. "
"In our secular age," he continued, "with Christians again a minority, we all need to be able to minister and to go out in mission to those who have not heard the Gospel. Let's begin anew to take our doctrine of Holy Baptism seriously and 'edify' the Church -- building up, informing, making aware, and expanding the horizons of all our people, not only those in holy orders."
Dr. Winters described the ancient catechumenate: "Three years of concentrated study of the traditions of the old and the new Israel, a final comprehensive exam during Holy Week, a sort of psychological testing including the exorcism of demons, then a solemn commitment before congregation and bishop, declaring belief in the traditions. All this was required as preparation for Holy Baptism; it sounds rather like what happens today for our clergy, doesn't it? Then, it produced a thoroughly ordainable laity; we've reversed the situation entirely. "
Dr. Winters said that while skill training can be given rather quickly, the use of skills in Christian ways requires "a whole reservoir of theological understanding as a part of one's interior equipment. Our lay people need long-term, systematic exposure to Holy Scripture and to how it deals with all the major issues of life. They need to bounce this knowledge around in their heads long enough for it to change their value structures. Until this happens, until once again we have an ordainable laity, we're whistling in the wind to expect to develop true Christian ministry."
He said seminaries today are "an endangered species, for good reason. We have too many seminaries preparing too many men for ordination. That's become the only non-freaky road open to one who wants to take ministry seriously -- the only door to go through. And we're pushing through that door larger numbers of people than the Church can pick up."
He posed the question, "What else might we in the seminaries do?" -- replying, "We might teach the laity. Wouldn't that be a novel thing to do? We could give lay people the chance to cluster around libraries and do theological scholarship. We could offer some of this beyond campus, too, in several ways; one might be a parish priest/professor exchange program. "
Dr. Winters is on sabbatical, outlining and gathering resources for an innovation Sewanee hopes to offer soon: a two-year pilot program in theological education for lay persons.