List of points

One characteristic of all Christian life, no matter what form it takes, is the 'dignity and freedom of the children of God'. Throughout your teaching, you have insistently defended the freedom of the laity. To what exactly do you refer?

I refer precisely to the personal freedom of every layman to take, in the light of principles given by the Church, all the concrete, theoretical or practical decisions which he considers most appropriate and most in agreement with his own personal convictions and aptitudes. For example, decisions referring to different philosophical or political views, to different artistic or cultural trends, or to the problems of professional and social life.

All those who exercise the priestly ministry in the Church should always be careful to respect the autonomy which a Catholic layman needs, so that he will not find himself in a position of inferiority in relation to his fellow laymen, and can carry out efficiently his own apostolic task in the middle of the world. To attempt the opposite, to try to instrumentalise lay people for ends which exceed the proper limits of our hierarchical ministry, would be to fall into a lamentably anachronistic clericalism. The possibilities of the lay apostolate would be terribly curtailed; the laity would be condemned to permanent immaturity and above all, today especially, the very concept of authority and unity in the Church would be endangered. We cannot forget that the existence among Catholics of a true diversity of criterion and opinion in matters which God has left to the free discussion of men is in no way opposed to the hierarchical structure or the unity of the People of God. On the contrary, it strengthens them and defends them against possible impurities.

This brings with it a deeper awareness of the Church as a community made up of all the faithful, where all share in one and the same mission, which each should fulfil according to his personal circumstances. Lay people, moved by the Holy Spirit, are becoming ever more conscious of the fact that they are the Church, that they have a specific and sublime mission to which they feel committed because they have been called to it by God himself. And they know that this mission comes from the very fact of their being Christians and not necessarily from a mandate from the hierarchy; although obviously they ought to fulfil it in a spirit of union with the hierarchy following the teaching authority of the Church. If they are not in union with the bishops and with their head, the Pope, they cannot, if they are Catholics, be united to Christ.

Lay people have their own way of contributing to the holiness and apostolate of the Church. They do so by their free and responsible action within the temporal sphere, to which they bring the leaven of Christianity. Giving Christian witness in their everyday lives, spreading the word which enlightens in the name of God, acting responsibly in the service of others and thus contributing to the solution of common problems: these are some ways in which ordinary Christians fulfil their divine mission.

For many years now, ever since the foundation of Opus Dei, I have meditated and asked others to meditate on those words of Christ which we find in St John: 'And when I am lifted up from the earth I shall draw all things unto Myself' (John 12:32). By His death on the Cross, Christ has drawn all creation to Himself. Now it is the task of Christians, in His name, to reconcile all things to God, placing Christ, by means of their work in the middle of the world, at the summit of all human activities.

I should like to add that alongside the laity's new awareness of their role there is a similar development among the clergy. They too are coming to realise that lay people have a role of their own which should be fostered and stimulated by pastoral action aimed at discovering the presence in the midst of the People of God of the charism of holiness and apostolate, in the infinitely varied forms in which God bestows it.

This new pastoral approach, though very demanding, is, to my mind, absolutely necessary. It calls for the supernatural gift of discernment of spirits, for sensitivity towards the things of God, and for the humility of not imposing personal preference upon others and of seconding the inspirations which God arouses in souls. In a word: it means loving the rightful freedom of the sons of God who find Christ, and become bearers of Christ, while following paths which are very diverse but which are all equally divine.

One of the greatest dangers threatening the Church today may well be precisely that of not recognising the divine requirements of Christian freedom and of being led by false arguments in favour of greater effectiveness to try to impose uniformity on Christians. At the root of this kind of attitude is something not only lawful but even commendable: a desire to see the Church exercising a vital influence on the modern world.

However, I very much fear that this is a mistaken way for, on the one hand, it can tend to involve and commit the hierarchy in temporal questions (thus falling into a clericalism which though different is no less scandalous than that of past centuries) and, on the other hand, to isolate lay people, ordinary Christians, from the everyday world, turning them into mere mouthpieces for decisions or ideas conceived outside the world in which they live.

I feel we priests are being asked to have the humility of learning not to be fashionable; of being, in fact, servants of the servants of God and making our own the cry of the Baptist: 'He must increase, I must decrease' (John 3:30), so as to enable ordinary Christians, the laity, to make Christ present in all sectors of society. One of the fundamental tasks of the priest is and always will be to give doctrine, to help individuals and society to become aware of the duties which the Gospel imposes on them, and to move men to discern the signs of the time. But all priestly work should be carried out with the maximum respect for the rightful freedom of consciences: every man ought to respond to God freely. And besides, every Catholic, as well as receiving help from the priest, also has lights of his own which he receives from God and a grace of state to carry out the specific mission which, as a man and as a Christian, he has received.

Anyone who thinks that Christ's voice will not be heard in the world today unless the clergy are present and speak out on every issue, has not yet understood the dignity of the divine vocation of each and every member of the Christian faithful.

It is an essential part of the Christian spirit not only to live in union with the ordinary hierarchy — the Pope and the bishops — but also to feel at one with the rest of one's brothers in the Faith. For a long time I have thought that one of the worst ills affecting the Church today is the ignorance many Catholics have concerning what Catholics in other countries or sectors of society are doing and thinking. We must rekindle the sense of brotherliness which was so deeply felt by the early Christians. It will help us to feel united, while loving at the same time the variety of our individual vocations. And it will lead us to avoid many of the unjust and offensive judgements made by particular little groups in the name of Catholicism, against their brothers in the Faith, who in fact are acting nobly and with a spirit of sacrifice in the particular circumstances of their own countries.

The important thing is for everyone to try to be faithful to his own divine calling. Only thus can he contribute to the Church the benefits deriving from the special charism he has received from God. What members of Opus Dei, who are ordinary Christians, have to do is to sanctify the world from within, taking part in the whole range of human activities. Since their membership in Opus Dei in no way modifies their situation in the world, they take part, as they see fit, in the life of the parish, in group religious celebrations, etc. In this sense too they are ordinary Christians who want to be good Catholics.

However, the members of the Work do not as a rule take part in confessional activities. Only in exceptional cases, at the express request of the hierarchy, do members of Opus Dei work in ecclesiastical activities. They do not adopt this attitude in order to be different, and still less out of disregard for confessional activities. It is simply that they want to do what befits the vocation to Opus Dei. There are already many religious and clergy, and many lay people also, who work in these activities and put their wholehearted efforts into them.

The task to which members of the Work are called by God is of another kind. Within the framework of the universal call to holiness, members of Opus Dei receive in addition a special call to dedicate themselves, freely and responsibly, to look for holiness and carry out the apostolate in the middle of the world, committing themselves to live a particular spirituality and to receive throughout their lives a specific formation. If they were to neglect their work in the world in order to carry out ecclesiastical activities, the divine gifts they have received would be wasted and, through a misguided desire for immediate pastoral effectiveness, they would do real harm to the Church. For there would be fewer Christians dedicated to sanctifying themselves in all the professions and trades of civil society, in the immense field of secular work.

And anyway the demands which continuous religious and professional training makes, as well as the time which each individual dedicates to acts of piety, to prayer and to the generous fulfilment of the duties of his state keep the members fully occupied. There just isn't any spare time.

Why are there priests in an institution so markedly lay as Opus Dei? Can any member of Opus Dei become a priest, or only these who are chosen by the directors?

Any person who wants to sanctify his own state in life can receive a vocation to Opus Dei: be he single, married or widowed, be he layman or cleric.

Diocesan priests also can join the Work. They remain diocesan priests just as they were before, because the Work helps them to tend towards the Christian perfection proper to their own state, through the sanctification of their ordinary work, which consists precisely in the priestly ministry at the service of their own bishop, of the diocese and of the whole Church. In their case also their commitment to Opus Dei in no way changes their position. They remain fully dedicated to the tasks entrusted to them by their bishop and to the other apostolates and activities for which they are responsible — the Work never interferes in these activities. They sanctify themselves by practising, as perfectly as they can, the virtues proper to priests.

As well as these priests who join Opus Dei after having received Holy Orders, there are in the Work other secular priests who receive the Sacrament after coming to Opus Dei, which they joined as lay people, ordinary Christians. These are very few in comparison with the total number of members, less than two percent, and they devote themselves to serving the apostolic aims of Opus Dei by means of their sacred ministry, giving up, more or less, depending on the case, the exercise of their civil profession. They are, in effect, professional people or workers who are called to the priesthood after having become professionally qualified and after years of work at their jobs, as doctors, engineers, mechanics, farm workers, teachers, journalists, etc. As well as this, they study the relevant ecclesiastical subjects, calmly and thoroughly, and do an ecclesiastical doctorate, and all this without losing the outlook characteristic of their own profession or occupation.

Their presence is needed in the apostolate of Opus Dei. This apostolate is carried out basically by the lay people, as I have said. Each member strives to be an apostle in his own environment, bringing people closer to Christ by his example and word, by dialogue. But in the apostolate, in bringing souls along the paths of the interior life, they come up against the 'sacramental wall'. The sanctifying role of the lay person is incomplete without the sanctifying role of the priest, who administers the Sacrament of Penance, celebrates the Eucharist and proclaims the word of God in the name of the Church. And since the apostolate of Opus Dei presupposes a specific spirituality, the priest must himself be a living witness to this particular spirit.

As well as serving the other members of the Work, these priests can, and in fact do, serve many other people. The priestly zeal which permeates their life should lead them to let no one pass by without receiving something of the Light of Christ. Furthermore, the spirit of Opus Dei, which will have nothing to do with cliques or discrimination, prompts them to feel intimately and effectively united to their brothers, the other diocesan priests. They feel themselves to be, and in fact are, diocesan priests in all the dioceses where they work and which they try to serve wholeheartedly and effectively.

I would like to stress, because it is very important, that the lay members of Opus Dei who receive Holy Orders do not change their vocation. When they freely accept the invitation of the directors of the Work to become priests, they do not act with the idea of uniting themselves more closely to God or of tending more effectively to holiness. They know perfectly well that the lay vocation is full and complete in itself and that their dedication to God in Opus Dei was, right from the start, a clear way to achieve Christian perfection. Ordination therefore can in no way be regarded as a crowning of a vocation to Opus Dei: it is simply a calling given to a few people so that they can serve the others in a new way. And then, of course, in the Work there are not two classes of members, priests and lay people. All are, and feel themselves to be, equal; and all live the same spirit: sanctification in one's own state in life.