The Vocation Of Lay People
By DON FIER The People of God should be so closely attached to their bishops that the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) closes its instruction on the hierarchical constitution of the Church with an urgent appeal by St. Ignatius of Antioch, who was martyred in early post-apostolic times (~AD 107) during the reign of the brutal Roman Emperor Trajan. “Let all follow the bishop, as Jesus Christ follows his Father,” entreats the Early Church father. “Let no one do anything concerning the Church in separation from the bishop” (Letter to the Smyrnaeans 8, 1; as cited in CCC, n. 896). For it is precisely to bishops, as successors of the apostles, that Christ “entrusted the office of teaching, sanctifying,…Continue Reading