What’s a Lay Apostolate?

Russell Shaw answers this question today on CatholicExchange. Here's an excerpt:

I was trying to explain the idea of lay apostolate to an intelligent Catholic laywoman. Oh sure, she said, she knew exactly what I meant. Lay apostolate was lay people participating in parish-based activities of various kinds — serving on the parish council, teaching an RCIA class, things like that.

What could I say? These obviously are admirable, excellent things to do. How helpful would it have been for me to point out that, good as they are, they definitely aren't lay apostolate? ....

A key part of lay apostolate is that it happens in a secular environment, not in church. Vatican Council II's Constitution on the Church spoke of it as a "special vocation" — making faith "present and fruitful" in those places where that can only be done by the laity. What places might those be? The home, the neighborhood, and the workplace come to mind. If Christianity is to be lived out there, it's up to lay people to do it.

Apostolate happens out there in the big, wide, secular world. At the risk of some oversimplification, you could put it like this: lay ministry is something that some Catholic lay people do on Sunday morning; lay apostolate is what all Catholic lay people should be doing every day of the week.

Read the rest here. Of course you can get a much more complete treatment by reading our own "Catholic Laity in the Mission of the Church" by Russell Shaw-available here .