To Hunt, To Shoot, To Entertain

Why hasn't the Catholic Church been more successful up to now in realizing the Second Vatican Council's call for the evangelization of secular culture? Why hasn't the Gospel been preached more forthrightly to the modern world? The most important reason, as well as the least recognized, may be clericalism: the attitude, widely shared by Catholic laypeople as well as many priests, that clerics make up the active, elite corps in the Church, and laypeople are the passive mass; that clerics alone have intrinsic responsibility for the Church's mission while the apostalate of laypeople comes to them (if they come at all) only by delegation on the part of the clergy.

To Hunt, To Shoot, To Entertain probes the theological and historical roots of this clericalist mentality as it has affected the Catholic laity, along with contemporary expressions of clericalism--the over-involvement of some clerics in secular politics, the sometimes exaggerated emphasis given to ""lay ministers,"" and certain aspects for the feminist movement in today's Catholicism. This is not another revisionist attack on the priesthood, not one more alienated voice from the pews. Instead the book offers a prescription for authentic ecclesial renewal based on new, healthier lay-clergy relations in light of the teaching of Vatican II, Pope John Paul II, and other voices of the Magisterium. It presents a positive vision of a Church in which laypeople and clergy regard one another with mutual respect as partners in her mission to the world, with indispensable, contemporary tasks arising from their own special vocations.

""Russell Shaw and other laypeople who decry the evils of clericalism put the Church in their debt. They are not anticlerical. They want priests and bishops to be the shepherds they are ordained to be.""
-- Rev. Richard John Neuhaus
First Things

Russell Shaw is author or co-author of twenty books and has contributed articles, columns, and reviews to many periodicals. A former Secretary for Public Affairs of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops/United States Catholic Conference, he is a member of the faculty of the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome.