OTTAWA (CCN) -- equal though 40 years have passed since Vatican II called onward all baptized believers to play a part in the church's ministry.

OTTAWA (CCN) -- equal though 40 years have passed since Vatican II called onward all baptized believers to play a part in the church's ministry, questions and confusion remain forward the ecclesiology of lay ministry, said keynote speaker Carol Kuzmochka at the Celebrate the Call parley which was held between May 11-13 at St Paul University in Ottawa.

"We continue to live our way into the answers to the questions we have about our ministry," she said, noting that difficulties and confusion are not "an excuse to distance ourselves from the questions."

Kuzmochka, who is co-ordinator of Adult Faith exhibition and Leadership Formation for the Ottawa Archdiocese, told the audience of about 250 the public about her first experience working as an assistant chaplain to a priest-chaplain forward a university campus.

"The great obstacle was the priest didn't want to work with a woman," she said, despite her having the filled support of the diocesan bishop. "The priest believed he should be in succession a pedestal," she said, recalling the relationship as troubl and turbulent

"I realize as I apply the mind back that I moved naturally into a leadership position. I am joined according to so many women and a certain men who are breaking recent ground in parish pastoral leadership," she said.

Kuzmochka advocated a collaborative relationship among lay and ordained ministers rather than a hierarchical single and said forgiveness was fundamental. She also said that many of the breakthroughs in lay ministry have happened as a be the effect of priest shortages, instead of by the agency of the new life Vatican II breathed into the church

"Lay ministry has its be in possession of identity and needs to be disentangleed in its own right," she said.

Kuzmochka also pointed without that honouring Vatican II is not possible from a position of polarity.

"I worry about the polarization we always present the appearance to see," she said. "Do you think we can learn to disagree without turning onward each other?"

She also said that professional lay ministries must be careful "not to create modern hierarchies. Parishes are not cudgels and the baptized are not offers in them," she said.

Bishop Martin Veillette of Trois-Rivieres, Quebec, in his keynote address, told the audience about the Quebec experience of lay ministry, and pointed abroad that as a pastor in 1974-80 he was "one of the first priests to call relating to a lay woman."

He asked a woman who was barely 20 to accept a position as a pastoral worker in a primary school

"It was the beginning of a miraculous adventure for her," said Veillette, who is President of the Canadian conversation of Catholic Bishop's (CCCB) Commission for Social Communications French Sector. Veillette noted that 1975 was the tithe anniversary of the end of Vatican II and in those ten years the mostly visible change came in the liturgy.

"Not everything was renovated and not everything happened easily," he said, nevertheless noted that it became possible to "dare to make changes" and to "risk doing things at no time done before."

Those ten years also encompassed the Quiet Revolution.

"From a social perspective, not no other than the church was undergoing change, the entire society was in an upheaval," he said, describing those years as a "time of trial" and a "dark period," where the ecclesiastical authority was seriously challenged. Many once-committed priests and nun left

"It was surpassingly difficult for us to pass through that time," he said. "We had to spread the door to the arrival of the laity taking upon tasks that had been done by means of priests and vicars and religious," he said. "In our baptism we are invited to take our responsibility," he said, and while the diminishing number of priests l to an increase in lay ministers, "we had been called by dint of the Council to do this."

Since those years, the meeting-house has been seeking to plant a foundation for this fresh phenomenon of lay ministry.

"Co-responsibility became a focal point," he said.

Veillette said that lay ministries bring outed from service-to-leadership positions with remuneration to major responsibilities as permanent staff.

The third Celebrate the Call talk also featured a panel with Winnipeg Archbishop James Weisgerber, who is co-treasurer of the CCCB; Jocelyne Hudon, pastoral agent in Chicoutimi, Que; Blake Sittler, parish life director and ministry developer in Saskatoon, Sask.; and St Jean Goulet Congregation of the pious Cross.

The interview was jointly sponsored by the midmost point for Ministry Formation at St Paul University and the Celebrate the Call Project

The middle "embraces a renewed vision of pastoral leadership in which lay and ordained ministries are co-responsible in the service to God's people"

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