The subject of the book is deliberately tightly defined. It is about lay preaching at the Eucharist – and whether this can be justified from within the Roman Catholic tradition, rather than by over-riding that tradition. The work contains papers delivered at a ‘synodal symposium’ in March 2024.

The underlying proposal is that qualified laity might be considered ‘extraordinary ministers of preaching’ at the Eucharist, with a ‘canonical mission’ akin to the faculties to preach granted to the ordained (page 14). Readers are invited to re-imagine the basis for such a ministry: ‘the coming together of vocational commitment, public ministry and official recognition bring the minister into a new position within the community’ (page 50). This allows for a discernment of roles beyond the clergy-laity divide: ‘the primary factor in discerning the appropriate minister to preach at the community’s Eucharist is neither ordination nor ability but the minister’s relationship with the community’ (pages 50-51).

The 1983 Code of Canon Law explicitly outlaws lay preaching at the Eucharist (c.767) but does acknowledge (c.759) that lay people can be called to exercise the ministry of the Word. So the question is whether lay people can be called to do this specifically at the Eucharist. If the homily is a presidential function then, so the logic runs, they cannot. However, the fact that deacons can preach without presiding undercuts this logic. So too does the 1973 Directory For Masses With Children which allows lay people ‘to speak to children during the moment of the homily if the priest found it too difficult to do so’ (page 89). Furthermore, the German Catholic Bishops allowed lay people to preach at Mass from 1973 until 1981 (and the tradition has quietly continued in places – as Kerstin-Marie Berretz reports on pages 167-72). Layla A. Karst argues that ‘the homily, understood within the ritual context of the liturgy, is not fundamentally a priestly or presidential action – it is an act of communion’ – and hence might be performed by others in the assembly besides the ordained (page 97).

Underpinning the discussion is a paradigm-shift from an ecclesiology ‘that consolidates ministry under the aura of the ordained priest’ (page 44) to the Vatican II vision of the Church, according to which ‘the priestly, prophetic, and kingly dimensions of Christ [are] now associated with the sacrament of baptism and only secondarily with the sacrament of orders’ (page 65) and recognition that preaching is a charism.

Layla Karst relates this charismatic rooting of a call to preach to current attempts to engender a more ‘synodal’ praxis in the Church. However, Maurice J. Nutt laments that ‘Roman Catholic liturgical preaching remains oppressively limited because important other and necessary voices are silenced and hindered’ (page 123).

It is the absence of women’s voices from the pulpit which is the most obvious focus of pain. Sara Fairbanks even uses Pope Francis’ favourite parable, that of the Good Samaritan, to suggest that while ‘laymen can take the diaconal road to the pulpit, women are left in the ditch, half-dead …’ (page 2). There is also a sense that restriction of the homily at mass to ordained males is robbing the Church of insights into the Word: ‘women preachers often see things in the text and its implications for our lives of faith that are not as apparent to our brothers … [and] often ask different questions about the text …’ (page 131).

For now, the Catholic Church finds itself in an uncomfortable ‘moment of liminality’, says Maurice Nutt, who hopes that, in time, the ambo may become ‘a shared space between the ordained and laity’ (page 125). In fact, so Maxime Allard bluntly claims in the title to her essay, ‘It is happening already’ (page 143). Perhaps the Holy Spirit is already blowing where she will in local communities around the world, in response both to pastoral need and to lay people’s own discernment of a calling to proclaim the Word.