One of the most interesting phenomena in the years after the Council, whose full consequences for the Church are known only by God, was the earthquake caused by the so-called promotion of the laity. After the first moments of commotion, everyone became convinced that, after a history of total belittlement and most unjust discrimination, at long last the hour had arrived to put lay people in the place they deserve.  

Some time ago, a priest friend of mine told me something that he had learned from a prestigious ecclesiastical figure. The anecdote, according to this person, clearly showed the high regard the Church currently gives to the laity. He proceeded to explain that the Vatican Swiss Guard now gives a martial salute to bishops and lay people, but not to priests. Logically, I did not give credence to the report my friend told me. For, although it is true that not all crazy people are in mental institutions, it is difficult to believe that the Swiss Guard has reached such an extreme, however much in tune they may be with the findings of the new theology. But what is most surprising of all is not so much the story in itself – which is absolutely unbelievable – but the fact that sensible people can have accepted it and told it to others as if it were true. It seems as if our illustrious cleric not only considered it to be true, but even granted it an uncontroversial demonstrative value (as always, Roma locuta, etc.).  I told my friend my profound conviction that, in the incredible case that this preposterous tale were true, the only thing that it would prove was the idiocy of either the Swiss Guard or, in any case, the Monsignor who had ordered such an absurdity.

The truth is that I have never understood well the problem of the promotion of the laity; probably because neither could I understand the need for the laity to be promoted. My naiveté always led me to the belief that the laity had a specific and fundamental place in the Church, so well defined and specified that it did not at all have any need to be promoted from above; and even less by ascribing to them clerical attributes and competencies. For simple people like me, it is difficult to understand why lay people need to take on the duties of a cleric or a sacristan to become more like lay people. I must admit that, even at that time, this endeavor of the experts and trendy theologians sounded to me like a new type of clericalism. Now I am convinced of something else: the grievances in favor of the laity have always worried the clergy more than the laity themselves. In those years, at least in Spain, common people lived Christianity better or worse – undoubtedly with more faith than now – without caring too much about the theological worries of avant-garde experts. I myself think that the anxiety was born, not in the area of normal Christian life, but in the laboratories of pastoral alchemy. This proves, once again, the admirable capacity of human nature to manipulate problems: either by inventing false or non-existent ones or by ignoring the truly important ones. The reasons for all this may not be easy to explain, and I am certainly not the right person to do so. But it is possible that they have something to do with that strange complex of clericalism which seems to be an endemic evil of so many churchmen. The undeniable fact is that the promotion was done by making the laity more clerical, which may be an indicator which supports what I am saying.

That is how a shower of ministries fell upon laymen, ever disrupting the tranquility of their Christian existence.

Translated from the book "Esperando a Don Quijote" (pags. 20 - 23)