Play Your Part with Confidence and with Love for the Church.

In conversation with a bishop in his own day Newman responded to the somewhat rhetorical and dismissive question "Who are the laity!" with "The Church would look foolish without them."

There were other contexts in which Newman stood up for the laity being given active voice in the life of the Church. Indeed he wrote perhaps the most famous and in its time astonishing essay on the matter in which he set out his very reasonable and measured case for recognising that the laity can be no less wise, knowledgeable or in tune with the Holy Spirit than the most exalted cleric.

Newman's insights have often been credited with many of the developments in the Church's self understanding during the last 150 years, and especially on those who contributed to the deliberations at he Second Vatican Council. Newman was a consistent proponent of the truth, not as some monolithic, intellectual talisman, but as the air that we breathe as living members of Christ's body.

Pope Francis is inviting us to draw deeply on this understanding and so confidently engage with a conversation about the best way the Church can respond to the challenges and invitations of our own times.