She made the comment on Flashes of Insight, a conversation between herself, and fellow theologians, Fiona Dyball, Elizabeth Young and Jo Ayers.

The women discussed the newly approved ministries for women of Lector, Acolyte and Catechist.

"I think it is helpful that Canon Law has been changed and women are formally allowed into ministry.

"It's got to be helpful that women because of the ‘womenness' are no longer excluded from ministry.

However, her view is not all ‘clear water', Bell telling the conversation she has a slight concern that formal recognition of these ministries might alienate the baptised who have been performing them for a long time.

"The people of God, the baptised, might become further disenfranchised from ministry by yet another layer and another process."

While keen to see the introduction of formal ministries Bell does not want ministry to happen only when it is recognised.

"It's the job of all of us to be involved," she said.

Host, Joe Grayland politely suggested Bell was ‘sitting on the fence'.

Pushing her, he made the choice concrete, asking would she support the introduction of these ministries at the Palmerston North Cathedral. (Where Bell works).

Bell ‘weighed up the balance' telling Flashes of Insight that while in the past the parish there was less formality involved with those ministering as Catechist she will support the introduction of the ministry.

"The ministry of Catechist would be perfect for those ministering in the area of marriage preparation", she said.

It is a point echoed by Fiona Dyball, adding that Pope Francis' statement makes the changes very clear.

"It is obviously something very dear to his heart", she said.

Dyball said that women have been performing these ministries for a long time, but in some places, it was said that women do not fit these roles and so were prevented from doing them.

She describes the changes as "a welcome clarity; because these things matter".

The Church has known for a long time that women have these gifts Dyball says.

She sees this as an important step for the church to legitimately use the gifts to help it accomplish its mission, in its service of the community.

Jo Ayers an Auckland theologian and lecturer however took a different perspective.

Responding to Dyball, Ayers said, "I was going to say one thing but Fiona's nearly persuaded that the institute of Acolyte and Reader is a good thing."

The persuasion was a near thing as Ayers went on to describe the institution of these ministries for women as, "crumbs from the table" and "another layer of clericalism.

Ayers says she is looking for real power-sharing.

However, Elizabeth Young RSM, a theologian and pastoral worker in Forbes echoes Dyball, but with a difference, saying it is important for people taking part and for those receiving the benefits of the service to know the minister is authorized.

"Signs make a real difference", she said and so she welcomes that these ministries are now officially open to women.

• Kate Bell, Elizabeth Young RSM, Fiona Dyball, Jo Ayers

Indeed, the reverse is the case: bishops and presbyters around the world have said that it is merely a matter of words. After all, women have been reading for years at the liturgy - so calling them ‘lectors' is just a needless formality!

Women have been presenting the gifts for just as long, altar servers are less important now than when they had to ‘answer' the Latin uttered by the presider, and the other few jobs like holding the book or swinging the thurible have been done by women for decades!

So why all the fuss?

It seems that the pope and the people in the Vatican must have little work if they want to now have a rite of installation so that men and women can do these things ‘officially.'

In short, for most people, Spiritus Domini is non-news.

I beg to differ.

Spiritus Domini is news, and the fact of the lukewarm reactions is also news.

Let me deal with the apparent dismissal of Spiritus Domini first.

The fact that we think of liturgical ministries as just ‘the jobs' that were shared out by servers is a litmus test of how little we have internalised the vision of the liturgy that was put forth in Sacrosanctum Concilium in 1963.

That is a vision of the whole people ministering to one another in differing ways.

We are to be ‘wholly celebrant.'

Likewise, it shows how little the vision of the Church as the holy people of God - as distinct from the officers and ‘other ranks' model in use before then - found in Lumen Gentium has actually embedded itself in the ways we behave.

I hear many people who say ‘Vatican II has gone too far'; but when I look around I notice how shallow is the realisation of Vatican II in the lives of so many Catholics.

Spiritus Domini is a concrete expression of the change from the inherited mindset to that which was / is envisaged in the Council.

We are not just consumers of a sacred product that is in the keeping of the clergy.

We are a people, a family of sisters and brothers in baptism, who have been given a variety of gifts by the Spirit of the Lord so that we might become more fully the Church.

Or, as Pope Francis put it in the document's opening words: ‘The Spirit of the Lord Jesus, the perennial source of the Church's life and mission, distributes to the members of the People of God the gifts that enable each one, in a different way, to contribute to the edification of the Church and to the proclamation of the Gospel.'

Acolyte vs. Altar Server

Now to the main question: how is an ‘acolyte' different from an ‘altar server'?

The confusion is a deep one for Latin Christians because it is founded in over 1000 years of ignoring the issue.

Once the standard form of Eucharistic celebration in the western churches became that of a priest standing alone at an altar and celebrating in Latin, a major gulf emerged between those who were ‘in attendance' - but actually had nothing to do in the liturgy as such - and the priest who said the Mass.

The priest was the one who was active, the others were passive.

The priest said the Mass, the congregation listened, watched, and prayed their own prayers.

It mattered little if there was just one person in the building or several hundred or, indeed, several thousand.

However, there had to be at least one person there!

This person - always a male and usually a boy - was needed to serve the priest.

If the priest said ‘Dominus vobiscum' - we shall pass over the irony that this is a plural: the Lord be with you, even if he said it in a building with only the server present - then someone had to answer: ‘Et cum spiritu tuo.'

Put another way: it took two to tango!

The server was there to serve the priest.

The priest needed this service and it did not matter what was happening with other people who were present.

Indeed, it was assumed that the server probably did not know what the words he uttered meant - so long as they were uttered in response, the law was fulfilled, and the priest could say his Mass.

Least we forget

The important thing was that the priest could offer Mass, and the server was only a practical requirement somewhat in the way that vestments, books, and vessels were needed for the lawful celebration.

But did not the altar servers have a duty to the community?

The simple answer is: no!

On the few occasions each year (before 1903) when communion was given to the congregation, the server held a plate under the chins of the recipients (in some places).

Indeed, since communion for anyone but the priest was an additional element to the standard form of the Mass, it would have been rare that the server even received communion at the Mass he served.

The whole task was to help the priest.

Indeed, in an emergency, the answering could be done by a woman who knelt at the altar rails (but could not go inside ‘the sanctuary' to bring up and down the cruets or wash the priest's fingers).

Acolyte serves the whole community

The rite of Vatican II assumes that the community is celebrating with the presbyter presiding: it is an act of the assembled church and now the acolyte is there to help and serve the whole community.

The acolyte is one ministry in a church of mutual service.

It is not a job but a form of service that builds up the whole people of God - and this is its dignity and why it needs to be taken seriously and needs to be instituted.

The altar server served the priest in the priest's work before God.

The acolyte serves the community in the whole community's work before God.

The world of the alter server is that of the two-tier world of cleric / lay; minister / ministered; master / servant - a one-way transaction.

The world of the acolyte is that of a community, equal in dignity, serving one another, all are ministers and ministered to - and a sharing of energy and skill rather than a transaction.

In the first case, all that was needed was a voice that could recite Latin by rote.

Today, we have one Christian serving her / his sisters and brothers in a common work which they, collectively, see as the centre and summit of their lives as Christians.

One was a task which just had to be got through so that the priest said Mass.

The other is a celebration that affirms who we are as people who serve each other in different ways.

So what is the importance of Spiritus Domini?

• We are undoing a 1000-year old clericalist liturgy.
• We are affirming the dignity of our baptism which has made us a priestly people.
• We are learning that we must all be servants of one another at the liturgy.
• We are moving from seeing actions in our worship as ‘things needing doing' to assisting we one another as disciples.
• We are embedding - after more than half a century - the vision of the Second Vatican Council.

In a nutshell

• We are not changing our rubrics, we are changing our mind-sets.
• We are not changing technical names, we are changing our theology and our practice.

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton, emeritus professor of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK) and director of the Centre of Applied Theology, UK.
• He is an organising contributor to the online conversation Flashes of Insight and his latest book is Eating Together, Becoming One: Taking Up Pope Francis's Call to Theologians.

You might have questions about what this ministry is and who it is for.

What is the instituted ministry of catechist?

An instituted ministry is a type of formal, vocational service within the Catholic Church. It can be either lay, such as lector or acolyte, or ordained, such as deacon or priest.

The newly instituted ministry of catechist is for laypeople who have a particular call to serve the Catholic Church as a teacher of the faith.

The ministry is "stable," meaning it lasts for the entirety of life, independent of whether the person is actively carrying out that activity during every part of his or her life.

But catechists already exist. How is this different?

Many catechists today serve the Church at the parish level, but the instituted ministry of catechist will be tied to the diocese and be at the disposal of the diocesan bishop.

Archbishop Rino Fisichella explained at a Vatican press conference May 11 that "the institution of a ministry by the Church is confirmation that the person invested with that charism is performing an authentic ecclesial service to the community."

Fisichella is president of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization, which oversees the Church's instituted ministries.

The institution of this ministry, together with the lay ministries of lector and acolyte, "will make it possible to have a laity that is better prepared in the transmission of the faith," the archbishop said.

He also emphasized that the instituted catechist is dedicated to the transmission of the faith through proclamation and instruction — he or she does not have any kind of liturgical responsibility.

The catechist collaborates with the local bishop and priests in the teaching of the faith to the local community. And it can be a benefit in places where priests are scarce.

Pope Francis "is well aware of how many areas of Latin America and Africa today still have catechists at the head of the community," Fisichella said. He stressed the unique nature of each ministry, noting that they are not interchangeable.

"At stake here is much of what is new in this ministry," he said. "Men and women are called to express their baptismal vocation in the best possible way, not as substitutes for priests or consecrated persons, but as authentic laymen and laywomen who, in the distinctive nature of their ministry, are able to experience the full of extent of their baptismal vocation of witness and effective service in the community and the world."

Who is qualified to be instituted into the ministry of catechist?

Pope Francis' letter said that a layperson called to be instituted in the ministry of catechist should have "deep faith and human maturity," be an active participant in the life of the Christian community, and "capable of welcoming others, being generous and living a life of fraternal communion." Continue reading

While some have presented Spiritus Domini as no more than giving formality to what has been common practice in some places since the 1970s.

Others see it as ‘too little, too late' in the movement towards the ordination of women within the Catholic Church.

Perhaps the key thing is to step back and look at what it signifies within a stream of Roman documents guiding the renewal of the liturgy that began in the mid-1950s.

Since the decree beginning the reform of Holy Week (16 November 1955: Liturgicus Hebdomadae Sanctae Ordo instauratur) down to today, one theme has been a constant: to enable the whole People of God to have ownership of the liturgy, to take part in the liturgy as their vocation, and to see themselves as ministers within the Church. Spiritus Domini is but the latest moment in a long-term process.

A nail in the coffin of clericalism

Let's start with a simple question.

Walk into any Roman Catholic building while a ceremony - for example, the Eucharist - is taking place and ask yourself: whose liturgy is this?

Most people would say that it is this parish's or this group's liturgy led by their priest.

If one asked that in the 1950s the answer would have been that it was the priest's liturgy done on behalf of the parish.

The shift from it being a clerical affair to the business of the priestly people; activity of all the baptised, has been a slow one.

While the rituals changed quickly especially over a period of just a few years around 1970, the shift in understanding has been slow, very patchy, and made against a great deal of resistance.

Moreover, the shift in appreciation by most Catholics has been even slower: many people still think that they are just ‘going' to something that the priest does.

The clericalist church is based around the notion that the clergy are ‘the real church' or, at least, its core.

They are happy to be ‘churchmen.'

But this term should surely apply to all the baptised and since they are made up of both males and females it would be better to speak of ‘churchpeople' - but the very notion would shock most ‘churchmen.'

These clergy celebrate the liturgy not with their sisters and brothers in baptism but for them.

The real work of the liturgy is what the clergy do, others attend (or, at most, they just help out in the way that altar servers have done for centuries).

This is the way the reading of the scriptures at the Eucharist has been treated by the clericalist church since 1970.

It is not a case that this is the liturgy of the whole assembly, but rather the priest has asked someone to read and just delegated them.

It is as if the most authentic reader is the priest (as was always the case before 1969), but just ‘to get people involved' he lets someone else do it.

Having ‘a lay reader' - still far from being what one expects in many countries - was seen as no more than an application of the teacher's trick of giving everyone in the class a job to make them feel involved.

Likewise, when it came to helping the assembly to share the broken loaf and shared cup (aka ‘give out communion') this involvement was not seen as needed by nature of the activity, but simply an ‘extraordinary' measure to ‘help speed things up!'

This was not a real ministry, but just clergy being ‘user friendly.'

One sees the old clerical mindset time and again.

The presider steps in and does all the readings unless someone makes a fuss, he does not call on ‘extraordinary ministers' or even thinks about sharing the cup and presents himself as the only real minister in the assembly.

This mindset until now has not been formally challenged because that cleric could point to the law, and filled with legal righteousness perpetuate the notion that the baptised are only present at his liturgy.

Instead of the unified vision of a people with the Christ worshipping the Father, this older idea was of a priestly tribe inside the sanctuary with the laity located outside.

Now it is formally the case that it is our common memory as a whole people which we celebrate in the Liturgy of the Word.

The scriptures are the books of our common memory, and so any one of the baptised who is skilled in their performance (a task far more demanding that just literacy) has the right not only theologically, but canonically, to take on this ministry and have it formally conferred by the community of faith. It may have taken canon law centuries to catch up on theology, but on 15 January 2021 it did!

Better late than never!

Likewise, eating and drinking at eucharistic celebrations is not a matter of acquiring some sacred object consecrated by a presbyter, but the celebration of the supper of the Lord as the community of faith whereby in our eating and drinking together we, with the Christ, offer the sacrifice of praise to the Father.

This community meal is our meal not simply the presbyter's meal, and so there should be within each community those who help in serving the meal and bringing that meal's food to those community members who cannot be there.

This is a ministry arising from the nature of the Eucharist, not simply a job that needs to be done to hasten a ceremony or ‘help out' a tired or busy priest.

It has been a sad reflection of how little we value the Ministry of the Word that since 1970 we have treated readers as just ‘doing a job' rather than giving them, in each community a formal standing.

Likewise, it shows, alas, how we have seen the Ministry of the Eucharist as only the work of a presbyter (‘deep down it's really the priest that counts') because we saw those who ‘helped' as really not being needed if we had ‘enough priests.'

Sadly, members of the clerical establishment do not like any suggestion that the Liturgy of the Eucharist is the common property of all the baptised.

They like to think of it as their special property; hence their reluctance to changes such as moving from pre-cut rondels to a single broken loaf or their resistance to sharing the cup or their objections to any but clerics helping at the meal.

But Spiritus Domini is one more reminder to them that their vision of the church is not that of Sacrosanctum concilium.

If I were one of those who hanker after ‘the good old days' or saw myself among that well-organised phalanx who resist Pope Francis and who want to continue in a clericalist church, then 15 January 2021 (the day the decree became law) would be marked down as a black day for the clerical army.

It is a day when an explicit legal act took place that removed two potent weapons in frustrating the reform of the liturgy.

New reading of the status quo

Most liturgical change takes place in such a way that those who want to subvert it can find little ‘workarounds.'

Indeed, it is the hallmark of those who have tried to slow down change in the Roman Church not so much to oppose developments as to seek to get them to run into the sand.

Already, I have heard one cleric bemoan Spiritus Domini precisely because he sees just what a well-aimed dart it is at the notion of ‘the church = the clergy' and his sigh was all the deeper when he added: "Pope Benedict would not have let this happen!."

I fear I was less than sympathetic and replied: "I fear it's worse than that, Pope Francis has not simply ‘let it happen' but has mandated it in canon Law."

My friend, shocked, said goodbye and put the phone down.

Canon 230, 1 now reads:

Lay persons who possess the age and qualifications established by decree of the conference of bishops can be admitted on a stable basis through the prescribed liturgical rite to the ministries of lector and acolyte. Nevertheless, the conferral of these ministries does not grant them the right to obtain support or remuneration from the Church.

Instead of lay persons it used to read ‘lay men' (Viri laici), and so an important threshold has been passed in having the law reflect the faith of the Church that the liturgy is the work of all of us, sisters and brothers of Jesus in baptism.

Will bishops now take the corresponding step forward?

In the Roman Pontifical - the book with those liturgies only performed by bishops - there is a formal ritual for instituting lectors and another one for instituting acolytes.

How many have ever seen these being used?

In the period of over forty years since they were promulgated, I have never seen them used outside a seminary!

In seminaries, they were seen as just steps toward the diaconate and as progress markers that a seminarian was doing all that was expected and was on track for ‘greater things.'

Meanwhile, readers were often just anyone who was willing to help out and not afraid of meeting ‘awkward words' in a reading, such as Nebuchadnezzar - and often did little preparation because they were ‘just helping because the priest wanted it!'

Likewise, ‘Extraordinary ministers' were given the occasional retreat day but it was seen, again, as just a convenience, an intrusion, or somehow less than ideal.

Will the bishops now see these as ministries that they actually institute? This is the acid test for the importance of Spiritus Domini.

The five challenges of Spiritus Domini

1. Will communities shift their perception of those who perform the readings from being simply those ‘helping out the priest' to those who are taking up part of the baptismal call to witness in word before the assembly to the Good News preached by the Christ? Will these women and men see this as a ministry and part of their conforming their lives with the work of Jesus?
2. Will presbyters take this vision to heart when they seek out readers and encourage them to see this as a real ministry? Will they take to heart that this changes their own relationship with the assembly and that this shift is part of the death of clericalism?
3. Will those who help in the Ministry of the Table see this as part of their baptismal calling and not just a ‘job' to ‘help out Father?' Acolytes are not just ‘jumped up altar boys' but part of the community's celebration of its identity.
4. Will presbyters see that this shift in the law is a reminder of a deeper shift in the Church's understanding that has been going on since the 1950s, but which has often barely affected the Church's practice?
5. Will bishops / episcopal conferences take Pope Francis's letter to heart and actually institute these ministries of lector and acolyte?They can hardly say that it will need a lot of time to think about - the actual structures of these ministries was established thirty-nine years ago in 1972 by Ministeria quaedam (as Pope Francis reminds us now), and they already have the necessary liturgical texts with them in the book they carry around from parish to parish.

So many have already dismissed Spiritus Domini as of no importance in the actual life of the church - would that it were so!

Spiritus Domini can only be dismissed when every bishop has formally instituted lectors and acolytes - and provided the means to train them for their ministries - in every community in their care.

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton, emeritus professor of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK) and director of the Centre of Applied Theology, UK. His latest award-winning book is Eating Together, Becoming One: Taking Up Pope Francis's Call to Theologians (Liturgical Press, 2019).