In a recent peer-reviewed article, Catholic theologian and lay minister, Marc DelMonico, Ph.D., considers the long-term influences on the theological and pastoral significance of the lay ministry movement in the United States which stem from the 2005 statement of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Co-Workers in the Vineyard of the Lord: A Resource for Guiding the Development of Lay Ecclesial Ministry. The article, which is accessible via academic journal databases online and downloadable as a PDF on Dr. DelMonico’s website, appeared in the Volume 52, No 1 (June 2025) issue of Horizons, the Journal of the College Theology Society (CTS). Dr. DelMonico is a member of CTS. A copy of the USCCB statement is also available online.

The article focuses on using the two elided biblically-based images of the statement’s title “co-workers” and “workers in the vineyard” as a metaphorical framework within which to examine the text and the tensions within it. Dr. DelMonico’s abstract for the article indicates the combination of the two images produces a mixed metaphor by pairing an historical reality of the creative, collaborative, ecclesial co-worker found in the New Testament letters of Paul, and a parabolic narrative of day laborers found in the Gospel according to Matthew. Per the abstract, this combined metaphor’s own tensions “mirror the statement’s theological and pastoral divergences on the scope and authority of lay ministry leadership. The metaphor’s meaning and the statement’s text reinforce one another’s ambiguities enough that they can both highlight the vital ecclesial importance of lay ministry, or allow it to be interpreted in a clericalized way which undermines lay ministers’ value.”

Dr. DelMonico provides additional context of how the tensions disclosed in the metaphor and the text concerning the agency of lay minister in the life of the Church by examining pandemic-era stresses on lay ministers, even as new recognition of their importance and value emerged in the teachings of Pope Francis and the Synod on Synodality. From the analysis, DelMonico concludes that the full theological and pastoral status of these important ministers as creative and collaborative co-workers in the Pauline sense remains largely unrealized, especially in the US Church, due to the influence of clericalism in theology and pastoral practice. This analysis highlights the need for renewed efforts to encourage the proper agency of lay ministers in the life of the Church today.

The article developed out of Dr. DelMonico’s workshop presentation at the 2023 annual meeting of the CTS. The presentation, originally titled “Mixed Biblical Metaphors and Mediation of Meaning in the 2005 USCCB Statement Co-Workers in the Vineyard of the Lord: Some Implications for the Theology and Practice of Lay Ministry,” was part of the Ecclesiology Section’s workshop set. The overall theme of the CTS event that year was “Theology and Media(tion): Rendering the Absent Present.”