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The Lay Apostolate

(899) The initiative of lay Christians is necessary especially when the matter involves discovering or inventing the means for permeating social, political, and economic realities with the demands of Christian doctrine and life. This initiative is a normal element of the life of the Church: "Lay believers are in the front line of Church life; for them the Church is the animating principle of human society. Therefore, they in particular ought to have an ever-clearer consciousness not only of belonging to the Church, but of being the Church, that is to say, the community of the faithful on earth, under the leadership of the Pope, the common Head, and of the bishops in communion with him. They are the Church." (Pope Pius XII)

(900) Since, like all the faithful, lay Christians are entrusted by God with the apostolate by virtue of their Baptism and Confirmation, they have the right and duty, individually or grouped in associations, to work so that the divine message of salvation may be known and accepted by all men throughout the earth. This duty is the more pressing when it is only through them that men can hear the Gospel and know Christ. Their activity in ecclesial communities is so necessary that, for the most part, the apostolate of the pastors cannot be fully effective without it. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1997, #899-900)

"It Takes A Reformed Criminal To Reform Criminals"

Organizational Overview

Our Mission: Transforming the repentant criminal, suffering from his distance from God, into a deep knowledge leader who can teach other criminals the path to redemption through the Catholic Church.

Our Core Beliefs

Suffering transformed builds souls. Just as the muscle tissue tearing that leads to greater physical growth resulting from body building, suffering is soul tearing which, through redemption, allows soul growth.

1) Deep knowledge leadership--college educated, transformed criminals, professionally trained to manage criminal transformative organizations-- will dramatically improve criminal transformation.

2) Catholic social thought forms the intellectual and spiritual foundation of criminal transformation.

3) Grassroots criminal transformation organizations need ongoing access to capacity building services.

4) Business and professional leadership, working to create community social capital through the transformation of criminals, will benefit from gaining knowledge about Catholic social thought.

Our Program

LampStand's direct teaching work is supplemented by grassroots leadership resources, monthly e-letter, quarterly newsletter, annual policy primer research report, periodic monographs, and books from Chulu Press (a LampStand imprint) published every winter.

We want to facilitate the development - from among the 30% of reentering criminals who do not return to prison - of reformed professional criminals whose personal transformation, education, and reconciliation or conversion to Catholicism has led them to want to help others, and inspire these potential leaders to seek graduate degrees, professional organizational training, learning in Catholic social teaching, and assume a leadership role in the community helping other criminals transform their lives.

It is because of their culturally determinant influence and status within the carceral/criminal world, that the professional criminal who has transformed his life, is able to have authentic access to other pentitential criminals, which is absolutely vital to attaining any substantial and sustainable success in criminal reformation.

"Dom Chautard, a French Cisterian abbot, shows in the Soul of the Apostolate that the essence of every apostolic work undertaken for our Lord is the interior life of grace within the individual apostle's soul-a life that is fed by prayer and conformity to the will of God. The reason the apostle's interior life is "The soul of the apostolate," he explains, stems from the very nature of God, which is Goodness itself, and which overflows in His Will to communicate Himself to others." (Tan Books)