Try to define a layperson without using the word not: cannot preach or say mass, is not a priest, is not in a position of leadership in the church. This generally negative or passive understanding of the laity was epitomized in a statement of Pope Pius X: "The one duty of the multitude [i.e., the laity] is to allow themselves to be led and, like a docile fl ock, to follow the Pastors." The Second Vatican Council, with its emphasis on the priesthood of all believers rooted in baptism, changed all that. Yet, writes Paul Lakeland, "many of our bishops and not a few of the lay members of the church are attracted to a dangerously incomplete vision of Catholicism...one that sidesteps the major themes and key insights of Vatican II." In Catholicism at the Crossroads, he teases out themes fi rst developed in a much more formal way in his prize-winning The Liberation of the Laity. In his new book he is "talking to ordinary Catholics in language that requires no special expertise in theology and does not necessitate constant reference to a dictionary."