The mission of the laity is carried out, according to the Council, in the Church and in the world. Often this is misunderstood because people concentrate on one aspect or the other. How would you explain the laity's task in the Church and in the world?

I think by no means they should be considered as being two different tasks. The layman's specific role in the mission of the Church is precisely that of sanctifying secular reality, the temporal order, the world, ab intra, in an immediate and direct way.

In addition to his secular task, a layman (like a cleric or a religious) has certain fundamental rights, duties and powers within ecclesiastical society related to his juridical status as a member of the faithful: active participation in the liturgy, the possibility of cooperating directly in the hierarchy's apostolate, and of offering advice to the hierarchy in its pastoral task. if invited to do so, etc.

The specific task which belongs to the layman as layman, and his generic or common one as a member of the faithful are not opposed but rather superimposed. They are not contradictory but complementary. To concentrate solely on the specific secular mission of the layman and to forget his membership of the Church would be as absurd as to imagine a green branch in full bloom which did not belong to any tree. But to forget what is specific and proper to the layman, or to misunderstand the characteristics of his apostolic tasks and their value to the Church, would be to reduce the flourishing tree of the Church to the monstrous condition of a barren trunk.