On the topic of Faith and Fidelity, I like Pietro de Marco's term christifidelis. He is responding to Andrea Grillo's interview in the Italian magazine Messainlatino. As he said, he was asked to respond, as a colleague and previous debater with Grillo; this is what he says of himself:
I do not intervene as a “traditionalist faithful to Rome,” as MiL legitimately expresses itself. Since I have been writing, and particularly, since I have felt it my duty to show disagreement with the communicative and governing acts of the reigning pontiff—I, who have always been pro-Roman!—I have spoken as a common christifidelis, endowed with some capacity for judgment, but first and foremost filled with concern for the Church, which since childhood, by God’s gift, I have truly felt to be my Mother.
In a commentary on Traditionis Custodes, from 2021, the author uses the same term:
The writer does not belong to any ecclesial group. Remote memberships were, if anything, to progressive groups. I have long been a simple Catholic believer, a "civis" of the "civitas Dei", theologically equipped, I presume, but (what matters) from my early years led to firm beliefs as my lips said: "lex orandi lex credendi" . Not out of a right, a "constitutional" perspective on the Church that doesn't excite me, but out of duty, the impulse of a believer, I evaluate what happens in the Church, which is truly my Mother. That is why I agreed with those who dared to warn His Holiness of the risk of serious errors in his positions and statements. For this reason I will be closer than ever to priests and lay "christifideles" who grasp and live in the mass of the "vetus ordo" (according to the "typica" of 1962) the fullness of the confession of faith and the apex of sacramental life in the Eucharistic Christ . Under the millennial guidance of the saints, not of educators and animators. Nor of liturgists. I fear that the Holy Father will have to regret having succumbed, still ill, to the pressure of anti-Ratzinger groups, to extremists of dubious doctrine and with no discernment of the damage they (for their part) have been causing for decades.
In both these quotes, while Dr de Marco is a professor who has taught in various Italian universities through the years, he speaks as a member of "Christ's faithful people", a believer.
According to Pope John Paul II, the fundamental vocation of the laity is holiness:
We come to a full sense of the dignity of the lay faithful if we consider the prime and fundamental vocation that the Father assigns to each of them in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit: the vocation to holiness, that is, the perfection of charity. Holiness is the greatest testimony of the dignity conferred on a disciple of Christ.
Holiness, the fullness of Christian life, does not consist in carrying out extraordinary enterprises but in being united with Christ, in living his mysteries, in making our own his example, his thoughts, his behaviour. The measure of holiness stems from the stature that Christ achieves in us, in as much as with the power of the Holy Spirit, we model our whole life on his.
It is being conformed to Jesus, as St Paul says: “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom 8:29). And St Augustine exclaimed: “my life shall be a real life, being wholly filled by you” (Confessions, 10, XXVIII).
More on holiness and fidelity from Archbishop Chaput.
Tolkien wrote to his son:
“Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament … There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth.”
As an article at the Kirk Russell Center on the Holiness of Hobbitry quotes Gandalf:
“The rule of no realm is mine … But all worthy things that are in peril as the world now stands, those are my care. And for my part, I should not wholly fail of my task … if anything passes through this night that can still grow fair or bear fruit and flower again in days to come, for I also am a steward.”
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