NEW JOB

FOR A LAYMAN
S a first step in Archbishop
Heenan's plan to establish a closer relationship between the clergy and the laity a layman is to be appointed to the administrative staff of Westminster Archdiocese before Christmas. It is believed that Westminster will then be the only diocese in the country with a layman officially involved in administrative affairs.
The appointment will concern education. A lay expert is to join Fr. John McCoy on the diocesan schools commission. His cifief role will be to establish a closer link between the commission and the Catholic teacher and parents associations in the Archdiocese.
Archbishop Heenan stressed that in future lay people must be directly involved in administering diocesan affairs, when he spoke on the role of the Church in the modern world at the Council.
Expansion
Westminster already has an alllay advisory committee on educational matters and its consultants are specialists in the fields of education, building. finance, statistics. and law. But there is an immediate need for an expert layman to work full-time as an administrator because of the "trouble-period" which the archdiocese faces over the next few years, Fr. McCoy said this week.
It as a £5f million expansion scheTne to provide 18.500 new school places in five years. It also faces the prospect of radical changes in the seconda ry %ducation system under the Labour Government and the new London borough education authorities.
To strengthen links between the schools commission and the various teacher-parent associations a series of conferences involving teachers. parents and diocesan education authorities has now started in Westminster. The future shape of the education system will be clarified by Sir John Newsom when he talks to more than 500 school managers, governors and teachers at Westminster Cathedral Hall on November 23.