Australia’s Cardinal George Pell took a moment from attending the Synod of Bishops in Rome to chat with John Allen about what’s been happening there — and, at one point, turned to the topic of preaching:

There’s been a lot of talk at the synod about the weakness of preaching. Do you think things are as bad as it sounds?

No, I don’t. I can speak primarily about Australia. I was pleasantly surprised in some of the survey’s we’ve done of church-goers to find a high level of satisfaction with the homilies. Now, you might say the survey is skewed because we’re not asking the people who aren’t there, and it’s possible some people don’t go because they don’t like the homily. But I was pleased and slightly surprised by the approval rating of sermons in Australia among church-goers, and I don’t think that would all be explained by loyalty to their local priest.

One thing I can say, without any fear of contradiction, is that there’s immense variety in the Catholic world. There’s immense variety in my diocese, in terms of levels of affluence, educational levels, ethnicity, level of church practice, and so on. These are multiplied ad infinitum across the Catholic world. It’s difficult to generalize about anything, including the quality of preaching.

Bishop Kicanas mused aloud about declaring 2009 a ‘Year of Preaching.’ What did you make of that?

It’s an interesting idea. How much will come of it, I just don’t know, but it’s a good idea.

Is there a risk of asking the homily to carry more weight than it’s meant to bear?

Yes, and I also think there’s also a danger that we will invest the sacred scriptures with more tasks than they were designed to carry. Newman said something like the scriptures weren’t written to offer a program of conversion, but to preserve the memory of the person of Christ and his teaching.

I’ve been thinking about the World Youth Day ‘Way of the Cross’ in Sydney, which was just a public re-enactment of it, and which was a spectacular success. I think that in this new media age, we need the equivalent of the medieval mystery plays, without all the traditional distractions. I’ll probably also say [in the synod] that at the time of the Reformation, we weren’t the first to have catechisms, we were slow into the vernacular, and we were slow to put scripture into the hands of the people. We don’t want to make the same mistake with the new media.

In some ways, haven’t we already made that mistake? Often Evangelicals and Pentecostals are much more media-savvy about how to bring the Bible to life, aren’t they?

Yes, that’s probably true. But there are good things happening … the Canadian “Salt and Light” network, EWTN in the United States. This world is developing. In Australia, we’ve just set up an interactive web site called “Xt3,” meaning “Christ in the Third Millennium.” It’s got 30,000 members world-wide. Especially for young adults who are in parishes, where they might find themselves a bit isolated, they can get together with friends who have similar interests.

Your point is that promotion of the Bible shouldn’t come at the expense of creative new modes of evangelization?

Exactly.

There’s more at the link, so check it out.