The Globe on Archbishop O’Malley

Two years into his tenure as archbishop of Boston, O’Malley’s public profile has largely been defined by a few key actions: his settlement of sex abuse cases, his sale of the archbishop’s mansion and move into the cathedral rectory, his unsuccessful campaign against gay marriage, and his controversial parish closings program.

But he has quietly been defining another profile, or at least attempting to do so, through relentless preaching to churchgoing Catholics, who make up perhaps a small but influential fraction — less than 20 percent — of the estimated 2 million Catholics in the 144 cities and towns that make up the archdiocese. Throughout the two years, most weekends, he has said Mass at least two parishes, and he has also preached at large retreat-like gatherings of Catholics, and to inmates in prison.

Through his preaching, O’Malley is sketching out an agenda for the archdiocese that has nothing to do with cleaning up the mess created by the abuse crisis, bringing order to the diocese’s troubled administrative and financial structures, or battling public policy measures increasingly at odds with Catholic teaching — even though those items have consumed much of his time.

In his homilies, which he drafts by hand late at night after long days of meetings, O’Malley focuses almost exclusively on spiritual matters, offering faith in Jesus as a solution to a culture beset by spiritual hunger and moral ambiguity. He tends to stick to broad descriptions of Christian faith, rarely offering a list of do’s and don’ts or exhorting worshipers to specific courses of action. His general themes, he says, have been the importance of the Eucharist, prayer, and church.

[snip]

O’Malley often jokes about the poor quality of Catholic preaching — a frequent complaint of Catholic worshipers, and historically less of a priority in Catholic worship services than in many Protestant congregations. O’Malley said he is concerned about the quality of Catholic preaching, and is contemplating organizing workshops for local priests. ”Sometimes people will come up to me and say, ‘Oh, bishop, that’s the best sermon I’ve heard in my life,’ " O’Malley said. ”It used to fuel my vanity. Now it just instills panic in me."

That last sentence is amusing and truthful.

Has anyone heard Archbishop O’Malley preach in a parish setting?