From the mysterious "Holy Office"

Very funny and true. Just a couple of notes:

1)I am done with holding Protestant preaching up as a model, and I honestly have my doubts as to whether, as a whole, Protestant preaching is any better than Catholic homiletics. Sure, all I know is what I see on television, but you can presume that most of what you see on television is considered the best of its kind. Not everyone is represented on television, either, and there are lots of Protestant sermons available on podcasts, some of which I have listened to hear and there, to get a taste. Most of the evangelicals of every stripe are repetitive, and if they’re not repetitive, they’re disjointed, and they more often than not lapse into self-helpfulness. The mainstream Protestants I hear on television or on the radio don’t strike me as particularly engaging, either. They are earnest, and that is about it.

2) We’ve discussed this here before, but the history of Catholic homiletics is complex. The short version is: the expectation that every priest at every liturgy should offer a unique, original homily is a fairly modern invention in Catholicism. In previous eras in various parts of the world, the task of the homily has been variously handled. In some eras, parish priests didn’t preach at all – the only preaching in a diocese came from the bishop or from members of religious orders (aka Order of Preachers. Get it?) Or priests were expected to read from prepared texts – texts prepared from other sources, not their own thoughts. And don’t forget there was the priest simplex, ordained, but not allowed to preach (or hear confessions). And there has been such a thing as a preacing license, common in some Protestant churches, but an element of Catholic life as well at times. Someone out there can undoubtedly give us a more authoritative, detailed history.

From the GIRM, in case you’re interested.

There is to be a homily on Sundays and holy days of obligation at all Masses that are celebrated with the participation of a congregation; it may not be omitted without a serious reason. It is recommended on other days, especially on the weekdays of Advent, Lent, and the Easter Season, as well as on other festive days and occasions when the people come to church in greater numbers.⁶⁶

If you think about it as well, the burden of a priest’s preaching is far greater than it is for any Protestant minister. Most priests in parishes celebrate Mass on the weekends, and most preach at their own Masses (some parishes have a system in which one priest is designated to preach at all of the Masses on a given weekend, even if he doesn’t offer that Mass. I’ve seen that in some places, but not very often). Most priests offer daily Mass in a parish, and some of those are in school settings, which has a different requirement. In a given week, a priest may also have a funeral and a wedding. On a busy week, it is totally possible that a Catholic priest, especially one who is alone in his parish, might have to offer 10 different homilies. It could happen. It does happen.

(the priest is not required to preach at daily Mass, as the GIRM indicates. But most do.)

That’s a lot.

I am tough on priests and homilies. My sympathy for them is framed by the fact that even though I know, the positions are not identical, in my job as a Catholic high school teacher, I taught five different classes ever day – 25 a week – so in a sense, I was "preaching" 25 times a week. And don’t tell me it’s completely dissimilar. If you’re in a classroom of skeptical adolescents, there is definitely a sense that what you are doing is preaching, in that you are trying to help them see the reality of Jesus and His Church for their own lives, right now, no matter what the subject matter.

And while I wish more priests took more time to prepare homilies (and that, more often than not is the issue), I think before we shoot off our mouths from our side of the sanctuary we stop and consider the reality of the priest’s life in a parish, particularly in an understaffed parish.

Another random point is that I doubt most priests get any kind of honest helpful feedback on their homilies.  Mostly what they hear, spoken directly to them is of the "That was lovely, Father!" with maybe a gripe or two offered later, perhaps in an anonymous note. Some priests realize this and are more pro-active in seeking feedback from groups of parishioners (or blog readers, in the case of our blogging priests!), but time mitigates against that for most.

Our priest-readers have commented on this before, and even asked for feedback. And yes, homiletics is taught in seminaries (for example, St. Meinrad now has a really nice homiletics lab, with taping capacity and so on).

But I do think that there is also no agreement out there (and I mean among people who write and teach about this) as to what Catholic homiletics should be all about, anyway, and some of that even goes back to the disarray in Catholic Scripture scholarship over the past few decades. The fundamental question is: if the bottom line of Scripture scholarship has been the skeptical line (and it has)…from where can the power of preaching come?