Pope to Priests: “Go to the outskirts!”

Source Whispers in the Loggia: FROM THE HOMILY OF POPE FRANCIS HOLY THURSDAY CHRISM MASS ST PETER’S BASILICA 28 MARCH 2013: From the beauty of all these liturgical things, which is not so much about trappings and fine fabrics than about the glory of our God resplendent in his people, alive and strengthened, we turn to a consideration of activity, action. The precious oil which anoints the head of Aaron does more than simply lend fragrance to his person; it overflows down to “the edges”. The Lord will say this clearly: his anointing is meant for the poor, prisoners and the sick, for those who are sorrowing and alone. The ointment is not intended just to make us fragrant, much less to be kept in a jar, for then it would become rancid … and the heart bitter. A good priest can be recognized by the way his people are anointed. This is a clear test. When our people are anointed with the oil of gladness, it is obvious: for example, when they leave Mass looking as if they have heard good news. Our people like to hear the Gospel preached with “unction”, they like it when the Gospel we preach touches their daily lives, when it runs down like the oil of Aaron to the edges of reality, when it brings light to moments of extreme darkness, to the “outskirts” where people of faith are most exposed to the onslaught of those who want to tear down their faith. People thank us because they feel that we have prayed over the realities of their everyday lives, their troubles, their joys, their burdens and their hopes. And when they feel that the fragrance of the Anointed One, of Christ, has come to them through us, they feel encouraged to entrust to us everything they want to bring before the Lord: “Pray for me, Father, because I have this problem”, “Bless me”, “Pray for me” – these words are the sign that the anointing has flowed down to the edges of the robe, for it has turned into prayer. The prayers of the people of God. When we have this relationship with God and with his people, and grace passes through us, then we are priests, mediators between God and men. We need to “go out,” then, in order to experience our own anointing, its power and its redemptive efficacy: to the “outskirts” where there is suffering, bloodshed, blindness that longs for sight, and prisoners in thrall to many evil masters. It is not in soul-searching or constant introspection that we encounter the Lord: self-help courses can be useful in life, but to live by going from one course to another, from one method to another, leads us to become pelagians and to minimize the power of grace, which comes alive and flourishes to the extent that we, in faith, go out and give ourselves and the Gospel to others, giving what little ointment we have to those who have nothing, nothing at all. A priest who seldom goes out of himself, who anoints little – I won’t say “not at all” because, thank God, our people take our oil from us anyway –misses out on the best of our people, on what can stir the depths of his priestly heart. Those who do not go out of themselves, instead of being mediators, gradually become intermediaries, managers. We know the difference: the intermediary, the manager, “has already received his reward”, and since he doesn’t put his own skin and his own heart on the line, he never hears a warm, heartfelt word of thanks. This is precisely the reason why some priests grow dissatisfied, become sad priests, lose heart and become in some sense collectors of antiques or novelties – instead of being shepherds living with “the smell of the sheep”, shepherds in the midst of their flock, fishers of men. True enough, the so-called crisis of priestly identity threatens us all and adds to the broader cultural crisis; but if we can resist its onslaught, we will be able to put out in the name of the Lord and cast our nets. It is not a bad thing that reality itself forces us to “put out into the deep”, where what we are by grace is clearly seen as pure grace, out into the deep of the contemporary world, where the only thing that counts is “unction” – not function – and the nets which overflow with fish are those cast solely in the name of the One in whom we have put our trust: Jesus. Dear lay faithful, be close to your priests with affection and with your prayers, that they may always be shepherds according to God’s heart. Dear priests, may God the Father renew in us the Spirit of holiness with whom we have been anointed. May he renew his Spirit in our hearts, that this anointing may spread to everyone, even to those “outskirts” where our faithful people most look for it and most appreciate it. May our people sense that we are the Lord’s disciples; may they feel that their names are written upon our priestly vestments and that we seek no other identity; and may they receive through our words and deeds the oil of gladness which Jesus, the Anointed One, came to bring us. Amen.

Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)

Table time: Pope discusses, prays, dines with Orthodox representatives

Source Catholic News Service.

By Cindy Wooden

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pastors and theologians involved in ecumenical dialogue emphasize the importance of “table time” — sharing meals — along with serious theological discussions, shared prayer and joint action.

Pope Francis spoke about his ecumenical vision March 20 and prayed with delegates from Orthodox and other Christian communities at his inaugural Mass March 19.

Since March 17, he’s also had breakfast, lunch and dinner with the Orthodox representatives who came to Rome for his inauguration. Pope Francis is still living at the Domus Sanctae Marthae, the Vatican guesthouse where the Orthodox delegates also were staying.

They all eat together and greet each other in the common dining room.

Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Tarasios of Buenos Aires and South America was one of the delegates who shared meals and prayers with the new pope. In fact, he’s been doing that since then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio attended his enthronement in Buenos Aires in 2001.

When they first saw each other March 17, they embraced.

“I said to him, ‘What have you done?’ He said, ‘Not I. They did it to me,’ pointing to the cardinals,” said the Orthodox leader, who was born in the United States.

During the more formal audience Pope Francis had with the ecumenical delegates, Metropolitan Tarasios presented the pope with two elegant, but very personalized gifts: an urn filled with soil from Argentina, “so he wouldn’t feel far away, he’d always feel close to us,” and a small chalice with the biblical inscription in Spanish, “That all would be one.”

In Pope Francis’ remarks to the ecumenical delegates, he focused on the common task of preaching the Gospel, defending human dignity and defending creation. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, in his remarks to the gathering, focused on the importance of continuing the formal theological dialogue so that “our Christian witness would be credible in the eyes of those near and far.”

Metropolitan Tarasios, who was part of the ecumenical patriarchate’s delegation to Pope Francis’ inauguration, said it is not a matter of either theological dialogue or practical cooperation: Christian unity requires both.

“The theological dialogue by itself cannot bring about Christian unity,” he said. It brings the churches closer, helps them understand each other more profoundly, and provides a serious tool for understanding where the churches agree and where they differ.

But efforts also are required to bring Christians together in common prayer and joint action.

“If, in the end, the people don’t accept the theological dialogue or what comes out of the theological dialogue, there won’t be any Christian unity,” he said.

For the past five years, the international Catholic-Orthodox dialogue has been focusing on one of thorniest topics dividing the two communities: the primacy of the pope and the way his ministry has been exercised since the Great Schism of 1054.

Theologians are looking first at the role of the bishop of Rome in the first millennium, hoping it will lay the foundation for a joint statement on the place and role of the pope in a reunited Christianity.

In the first week after his election, Pope Francis emphasized his position as “bishop of Rome,” his calling to preside in charity and his insistence that the power of the papacy is the “power of service” seen in Jesus’ charge to St. Peter: “Feed my lambs. Feed my sheep.”

For the Orthodox, “that’s how we see him — as the bishop of Rome,” Metropolitan Tarasios said. That the pope repeatedly referred to himself that way “is music to our ears.”

The early years of Catholic-Orthodox dialogue focused on baptism, the Eucharist and other issues the two churches basically already agreed on. The tough topic of the primacy of the pope was saved until a time when church leaders felt the relationship was strong enough to tackle it head on.

Metropolitan Tarasios said Patriarch Bartholomew’s presence at the pope’s inauguration wasn’t just the first time a patriarch of Constantinople came for the event since 1054, it was the first time ever. Even when the churches were united, a pope or patriarch sent his newly elected brother a letter delivered, perhaps, by a special emissary.

Patriarch Bartholomew, he said, thought “if we want to help Christian unity, then we have to make our presence felt, not just known.”

The patriarch knew the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI in 2005, but he did not think about coming to Rome at the time.

“It’s a question of timing, of when the moment is right,” the metropolitan said.

“It’s time for the Christian churches to put aside some of the historical impediments to unity,” he said.

Catholics and Orthodox cannot ignore or deny the things in their history that have hurt each other, Metropolitan Tarasios said, but much of those hurts are “excess baggage” that prevent the churches from credibly proclaiming Christ today.

For the Orthodox, one of the issues still causing tension or pain is the existence and growth of the Byzantine-rite Eastern Catholic Churches that entered into full communion with Rome more than 400 years ago. The largest of the churches, the Ukrainian Catholic Church, was outlawed for almost 50 years by the Soviet Union, and its emergence from an underground existence has created serious problems in relations with the Russian Orthodox Church.

Metropolitan Tarasios said the people whose families have been Eastern Catholics for generations are one thing, but he denounced what he said were attempts to use the Byzantine Catholic Churches to convince Orthodox Christians to become Catholic while keeping their Byzantine liturgies and spiritualities.

“That’s an issue we can’t ignore,” he said. “Quite frankly, we resent it.”

On the positive side, Orthodox and Catholics are working more closely on environmental issues. Patriarch Bartholomew has been called “the green patriarch” and is one of the leading Christian proponents of a theological reflection on the moral obligation to safeguard creation.

The new pope’s choice of St. Francis of Assisi for his name and his repeated calls for respect for creation in his first week of ministry are important for the Orthodox because the patriarch and pope “can double their forces and their strength if they do it together,” Metropolitan Tarasios said.

The metropolitan said he, too, had read reports that Patriarch Bartholomew invited Pope Francis to go with him to Jerusalem in 2014 to mark the 50th anniversary of the historic first step in Catholic-Orthodox rapprochement: the 1964 meeting there between Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras.

“I think it would be a great occasion,” he said.

Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)

What the Orthodox Church Owe to the Catholic Church

We Orthodox owe something to the Catholics. Catholic leaders have been the clearest and strongest voice in the defense of the dignity of the human person in our increasingly secularized culture. We benefit from their witness. They draw from the moral tradition in ways that that hold our own leaders to account — and correctly so since we hold that part of the moral tradition in common. All Christians, not just Catholics, benefit from their faith and courage.

They also give the American Orthodox Church some breathing room as it finds its way in American society and learns how to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ into the American ethos. Learning this takes time just as it did in the early centuries of the Church. Orthodox Christianity has much to give secularized America especially to the young who, as I said at the outset, are searching for authenticity and communion.

Fr Hans Jacobse, read the rest here

Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)

Whispers in the Loggia: De Argentina a Roma – Bergoglio Elected Pope Francis I

Source: Whispers in the Loggia.

The College of Cardinals have elected Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the 76 year-old Jesuit archbishop of Buenos Aires, as Pope Francis I.

By choosing the name of the founder of his community’s traditional rivals, the 266th Roman pontiff – the first from the American continent, home to more than half of the 1.2 billion-member church – has signaled two things: his desire to be a force of unity in a polarized fold, and his intent to “repair God’s house, which has fallen into ruin”… that is, to rebuild the church.

Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)

The Ratzinger Legacy

From Ross Douthat’s recent column at NYTimes.com:

…for all of Catholicism’s problems, the Christian denominations that did not have a Ratzinger — those churches that persisted in the spirit of the 1970s and didn’t reassert a doctrinal core — have generally fared worse. There are millions of lapsed Catholics, but the church still has a higher retention rate by far than most mainline Protestant denominations. Indeed, it is difficult to pick out a major religious body where the progressive course urged by so many of Ratzinger’s critics has increased vitality and growth.

This doesn’t mean there isn’t some further version of reform, some unexpected synthesis of tradition and innovation, that would serve Catholicism well. And if such a path exists, Pope Benedict was probably not the leader to find it.

But he helped ensure that something recognizable as Catholic Christianity would survive into the third millennium. For one man, one lifetime, that was enough.

Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)

Being REALLY Counter-Cultural

Pope Benedict XVI’s Household Theologian, Fr. Wojciech Giertych, OP explains the impossibility of ordaining women to the priesthood and responds to several common objections made against this reality. Good job, Fr. Wojciech!

H/T: Domine, da mihi hanc aquam!.

Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)

Neurosis Isn’t Necessarily Bad

Applying psychological, much less psychoanalytic, constructs to a social group or a tradition is dicey at best. Even when applied to individuals, psychological and psychoanalytic constructs tend to be used reductionistically, that is, they minimize (or even ignore) human freedom. When applied to a social group insights meant to help us understand something of the individual in his or her life situation homogenize a community—it causes us to lose sight of the person for the group.

That said, however, there is still something to be said for identifying personality general styles or traits that are favored within a particular social group. Even as "I" have a preference for certain patterns of thought and action, so to do "we" or even "they" seem to reward and discourage particular ways of engaging the world of persons, events and things. Before I go on, it is very important to emphasize that in the context of this post, "world" is used more in an existential and empirical sense and not as a theological construct. "World," here means a social reality and not, as it does in John's Gospel, the creation as fallen and in rebellion against the Creator.

Earlier I hinted at the idea that Catholic and Orthodox Christians tend to favor different very broadly defined styles of engaging the world. Jesus toward the end of John's Gospel tells His disciples that we must be in the world, but not of it. Especially since the Second Vatican Council, I the Catholic Church, this has tended to take the form of a fundamental openness toward the world of persons, events and things outside her visible boundaries. For the Orthodox Church, the movement has been somewhat different—even opposite. Orthodoxy favors not a movement toward the social world outside her visible boundaries, but more a movement away from it.

Looking around the world of psychology, I think Karen Horney's work of neurosis is helpful here. So before I can look at Catholic and Orthodox polemics, I need to explain a little bit of psychoanalytic theory.

For Horney a neurosis is fundamentally a coping mechanism, it is a way of dealing with conflict. As a way of negotiating conflict—both conflicts with environment as well as our inner conflicts—a neurosis isn't necessarily pathological. Only when the neurosis becomes rigid, that is, only when we pursue some needs at the expense of other, equally legitimate needs, do we enter into the world of the pathological.

In her work Our Inner Conflicts, Horney identifies three forms of neurosis and the underlying needs that they help us meet. There is a summary on Wikipedia (which I think tends to lump healthy and pathological response to conflict together, so I've edited it for my purposes here):

Moving Toward People

1. The need for affection and approval; pleasing others and being liked by them.
   
2. The need for a partner; one whom they can love and who will solve all problems.
   

Moving Against People

1. The need for social recognition; prestige and limelight.
   
2. The need for personal admiration; for both inner and outer qualities—to be valued.
   
3. The need for personal achievement.
   

Moving Away from People

1. The need for self sufficiency and independence.
   
2. The need for perfection.
   

Looking through the summary, it is clear that our movements toward, against or away from, others are all attempts to met very specific psychological and social needs. We all of us need both to love and be loved (moving toward), even as there is a legitimate desire for self-sufficiency and independent (moving away).

Horney will later summarize these three movements as compliance, aggression and detachment respectively. And again, these only become pathological when they are not appropriately balanced by the other two movements or responses to outer and inner conflict.

In my next post, I want to look what seems to me to be the different basic styles of Catholic and Orthodox traditions in relating to the world understood psychologically. In brief, I would suggest that in the main the Catholic Church's tradition tends to be one that favors a 'movement toward" the world. The tradition of the Orthodox Church, on the other hand, is one that values more a "movement away" from the world. In the West, grace perfects nature; in the East, grace is what makes possible the transcendence of nature. Obviously these are overly broad categories. One can find easily counter examples in both traditions. That said, I think that it is a helpful way to think about East/West Christian relations.

To be continued…

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Through a Glass, Darkly: Secrecy and the Catholic Church

One of the charges that we sometime hear in Orthodox Church circles is that this or that bishop or idea is "Catholic" and not Orthodox. Often by "Catholic" what is meant is a decision or idea that (rightly or wrongly) appears to its critic as authoritarian.

Over the years as I have heard this type of complaint made I've had a number of different thoughts. One is to question criticizing an idea or policy by associating it, unfavorably, with another Christian community. This isn't like saying "You throw like a girl" when we mean to say that a boy lacks athletic skill.

The second though I have is that, frankly, there are times when I wish the Orthodox Church was as well run as the Catholic Church (and yes, I heard the gasps--from both my Orthodox readers who are appalled and my Catholic readers who must be wondering "How poorly is the Orthodox Church run if he admires us?!") Let me say quickly, I don't have desire to throw over Orthodox ecclesiology. Nor have I any illusions about the administrative operations of the Catholic Church. What I do have is a desire to see both communities draw closer together and as a step along the way I think both can learn from each other about the day to day goverance of their respective communities.

All this is by way of a longish introduction to an interview with Russell Shaw posted on Inside Catholic. Shaw, a regular contributor to Inside Catholic, has just published his 20th book, Nothing To Hide: Secrecy, Communication, and Communion in the Catholic Church (Ignatius Press), in whcih he "takes a candid and sometimes surprising look at the abuse of secrecy in an ecclesiastical context."

While the whole interview is worth reading, I would draw the attention of my Orthodox readers to some of the following in Shaw's interview (my emphasis and my comments).

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Inside Catholic: What moved you to write a book about secrecy in the Church?

Russell Shaw:I guess I first became conscious of the problem in 1969, when I went to work for the bishops' conference as director of information. At the time, the bishops' relations with the press were in terrible shape, and much of the tension focused on the bishops' general meetings. They were entirely in executive session, with no reporters and observers allowed in. Yet the bishops invited reporters to come to the meeting and cover it -- which they did, partly by means of briefings and partly by means of leaks. Needless to say, there was no good reason for all that secrecy. The situation was a mess and very harmful to the bishops' own best interests.

Don't you think there's a place for secrecy and confidentiality in the Church?

Of course there is. As a matter of fact, I make the case for secrecy in the book. The seal of the confessional is the strongest example of strictly obligatory secrecy, but the duty to preserve privacy pertains in pastoral counseling situations. Furthermore, the Church has the same right to confidentiality to protect its legitimate interests that any other group has, along with the common obligation to respect people's privacy rights.

My point isn't that there has to be total disclosure of everything. It's that the assumption in doing the Church's business should be in favor of openness and accountability, with the burden of proof resting on those who favor secrecy in any particular case. [One of the things that the parish I serve does very well is hold open monthly parish council meetings. In addition to annoucing the time and date of the meeting, they also post the minutes on the parish bulletin board. Most important, in my view, is that comments and questions form visitors are encouraged by having a visitors' forum on the monthly agenda.]

....

[Is] there anything special about the abuse of secrecy in the Church?

Yes, there is. The clergy are the management class in the Church, and in that context the abuse of secrecy becomes a typical tool of the clericalist culture. It's clericalism at work.

Furthermore, abusing secrecy is contrary to the Church's nature as communion -- a communion or hierarchically structured community of faith in which all the members, as Vatican II taught, are fundamentally equal in dignity and rights. But you can't have real equality in dignity and rights in a community in which a large body of members are routinely denied information that they need to function as full, equal members. That's how things are now.

....

But ever since Vatican II haven't we had structures and processes of consultation to prevent what you're talking about -- pastoral councils, finance councils, things like that[and the Orthodox Church had had these in place especially in America since the beginning of our time here]?

On paper, yes. But in many places, if not most, they don't seem to be working very well. What did diocesan and parish councils do to detect and prevent sex abuse? Nothing -- evidently they were frozen out, kept in the dark. In lots of parishes and dioceses, nobody knows who the council members are or when they meet or what their agenda is or what they do. There's a common impression that very often -- there are exceptions, of course -- the main role of these bodies is to be a sounding-board and rubber-stamp decisions by the authorities.

Isn't the problem larger than secrecy?

Yes, it is. As I say in the book, the abuse of secrecy has a number of cousins -- stonewalling, happy talk, spin, deception, failure to consult, rejection of accountability, things like that. The family resemblance is that, like secrecy, these are all breakdowns in the open, honest communication that ought to be the rule in the communio of the Church.

Has the Church officially taken a position on this question?

Well, it hasn't said a whole lot. But you will find some excellent statements of principle in Communio et Progressio, a pastoral instruction on communications published by the Pontifical Council for Social Communications in 1971. It calls for a "steady, two-way flow of information" between Church authorities and the faithful, and says people have a right to "all the information they need to play their active role in the life of the Church," while secrecy should be limited to cases of necessity.

This Vatican agency has returned to the same subject several times in documents it's published since then, and Pope John Paul II touched on the theme in his last public document before he died, Il Rapido Sviluppo (The Rapid Development). Pope Benedict laid down the basic principle of internal communication in the Church several years ago. "We cannot communicate with the Lord if we do not communicate with one another" is how he put it.

What do you suggest be done?

My book ends with some practical recommendations. For instance: adopt policies that guarantee openness in conducting the business of dioceses and parishes and religious institutes; make a fresh start with pastoral councils and finance councils by giving them a real say in decisions and making their proceedings public; give qualified lay Catholics a consultative voice in the choice of their bishops and pastors; put freedom-of-information policies in place in Church institutions; allow diocesan newspapers to be more than house organs and operate as reliable sources of information and vehicles for public opinion. We have to revive the ideal of shared responsibility, too -- not as part of a power struggle, but so that we can all work together for the welfare of the Church.

Basically, what's needed is a new way of thinking -- a commitment to the proposition that openness and accountability really are the way to go because they're expressions of what the Church is and how it's meant to operate. When people grasp that, the abuse of secrecy ought to fade away But I'm realistic enough to recognize that, human nature being what it is, the temptation to go behind closed doors and practice secrecy will always exist.


► This is the third entry in a multi-part, multi-week series on the issue of clericalism in the Catholic Church. The project will continue tomorrow with a discussion/dialogue on whether or not faithful Catholics may criticize a bishop publicly, and will conclude Friday with an online symposium, including dozens of prominent Catholics from various perspectives, offering their own analysis and solutions. All the articles will be gathered into a single printable volume, available for free download at the end of the week.

Related articles

• Pope: Sex Abuse "Badly Handled" By Church [via Zemanta]

Why Do Catholics Become Evangelicals?

There is much for those of us who are Orthodox to think about in a recent article by Fr. Gerald J. Mendoza, O.P. In a section entitled: "An Operative Theology of Exit: Why Catholics Leave," Fr Mendoza lists 4 reasons why people fall away from the Catholic Church that are directly applicable to the pastoral situation of the Orthodox Church here in the U.S. He writes:

(1) Lack of active participation. Out of 60 million Catholics in 1997 in the U.S., only 25% minimally practiced their faith. In 1999, the National Catholic Reporter conducted a study that showed a general decline in Mass attendance, while at the same time a trend toward more personal autonomy regarding all morals. Without question, the person that does not know his or her faith is unable to defend it or to intelligibly critique it against challenges posed by fundamentalists, and a person who does not actively participate in his or her faith, at a minimum, with regular church attendance, cannot know his or her faith.

(2) Lack of scriptural and theological sophistication. In order to understand “major points of conflict” between fundamentalists and Catholics, the Catholic needs to know his or her Bible and the manner in which Catholic dogma and doctrines are drawn from and complement the scriptures. I suggest—given my own experience in parish ministry—that most Catholics in the pew would be hard-pressed to intelligently distinguish between Gospels, Epistles, and/or Psalms, other than being able to identify which follows which in the Mass. That is, assuming that they regularly attend Eucharistic liturgies, which given the aforementioned statistics regarding Catholic Church attendance, is a huge assumption. This is largely because the Second Vatican Council’s teachings on the Bible, specifically in Verbum Dei, have not been pastorally institutionalized.

(3) Lack of appropriate and effective Catholic catechesis. Related to the lack of Catholics practicing their faith and their lack of scriptural and theological sophistication, is the vacuous state of catechesis in the Catholic Church today. In most parishes, catechesis is limited to those preparing for juvenile or adult initiatory sacraments of baptism, first communion and confirmation. That means that outside of whatever catechesis may be disseminated via the weekend homily—which generally is more practical than catechetical—Church members who are not children or participants in the Rite of Christian Initiation (RCIA) receive no significant catechesis. As a result, most Catholics have a theological sophistication that is stunted at the elementary or junior high school level. For example, as a religious education teacher at a San Antonio parish church, four fifths of the adult class participants in the class did not know what the word, “liturgy” meant.

(4) Anemic parishes and preaching. Evangelical Protestant churches tend to be vibrant, affirming places where people can find good preaching, ministries that feed the soul and warm fellowship and a sense of mission that keeps them coming back. This unfortunately is not happening in far too many Catholic parish churches. Fr. Joseph Wilson of St. Luke Catholic Church in Queens, New York opines that: "I’m sure people drift away for all kinds of reasons, but I think we ought to be especially concerned for people who are turned off by the anemic parish life one finds in so many places in our country. Here in New York City I know of a good number of couples that travel over parish and diocesan boundaries to a parish where they find good worship and teaching. They know something is missing and go out of their way to supply the need. How many more there must be whose faith was simply never nourished in their parishes, and how many there are who end up in ‘Bible churches’ because they find fellowship, scriptural preaching and teaching, and a sense of spirituality they had been lacking. As far as preaching goes, I hear a lot about the abysmal state of Catholic homilies. Part of the problem is that in this age a priest or deacon who teaches something clearly and forthrightly will catch flak for it. Early on in his ministry a homilist should be able to make a few mistakes, find his own gifts as a preacher, learn how to phrase an argument or an example and how to talk about sin. Today, however, in the age where everyone is an expert and all truth is subjective, many people do not want to hear uncomfortable teachings expounded. It becomes very easy to fall back on a feel-good approach to the homily, light on content, long on uplifting anecdotes and the power of positive thinking."

If you interested you can read more: HPR | Why Do Catholics Become Evangelical?

Your comments are invited.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory