Fr Ray of St Mary Magdalene, Brighton on boring preachers.
What I don’t get is this: when you’re up there preaching you can see the people. You can tell if they’re sleeping. You can actually see when they are bored to tears. Why then, do preachers week in and week out continue to preach poorly and too long?
My take on it is this: there is no correct length for a homily. For a good preacher thirty minutes is too short. For a bad preacher five minutes is too long.
This is a semi-related question. What are the qualifications of say a Baptist preacher? Those boys go on for hours while us Catholic boys spend 4 years in graduate school and cannot maintain 5 minutes of coherent speech. Does the current priest shortage lower the standards? That is, if they don’t seem like a pedophile and can write a paper, a man can become a priest.
If I might be frank the thing that drives me absolutely crazy is when the priest feels the need to repeat the same phrase (usually the main idea of his homily) twenty times in a 20 minute sermon. I zone out for lack of new material.
I should add, I know sometimes priests are busy and don’t have time to prepare. In such cases I would suggest adapting the whatever sermon is in that day’s Office of Readings.
WOW, spot on, Father! And the three comments above are also right on. What to do… I know there are websites dedicated to producing good homiletics. Would that our homily-challenged priests frequent such sites; but, alas, these same priests probably don’t frequent the internet. I’ve suspected that at least one priest I know doesn’t even read–how he got through seminary is anybody’s guess…
Just come across…’Is Anybody there?’ written by one Dwight Longenecker! Perhaps they should read that??
But then if WE as the congregation are truly hungry and open to hearing the Word of God ( as opposed to wanting to be entertained), then ANY ordained priest or deacon should give us a nugget of something from God – if we are ready to receive it. That`s if we believe the teaching of The Church. Sorry, just er.. standing this on it`s head…..
Blarg, I imagine the reason Protestant preachers are better at preaching is that preaching is the main qualification to be a pastor in the Protestant world. The sermon is the main event of the service, so if you can’t preach you simply won’t be hired as pastor. But a priest could be a bad preacher, and if he just keeps it short and then says Mass correctly, he’s given the people the main thing they came for. We have a priest in our parish whose strong Italian accent makes his homilies hard to understand unless you’re in the front row. He’s a good confessor, though– lots of kindness and common sense. I think he’s a good priest. :)When I was first converting I thought most Catholic preaching sounded rough and unpolished. Then when I visited my old Protestant church after being Catholic for a while, my old pastor suddenly sounded slick and insincere. It was funny; a lot depends on what you’re used to.I like homilies if the priest expounds on the Scripture, or gives us some thoughts from the Church Fathers on the Scripture, or tells us the life of some saint, or gives us some wisdom from one of the saints, or suggests practices for a more fruitful spiritual life, or offers some church teaching from encyclicals. Anything *specific* like that is interesting to me. As long as the homily’s source is the Bible, the Fathers, the Magisterium, or the saints, it’s probably good. If the source is just vague 20th-century moralizing and “wisdom”– not so good.
I can understand under the current priest shortage it is easy to draft a make shift homily the night before and move on to the new parishioner rapping on the door, but for those twenty minutes a priest has a captive audience. At no other time does a priest hold the attention of such a vast audience with the capability of an effective delivery and sacrament of the Church: in persona Christi. True enough parishioners come for the solemn joys of the Last Supper made present; however, “faith come from what is heard” and it is in the homily where scripture is made present through the authoritative teaching of the Church (Romans 10:17). Now, should this opportunity and sacred duty be so easily blown off until the night before? I think not.
True, I’d agree the pries should do his best! I was more answering the question of *why* Protestant preachers are better, but if you asked, “*Should* Catholic preachers be good?” you bet I’d say yes.Also, I completely forgot another huge factor– Protestant pastors normally prepare one sermon a week, while Catholic priests have daily Mass to deal with.
Yes there is the daily Mass for most priests to attend to as well, however even that should not remove from them the requirement that their time spent in at the Ambo is precise, effective, and relevant to the lives of those in the pews. There is little excuse for not delivering at LEAST a good 5 minute homily.
If there’s ice in the pulpit, there’s no fire in the pews.