Preaching: Does It Reach Your Ears?

I was at a social recently with a group of active Catholics who were lamenting the quality of preaching in their respective parishes. Having been a preacher myself for twenty-some years I keep my mouth shut, in part because my former congregations would probably give me mixed reviews, too. But recently I decided to make preaching the subject of discussion here at the Café site, because there is considerable confusion among clergy and laity about exactly what should happen in that space between the Gospel and the Profession of Faith. In the 1960's the U.S. Supreme Court was considering an indecency case; Justice Potter Stewart observed that while he could not define obscenity, "I know it when I see it." Do we know good preaching or poor preaching when we hear it?
 
BACK IN THE OLD DAYS:
 
I looked at the evolution of explanations of what we call the “preaching” at Mass. A pre-Vatican II daily Missal [i.e., prior to 1965] describes this space as a homily, as in “the priest explains the Word of God for us.” A critical part of the explanation was a translation: the Tridentine or pre-Vatican II Mass was celebrated in Latin, and the Gospel was read in the vernacular [e.g., in English] after the solemn singing of the Latin text. As I recall, liturgical law did not demand a sermon but strongly encouraged it on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation.
 
I can clearly remember that some priests interpreted “explaining the Word of God” rather liberally, focusing on everything from pious devotions to parish finances to the need for confession to “the last things,” i.e., heaven, hell, and purgatory. In my parish I was in the second grade in 1956 when our monsignor preached that no one should see the morally objectionable film “Baby Doll” then playing in theaters in Buffalo. [“An immature, naive teenage bride holds her anxious husband at bay while flirting with an amorous Sicilian farmer.” [per IMDb] Unfortunately, it was the Christmas morning Mass when he delivered this message.
 
It is probably fair to say that what Catholics heard in the years before the Council was a brief exhortation to be prayerful and good, a “pious exhortation,” as a rule. It is also true that “professional preachers” were invited into parishes, particularly for annual parish retreats and Forty Hours devotions, etc. Often the visiting preachers were members of religious orders who specialized in parochial renewals and perfected multiple crafts in communication style and composition.
 
One of the highest-rated television shows in prime time during the 1950’s, if you can imagine this, was “Life is Worth Living,” a half-hour spiritual exhortation/reflection/instruction from Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, an auxiliary bishop of New York City. He was to preaching what Johnny Carson was to comedy: he understood “connectedness” as well as any public performer. He mixed devotion with poetry, theology, and even humor. I still remember his accounting of a letter he received from an actress who wrote that she was listening to his show while applying her facial make-up to go on stage. She said she was moved to return to religion by his words. Sheen, with a perfectly straight face, looked into the camera and said: “The first instance of grace after grease.” Sheen’s program won awards and maintained high ratings, even more remarkable as his broadcast competition in that time slot was the number one rated “Milton Berle Show.” But Berle and Sheen were good friends and “Uncle Milty” as he was known would often joke that he was changing his name to “Uncle Fulty.” [Bishop’s Sheen’s program was ended in 1957 by Sheen’s superior, New York’s Cardinal Spellman, who literally hated his auxiliary, Sheen.]
 
There is a doctoral dissertation waiting to be written on the impact of Bishop Sheen’s preaching on parochial life in the United States. Whether a Catholic attended Sunday Mass or not, he or she would have been exposed to the captivation of good preaching at least a few times during the run of “Life is Worth Living.” I doubt that many Catholics expected their parish priests to replicate the effectiveness of Bishop Sheen, but at the same time they [and I] had some clue to the spiritual magic that certain men could summon in the pulpit. When I “played Mass” as a kid, I always preached, so I must have gotten something from my parish priests.
 
A CURIOUS CONTRADICTION OF DEVELOPMENTS:
 
You can look at all sixteen documents of Vatican II [promulgated between 1963 and 1965] and find a call to all Catholics to turn to the Bible as the primary text to learn the will of God, to return to the atmosphere of the Apostolic era. This was, to borrow a biblical phrase, “a hard teaching.” The old joke described the Catholic family bible as the repository for family documents, stocks and bonds, and there was truth in that. Even after Pius XII [r. 1939-1958] encouraged Catholics to study the Bible, there was parochial reluctance to do so, particularly where the Hebrew Scripture or Old Testament was concerned.
 
Regrettably, antisemitism permeated Catholicism as it did much of American society. It is also true that Catholics in general regarded emphasis upon the Bible as a “Protestant thing.” Before the 1960’s you could miss the entire Liturgy of the Word and still get credit for attending Mass, because only Catholics had the true presence of Christ in the Consecration and reception of Holy Communion. When the Vatican II fathers labored to put the Scripture at the center of Catholic/Christian life—the sacraments, after all, take their very meaning from the sacred scriptures-- there was considerable grumbling that Catholicism was “turning Protestant.”
 
The renewed emphasis upon the Scripture was applied to all the sacramental rites, but none with more vigor than the Eucharist itself. The Mass expanded from two to three readings, adding a passage from the Old Testament to the calendar of Masses. The Mass readings were richly expanded to the three-year cycle we have today, and as we know, the readings are proclaimed in the local language, no longer in Latin.
 
Such drastic changes of a half-century ago would have theoretically altered the nature of the sermon and the identity of the preacher-homilist at Mass. But here we are in 2024, and researchers still report that Catholics are more dissatisfied with preaching than most any other aspect of parish life. What happened?
 
AN UNCERTAIN TRUMPET:
 
The reform documents from the Council, as well as sixty years of follow-up directives, were long on exhortation to preach energetically, but short on specifics. A commentary on the Roman Missal instructs: “For in the readings, as explained by the Homily, God speaks to his people, opening up to them the mystery of redemption and salvation, and offering spiritual nourishment; and Christ himself is present through his word in the midst of the faithful. The reading of the Gospel constitutes the high point of the Liturgy of the Word.”
 
And in another place, “The Homily is part of the Liturgy and is highly recommended, for it is necessary for the nurturing of the Christian life. It should be an explanation of some aspect of the readings from Sacred Scripture or of another text from the Ordinary or the Proper of the Mass of the day and should take into account both the mystery being celebrated and the particular needs of the listeners.”
 
I was in the Franciscan major seminary when the first directives on preaching were coming into our classrooms. Collectively, they were rather thin gruel for 22-year-old students who were cutting our teeth in public ministry—in my case, working on retreat weekends with Catholic high school students and religious education programs in the Washington, D.C. area. Looking back, we worked with some of the best high schools in the Capital area: Georgetown Visitation, Trinity High School [where “The Exorcist’ was filmed], Seton High School, and a number of suburban Maryland and Virginia high school religious ed programs. I guess the counsel we received from our mentors and superiors was “keep them enthused and attached to the Church.” We loosely followed a teen retreat program model called TEC or “Teenagers Encounter Christ” which I discovered today is still in use around the country and considerably expanded.
 
But even today the TEC website describes its preaching mission in generalities: TEC begins with a retreat that offers a powerful, life changing encounter with Christ. Christ’s Paschal Mystery is shared through a dynamic sequence of peer reflections, small group discussions, sacraments, recreation, prayer, and respectful support. Team members share the gospel with retreat participants who in turn go forth and continue to share with others. It was up to each of us, as young aspiring preachers, to craft that invitation in the confines of our strength and weaknesses and the personalities of our clientele. I learned early that there is a strong psychological component to the ministry of preaching—you are not just conveying a body of information, but also opening yourself—connectedness—to your congregation. You become one with them.
 
BUT THERE IS MUCH MORE:
 
To tell the truth, evangelical Protestant theologians—most notably Karl Barth—seem to have a more powerful and concrete definition of preaching and preachers than their Catholic counterparts. Barth [1886-1968] wrote: Pastors [preachers] are sinners. They are unprofitable servants with all their words even though they do all that they are under obligation to do (cf. Luke 17:10). Nevertheless, they are servants of the Most High (cf. Dan. 3:26). They speak in his name. They carry out his commission, which is a reality even today. No matter how well or how badly they do it, this in the presupposition of listening to them…. They know fear and trembling whenever they mount the pulpit. They are crushed by the feeling of being poor human beings who are probably more unworthy than all those who sit before them. Nevertheless, precisely then it is still a matter of God’s Word. The Word of God that they have to proclaim is what judges them, but this does not alter the fact – indeed, it means – that they have to proclaim it. This is the presupposition of their proclaiming it.”

In Roman Catholic theology, a Catholic priest becomes an alter Christus [“another Christ”] when he consecrates the bread and wine as Jesus did at the Last Supper. Barth would argue that, in so many words, the preacher in any Christian denomination speaks in God’s name and makes known the concrete judgments of God. Little wonder that there is fear and trembling in Barth’s theology of preaching. Barth, a Reformed Calvinist, becomes much more understandable to Catholics when we remember that in 1935, he was deported from Germany to Switzerland for preaching against the evils of the growing Nazi government. Interestingly, around the same time, the Catholic bishop Angelo Roncalli was diplomatically expelled from Rome to Bulgaria for decrying the fascism of Benito Mussolini. The silence of so many bishops in Europe in the face of the totalitarian menace was one of the prime reasons for the calling of Vatican II by Pope John XXIII in 1959, the very same Angelo Roncalli!
 
A Catholic theologian pointed out to me that in Barth’s thinking, a congregation should be so moved to conversion by a sermon that they wish they could be baptized again at its conclusion. It is no accident that in much of Christianity—and certainly in Catholicism—we make the Profession of Faith, the Nicene Creed, the same creed professed at Baptism, immediately after the sermon. I think of Barth many weekends at Mass as we rumble half-heartedly through the Nicene Creed.
 
WHAT CATHOLICS SAY THEY NEED:
 
I was at a dinner party recently when I realized that I was the only person at the table who did not hold a doctorate degree—and, no, two master’s degrees do not equal a doctorate, as my Ivy League doctor/wife reminds me when I get on my high horse. For years now I have been hearing from professionals in many fields that sermons are sandwiches thin on the meat. The clerical excuse used to be—and may still be—that the “simple faithful” would not understand a sermon with either academic thought or moral conviction; put another way, we address the lowest common denominator.
 
Barth, whose Church Dogmatics runs to about 9000 pages, was correct that preaching requires both study and the passion of faith, i.e., Biblical reflection upon the human condition. It is a curious thing that in an American presidential election year where public morality is a major issue, not a single moral issue comes up in homilies, and this although Pope Francis preaches regularly—and controversially—on a wide range of issues, from ecology to abortion to refugees to human sexuality to acts of war.
 
It may be that with our country sharply divided, most pastors and preachers believe that to wade too far into Biblical/Church moral teaching runs the risk of alienating members at a time when we have already lost a good number of our confreres in the Catholic family. I was a young pastor when John Hinkley shot President Ronald Reagan and two others. The following Sunday I preached on the need to reflect upon the proliferation of handguns. As you might expect, I received my share of strong criticism. After all, this is Florida, the land of open carry. Looking back, I might have done better to wait until my own anger had cooled down and I could have drawn more from the generally good rapport I enjoyed with my people.
 
Another issue which challenges preachers is the complexity of moral teachings of the Church [and the state, for that matter.] My moral professor advised us that at times in our ministry the issues would not always be “yes or no” or “good and evil.” “Sometimes your choices are evil versus less evil.” I raise this question because ten states have some form of constitutional proposal on the November ballot dealing with the issue of abortion, including my state of Florida. In 2022 Catholic News Agency ran a lengthy piece on the moral complexity of some prenatal cases, notably involving ectopic pregnancies and cancer:
 
A Catholic woman is allowed to undergo life-saving treatment — even if it means that her unborn baby will die indirectly as a result of that treatment, according to the U.S. bishops’ directives. The intention and action, here, is to save the mother’s life. It is not to end her baby’s life through abortion, or “the directly intended termination of pregnancy.”
 
“Operations, treatments, and medications that have as their direct purpose the cure of a proportionately serious pathological condition of a pregnant woman are permitted when they cannot be safely postponed until the unborn child is viable, even if they will result in the death of the unborn child,” the directives read.  For a more complicated case, see this 2010 study from America Magazine. A total ban on every procedure to save the life of the mother--as some states legislate in their abortion codes—actually lacks the traditional wisdom of the Church in these tragic and delicate cases.
 
Clearly, no homilist would or should go into such details from the pulpit. However, it is certainly appropriate to exhort Catholics to study moral issues closely and to integrate resources such as books, journals, and websites into the homily and subsequently into the adult education ministry of the parish. The Catechist Café itself was developed to address adult education and discussion in the Church.
 
FINALLY, SOME FRANK OBSERVATIONS FROM THE PEW:
 
One man’s thoughts…and you can refute them as you wish.
 
Preachers, particularly priests, do not seem to read. In thirty years, I have heard exactly two books mentioned in a sermon in my present church. There ought to be book quotations and recommendations from the pulpit—and in church bulletins-- on studies of Scripture, Spirituality, Church History, Morality, etc. Introduce the major Catholic publishing houses. There are a lot of Ph.D.’s in the pews who can master St. Paul, St. Augustine, and Thomas Merton, and would eagerly do so.

I think that most Catholics regardless of their education would be honored and motivated if their preachers considered them smart.
 
A sermon should not be ego centered. I was guilty of this; from my sermons my parishioners knew I lived and died with the Buffalo Bills and that I attended the Daytona 500 every year, among other things. A preacher can feel “too much at home” particularly if he has lived with his congregation for some years. Pope Francis recently stated that a sermon should last no longer than ten minutes. Ten minutes goes by very quickly. Get down to business. Talk about the golf at coffee and donuts.
 
Deacons prepare more diligently than priests. In part, this is due to the deacons’ self-realization that ordained ministry is a life-long school of the study of the holy. They have more in common with monks, for whom religious study is embedded in daily spirituality. Priests, I fear, believe that graduation from the seminary will hold them intellectually for a lifetime. The three deacons in my parish read/proclaim their sermons. I didn’t always agree with this method at first, but today, when one of our deacons opens his homily folder, the same thought comes to everyone: HE’S PREPARED! People respect the preacher and the message when they see the sweat that went into it.
 
We do not live in a bubble. It would be a pleasant change to hear mention of the culture outside the Church bookstore. I would wager that many Catholics would be shocked to know that bestselling novelists Toni Morrison, Dom DeLillo, Walker Percy, Graham Greene, Cormac McCarthy, J.F. Powers, Louise Erdrich, Phil Klay, Ron Hansen, and Alice McDermott are themselves Catholics who weave narratives with the richness of parables. And of course, Flannery O’Connor. Novelists and other artists, at their best, are prophets of our culture.
 
The sermon is a component of a bigger event. It is time we began thinking again of the Mass as a dramatic whole. Aristotle’s [384-322 B.C.] Poetics played a big role in my sacramental formation; his main premise of drama was unity of action. In our circumstances, the sermon’s content and delivery must fit the rest of the Mass like Cinderella’s slipper.
 
Preaching suffers when the rites of the rest of the Mass are ignored or poorly observed. I had recent occasion to read again Sacrosanctum Concilium [promulgated 1963], Vatican II’s decree on the Liturgy. It is a shock to see how the typical American celebration of Mass overlooks the directives of the Council and the Roman Missals. Did you know that the official Church teaching on music cautions against “performance music” [with clapping!?] at Mass and states that the cantor’s role “disappears into the strong sound of full congregational singing?” Or, that there are three identified moments at Mass where the congregation is given silent time for personal reflection and prayer? [During the Penitential Rite, after the homily, and after the distribution of communion.] If the Mass is celebrated in its proper form, an engaged congregation will look to the homily with greater hunger—and most likely energize the preacher to pour out his grace.