Had an interesting conversation with my (pentecostal) brother last week. We were talking about our Churches and how they compare and why he left the Catholic Faith. He recently listened to a podcast version of a sermon Fr Michael Gielen gave at Hearts Aflame a few years ago – you can find it on itunes – Ignition Talk 2, parts 1 and 2. It’s a talk on Evangelisation and it is stirring and a great listen.
My brother was saying that if he’d had a priest like Fr Mike when he’d been a teenager – a priest who gave great sermons, talked about his own struggles and relationship with God and a priest who made genuine efforts to connect with youth be may not have left the Church.
We talked about how the priest is not the source and summit of Catholic life, the importance of the Eucharist and how we can’t afford to get too attached to our parish priests as we shouldn’t be showing up on a Sunday to see the priest, we should be showing up to connect with God in the holy mystery that is the Mass. He agreed with me in principle but still said that a priest like Fr Mike could have made all the difference in helping him understand these mysteries.
After thinking it over I have to admit that in many ways I have to agree. Afterall, when I’m at my parent’s house in Hamilton I deliberately travel across to the opposite side of the city to listen to a certain priest’s homilies. This priest really knows his stuff and I feel so FED when I listen to him speak. I took my parents to Mass there this week and my Dad’s comment was, “He leaves you with things to go away and really think about.” He also does things right. To the letter. He doesn’t make concessions – he values the liturgy and makes every effort to make sure it is celebrated correctly.
So, I have to admit, the priest does make a difference. Not enough of a difference to leave the Church, of course. But the right priest can inpsire, teach and lead us to a deeper faith.
Happy New Year all, have a blessed 2013.
Certainly, I think preaching has always been important to people’s faith. St Paul wrote that faith comes through hearing (Romans 10:17). Faith without preaching would be for many like looking at those Magic Eye puzzles and seeing anything there.
sermons seem to be too idiosyncratic to bother with much. with the idiosyncracies of the mass from parish to parish it’s difficult enough to believe that the radically calvinsied NO is a sacrifice rather than an ordinary meal of rememberance anyway. when homilies focus on how christian and christlike the world and pagans are i tune out. speaking of tuning out, there’s a book by Martin Mosebach called the ‘Heresy of Formlessness’. He notes in it how even before Vatican II the swamping of the Mass with vernacular hymns was already making the Mass too particular to the personality of the priest – the priest was already becoming less priestly – less in the person of Christ, and just a master of ceremonies – these hymns were introduced as a sudden panicky reaction to the ‘indoctrination’ hymns in Protestant ‘masses’ of the reformation usually set to secular tunes. This swamping has turned into a veritable drowning in awful songs the melodies of which and the lyrics of which radically interrupt every movement of the Mass and seem more than anything an excuse for the priest to karaoke his way through the service (admittedly they often have a beautiful voice). Given that the NO is bereft, at least in most Churches I’ve been to, of any semblence of ‘fear and trembling’, of awe and sacredness, of the need for consecrated hands; the hymns define the all too protestant and worldly nature of the meal in Catholic services these days – you get the feeling that just like in the Temple of Jerusalem of old, the Holy Trinity have said, ‘let Us depart’, from all too many parishes – perhaps the watershed moment was the smashing of the altars.
Withhope, I attended the (EF) Latin Mass at St Mary of the Angels in Wellington on Christmas Day and the following Sunday. On each occasion it was Low Mass with some Gregorian chant, as several members of the St Mary’s choir attended. Attending those Masses filled me with peace, so much so that I am thinking of moving to a diocese where I can attend the Latin Mass each Sunday. Even with the new translation, which is a great improvement, the NO Mass just doesn’t come close, particularly on Sunday where it is just a people parade with a performing band. I also think that priests are totally fed up with lay people and no wonder. How many people does it take for a NO Mass, with greeters, readers, extraordinary ministers, band … And the priests are swamped with parish council, finance and liturgy committee meetings. All things that priests in the past didn’t have to bother with. As regards sermons, most priests are hamstrung by the fact they have been instructed not to talk about moral issues, so there is nothing like the sermons we used to get. No wonder Martha and Mary’s brother left the Church. The Pentecostal Churches are strong on morals in their sermons, so the young people have something to live up to. What seems to be important in the Catholic Church in NZ these days is that the young people can strum guitars and learn to sing repetitive nursery rhymes.
How important is the priest? Very important. He is there to set the example of how to live a good life, to teach us the way. If the priest isn’t up to it then we won’t be up to it. That’s why it is important to be a roaming Catholic and find a good priest where you can.
Teresina – I agree. a Catholic Priest is deadly important – he marks the sword bridge between heaven and hell – yet sometimes he seems about as clued up on this as typhoid Mary was of the dangers of infection in her charitable haze. the protestantising of Catholicism and the humanistic characteristic of sermons and communions have done more than strip the altars, like cranmer and his king did. seekers hunger for the real, for truth – as much as some clergy find these things archaic or politically outdated – there will always be poor, but while the Bridegroom is present we should be as extravagant as the woman with the alabaster jar and so scandalously mysterious that even devils turn away from the meaning too hard for reason to grasp.
Given the adoration, the pomp offered up to the average celeb, let alone contemporary VIP or monarch – when you consider the sad assemblage of minimalistic adoration (yes it’s oxymoronic) of the new masses and their celebrants – is it any wonder we think Christ is no more special than Gandhi or dalailama or an assissi like party list of ecumenically correct some bodies?
like the bishop said at the midnight mass at St Patrick’s when referring to the Holy Father’s push for authentic tradition – ‘ya use it or ya lose it’; needless to say that such a sermon, along with the myriad abuses of that mass were well on the ‘lost it’ side of that argument of authenticity.
Indeed how important are our priests and how much we should pray for them … this link , I feel says a lot…
http://vultus.stblogs.org/
Shalom