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Among the many testimonies received, here are a few that stand out.
1. "Other-worldliness?" It is my experience in recent weeks that some people have been exposed to very practical matters from the pulpit. Some bishops and perhaps some priests individually have used homily time to instruct the faithful about the evils of voting in a particular way. Some have gone so far as to say that it is a mortal sin to vote for candidates that don't support church positions on certain issues. Of course such sermons are not consistent with the guidelines that bishops have set forth for "faithful citizenship." Not only that, but they put Catholic voters who see the priest's opinions as "gospel" in the difficult position of having to choose between various church positions equally important or equally problematic Are social justice issues, hearing the "cry of the poor," and immigration questions to be in competition with sexual and abortion issues? And how can those dichotomies be resolved? Few tackled this question. As a person in the pew most of the time, without the opportunity to actually give homilies, it is difficult to sit through talks that pretty much ignore the scriptures—as one local bishop did at a Mass for my high school class—in favor of a didactic session on the new liturgical responses: "Repeat after me: 'And with your spirit.'" One priest in a southern cathedral parish, where my husband and I happened to be vacationing, noted that he had just come back from—the irony!—a liturgical workshop in Rome and hadn't had time to prepare his homily. Instead he regaled us with a rather detailed travelogue of his Roman holiday. We cannot get in touch with the presence of Christ in the scriptures without a proper mediation.
Catholicism is not an other-worldly religion. It is an enfleshed religion in more than one way. First, how else could the "community of the Beloved Disciple" (Raymond Brown's words), a community who had never met the earthly Jesus, proclaim that they were passing on to the next generation "what they had seen and heard and touched?" They passed on with passion the experiences they had of the risen Christ in the community and in the scriptures. Otherwise the notion that God came to us enfleshed would make no sense. Second, the Eucharist calls us to listen to the words of scripture and the central challenge of the Mass, "Do this in memory of me," to become bread broken and blood poured out for others (I borrow here from Gene Laverdiere). The Eucharist is not a magic act, a spectator sport to awe the congregation. It is precisely the occasion and challenge to be Christ on the earth.
2. Theological Reflections The mission of liturgical preaching is to deepen the faith of the baptized assembly gathered to hear the proclamation of the Word of God. The USCCB's seminal document on preaching, "Fulfilled in Your Hearing" rightly positions Luke 4:16-21 as the paradigmatic example of how the contemporary homily ought to function for the baptized. Drawing from scriptural witnesses as well as contemporary communication theory, the 1982 document attends to the hearer as the primary trajectory of the homily. As Paul famously says, "Faith comes through hearing." To this end, the preacher and the text (the other two key elements of the preaching moment), must work in concert to structure the homily around the listener. Preachers must exegete the assembly as well as the biblical text so that all the baptized have a role in breaking open the word of God together. In this regard, the prayerful and pastoral preacher functions as what FIYH calls "the mediator of meaning."
As preaching becomes more and more open to a diverse congregation, preachers and listeners trust in the work of the Spirit to labor in the midst of the Christian assembly so that God's word will be fulfilled in their hearing.
3. Comments on: "Theological Reflections" Preaching is the gifted expression of God's saving power inside human language. Based on the prophetic, biblical witness of the encounter with the Holy—and the definitive expression of Jesus Christ as the Word made flesh—Christian preachers make known the works of the Lord for all those who have ears to hear.
This statement appear to be the conclusion of an implicit deduction. Practical theology must go further and ask: what does this look like?
As the Pentecost event makes clear, the Spirit of the Lord has animated the whole Church to proclaim the Good News that Jesus has been raised from the dead.
This statement makes the previous question more specific: what justufies a preacher to say that any particular sermon is the expression of the Spirit's animation of the whole church? Futher, the statement is too broad: there is no way that you can hold that and at the same time account for the poor queality of preaching that occurs in so many parishes. The mission of liturgical preaching is to deepen the faith of the baptized assembly gathered to hear the proclamation of the Word of God. The USCCB's seminal document on preaching, "Fulfilled in Your Hearing" rightly positions Luke 4:16-21 as the paradigmatic example of how the contemporary homily ought to function for the baptized.
The critical word here is "ought." The "how" and the "is" are silent To this end, the preacher and the text (the other two key elements of the preaching moment), must work in concert to structure the homily around the listener. Preachers must exegete the assembly as well as the biblical text so that all the baptized have a role in breaking open the word of God together. In this regard, the prayerful and pastoral preacher functions as what FIYH calls "the mediator of meaning."
One might explore how the Spirit's gift to the whole church can be discened and animated by other means than that of a preacher sitting in the rectory preparing his sermon in isolation. The issue of mediation raises profound epistemological questions which are too easily overlooked or ignored. One would have to begin by asking whose meaning? Whose experience of God-in-the-World is being mediated in a homily? As preaching becomes more and more open to a diverse congregation, preachers and listeners trust in the work of the Spirit to labor in the midst of the Christian assembly so that God's word will be fulfilled in their hearing.
This statement may indeed express theological truisms, but without the means of verifying their claim. In my view these kind of descriptions of preaching tend to obscure what is happening and frustrate realistic questioning.
4. There is no lay preaching I am a Catholic 'revert' after 30 years in Lutheranism (LCA/ELCA), 22 of which were spent in the parish pastorate. Since my return to the Catholic Church by profession of faith and annulment of marriage over 3 years ago, I have been invited to team-teach in RCIA and to lecture in the Diocesan Institute but never to preach in any Catholic setting whatever. I have followed the discussion here with great interest and astonishment.
For almost all of those 22 years of ordained ministry, including 4 years of full-time college teaching during which I volunteered to be deployed as a 'stated supply pastor' in the same two parishes each Sunday and on other major festivals, my working life was structured in large part around the discipline of lectio divina, exegesis, preparation of a homily MS or outline and liturgical delivery of the sermon within the congregation. It is a work that I would gladly take up again on a completely non-stipendiary basis, when and where needed throughout the diocese, but here the preaching office is seen as an extension of the ordinary magisterium and, as such, as the sole prerogative of the episcopate, presbyterate and diaconate. Other former Lutheran pastoral colleagues in this diocese, who are either converts or reverts like me, report an identical experience. 5. Lay preaching in the Miami diocese But there is always a brighter side to this stark entrenchment, namely that lay people are still getting educated in an ecumenical context. The divide is growing and many educated lay people are voting with their feet. For example, Fr. Alberto Cutie was one of the best preachers in the Archdiocese of Miami. His church in Miami Beach was packed with a very diverse crowd of Catholics; he preached about the ordinary lives in the community in reference to the Gospel. Many traveled 30 minutes or more to attend St. Patrick's church on any given Sunday. What the faithful did not know is that he had been asking for a dispensation for years but the bishop would not let him go. After the scandal broke out that he had been seen in compromising positions with a woman at the beach, he left the Roman Catholic Church and became an Episcopalian priest, got married, and was given a parish that was serving 14 to 20 families when he arrived, and is now bursting at the seams (standing room only) every Sunday. Why? Because Alberto Cutie delivers a kind of preaching that inspires, relates, challenges, instructs and ultimately animates a parish to be Good News.
There are many Catholics in Florida who believe that Vatican II theology calls for a continual reading of the signs of the times, a looking forward with expectant and courageous hope (not passive waiting). I must admit that we have been scattered because very few parishes nurture a spirituality of transformation. But for the most part we meet at conferences, we see each other at lectures, we blog and we trust that the spirit will keep us faithfully connected despite all the obstacles that impede fidelity to the one commandment—Love God above all else, and your neighbor as yourself.
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