Can we have an explainer, or maybe a pod, on the differences between the homily and other types of preaching? I know there was a previous pod on which JD suggested an office of installed lay preacher, but it still left me confused on the difference. Is it simply a question of who and where (clergy, in a Mass) or is there a content element? Coming from a Protestant background, I frequently refer to what we hear at Mass as a "sermon" (just the vocabulary term I'm comfortable with), and on more than one occasion have been officiously corrected "actually, it's a homily, not a sermon." The officious corrector has never been able to explain for me the difference. At one point someone told me, "Well, the homily has to involve the proclamation of the kerygma." OK... I can count on one hand the number of homilies I've heard that do, in fact, explicitly proclaim the kerygma. Beyond that, note this quote from above: “This is not an exclusion of the laity,” Cardinal Roche wrote, “nor is it, of course, a denial of the right and duty of every baptized person, male or female, to proclaim the Gospel, but rather a confirmation of the specificity of this form of proclamation, which is the homily.” So every baptized person has the right and duty to proclaim the Gospel, but the homily is a specific form of that proclamation. **What is the specific form then?** Again, is it simply a question of who and where (clergy, in a Mass) or is there a content element? Is proclamation of the Gospel different from the proclamation of the kerygma, and if so, in what specific ways? (I'm totally OK with the answer being that it's simply about who and where, BTW. This is just a question that has bugged me for years and I can't seem to get a straight answer.)
Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) was an enormously popular preacher in her time, particularly about virtues, and her audience included at least once an approving Pope Eugenius and likewise approving St. Bernard of Clairvaux. She never, however, preached at Mass.
To me the attitude expressed by the Central Committee of German Catholics:
"In just a few years, no one will be able to seriously oppose lay sermons and baptisms by lay people if the Church still wants to have meaning for the local people."
My issue is that, these things are already happening, including the blessing of same sex couples, and that these warnings are not doing anything to stop it. There needs to be some serious acts of governance to try and reign in the church in Germany.
"“lay persons can be permitted to preach in a church or oratory, if necessity requires it in certain circumstances or it seems advantageous in particular cases,” but the homily “is reserved to a priest or deacon.”
I grew up in a super liberal area of the Catholic Church and we had "lay homilists": a sister and another woman, a lay woman who was a Church employee. This was back in the 1980's, when it was very hard for lay people to get any sort of accurate information on what the church actually taught (they told us that Vatican II changed everything), so they could get away with doing stuff like that.
Of course I don't remember much about those "homilies" except the lay woman giving us very detailed information about her ecclesiastical and educational career. Needless to say there wasn't any explosive growth in the Church because of such things, quite the opposite statistically. Of course growing the Church doesn't seem to be the point of such exercises, does it?
I have NEVER understood the appeal of lay homilists. What gives YOU the right to a captive audience who are obligated to be there on a Sunday? No one is stopping you standing on a street corner and going for it. No one is stopping you inviting people into your home or parish hall for a lecture series… but those all seem like hard work and no one will pay attention to you anyway. Better to shove Father out of the way in the name of progress and get that polite ‘affirmation’ from Mass goers who felt obligated to pretend to pay attention.
And ignore it. My toddlers play a similar game where they keep asking for a fruit bar in the hopes I’ll say ‘yes’ if they ask enough times. They’re always wrong and eventually mama gets mad and sends them to time out.
"[Cardinal Roche] suggested that 'misunderstandings about the figure and identity of the priest' could 'arise in the consciousness of the Christian community' if lay people preached at Mass."
Oh boy... I mean, the gratuitous proliferation of lay Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion (to the point where you can't have a sparsely-attended daily Mass without requiring 3 lay EMHCs) has arguably done the same thing, but we're not ready for that conversation.
In the end, I suppose that as regards the journey of "active participation of the laity," lay preaching was simply... A Bridge Too Far.
I remember hearing a joke about how British police, being unarmed, have to yell "Stop or I'll...say 'stop' again!" That's kind of what this reminds me of.
The problem with Cardinal Roche saying this stuff is that we all know he can be much more forceful. He is the face of the crackdown on the Latin Mass. Right down to the place where you can't announce things in the bulletin. So if I were the Germans why would I listen? This is not how he acts when he is serious.
He doesn't seem to be acting any differently between the 2 groups. The Germans are not willing to obey the Church and the bishops in the rest of the Catholic world are.
The people who want the Latin Mass want something that was considered entirely right and proper for hundreds if not thousands of years. Vatican II said that Latin should retain pride of place in the life of the church. The two previous popes made provision for them. Now the bishops who made room for TLMers have been told to cut them off without regard for kindness or inclusiveness. Archbishop Roche made it clear that there would be no exceptions to the rules and some bishops seem to have been disciplined for wanting to do something different. That's what it looked like in Puerto Rico anyway. The "obedience" being asked for is pretty arbitrary.
In contrast some people in Germany want things that have never been licit in the past and the bishops have allowed, not to say encouraged, these things to take hold. They have been defying the Vatican and continuing down this path for several years at least. They still hold high places in the Curia. Did Archbishop Roche tell the Germans to stop those blessings, to quit announcing publicly that you can obtain them, that a bishop will be forced out if he doesn't comply, that the clergy running that German synod will be persona non grata in Rome? I don't think so.
Anyway there are bishops besides the Germans who are defying the Church on various matters and the Pillar has run stories about them. Just saying.
I think you missed my point that the bishops who are stopping the TLM tend to be bishops obedient to the Pope whereas the German bishops don't care in the least what anybody else, the Pope or the head of a dicastery or even God, says because they are bound to do things their own way.
Can we have an explainer, or maybe a pod, on the differences between the homily and other types of preaching? I know there was a previous pod on which JD suggested an office of installed lay preacher, but it still left me confused on the difference. Is it simply a question of who and where (clergy, in a Mass) or is there a content element? Coming from a Protestant background, I frequently refer to what we hear at Mass as a "sermon" (just the vocabulary term I'm comfortable with), and on more than one occasion have been officiously corrected "actually, it's a homily, not a sermon." The officious corrector has never been able to explain for me the difference. At one point someone told me, "Well, the homily has to involve the proclamation of the kerygma." OK... I can count on one hand the number of homilies I've heard that do, in fact, explicitly proclaim the kerygma. Beyond that, note this quote from above: “This is not an exclusion of the laity,” Cardinal Roche wrote, “nor is it, of course, a denial of the right and duty of every baptized person, male or female, to proclaim the Gospel, but rather a confirmation of the specificity of this form of proclamation, which is the homily.” So every baptized person has the right and duty to proclaim the Gospel, but the homily is a specific form of that proclamation. **What is the specific form then?** Again, is it simply a question of who and where (clergy, in a Mass) or is there a content element? Is proclamation of the Gospel different from the proclamation of the kerygma, and if so, in what specific ways? (I'm totally OK with the answer being that it's simply about who and where, BTW. This is just a question that has bugged me for years and I can't seem to get a straight answer.)
It's the sermon right after the Gospel. You will note that lay people are allowed to talk after Communion, for instance at funeral Masses.
So a question of who and when, rather than of content?
good idea. there's a bit to it that would be fun to unpack.
Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) was an enormously popular preacher in her time, particularly about virtues, and her audience included at least once an approving Pope Eugenius and likewise approving St. Bernard of Clairvaux. She never, however, preached at Mass.
To me the attitude expressed by the Central Committee of German Catholics:
"In just a few years, no one will be able to seriously oppose lay sermons and baptisms by lay people if the Church still wants to have meaning for the local people."
may explain why:
"We already have a glaring shortage of priests."
My issue is that, these things are already happening, including the blessing of same sex couples, and that these warnings are not doing anything to stop it. There needs to be some serious acts of governance to try and reign in the church in Germany.
Unfortunately, if history is any example, they will eventually have to be excommunicated. All the talking is just slowing down the inevitable.
"“lay persons can be permitted to preach in a church or oratory, if necessity requires it in certain circumstances or it seems advantageous in particular cases,” but the homily “is reserved to a priest or deacon.”
I grew up in a super liberal area of the Catholic Church and we had "lay homilists": a sister and another woman, a lay woman who was a Church employee. This was back in the 1980's, when it was very hard for lay people to get any sort of accurate information on what the church actually taught (they told us that Vatican II changed everything), so they could get away with doing stuff like that.
Of course I don't remember much about those "homilies" except the lay woman giving us very detailed information about her ecclesiastical and educational career. Needless to say there wasn't any explosive growth in the Church because of such things, quite the opposite statistically. Of course growing the Church doesn't seem to be the point of such exercises, does it?
I have NEVER understood the appeal of lay homilists. What gives YOU the right to a captive audience who are obligated to be there on a Sunday? No one is stopping you standing on a street corner and going for it. No one is stopping you inviting people into your home or parish hall for a lecture series… but those all seem like hard work and no one will pay attention to you anyway. Better to shove Father out of the way in the name of progress and get that polite ‘affirmation’ from Mass goers who felt obligated to pretend to pay attention.
I’m glad Germany is welcoming talks with Rome so they can continue to hear Rome say “no.”
And ignore it. My toddlers play a similar game where they keep asking for a fruit bar in the hopes I’ll say ‘yes’ if they ask enough times. They’re always wrong and eventually mama gets mad and sends them to time out.
"[Cardinal Roche] suggested that 'misunderstandings about the figure and identity of the priest' could 'arise in the consciousness of the Christian community' if lay people preached at Mass."
Oh boy... I mean, the gratuitous proliferation of lay Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion (to the point where you can't have a sparsely-attended daily Mass without requiring 3 lay EMHCs) has arguably done the same thing, but we're not ready for that conversation.
In the end, I suppose that as regards the journey of "active participation of the laity," lay preaching was simply... A Bridge Too Far.
I remember hearing a joke about how British police, being unarmed, have to yell "Stop or I'll...say 'stop' again!" That's kind of what this reminds me of.
The problem with Cardinal Roche saying this stuff is that we all know he can be much more forceful. He is the face of the crackdown on the Latin Mass. Right down to the place where you can't announce things in the bulletin. So if I were the Germans why would I listen? This is not how he acts when he is serious.
He doesn't seem to be acting any differently between the 2 groups. The Germans are not willing to obey the Church and the bishops in the rest of the Catholic world are.
The people who want the Latin Mass want something that was considered entirely right and proper for hundreds if not thousands of years. Vatican II said that Latin should retain pride of place in the life of the church. The two previous popes made provision for them. Now the bishops who made room for TLMers have been told to cut them off without regard for kindness or inclusiveness. Archbishop Roche made it clear that there would be no exceptions to the rules and some bishops seem to have been disciplined for wanting to do something different. That's what it looked like in Puerto Rico anyway. The "obedience" being asked for is pretty arbitrary.
In contrast some people in Germany want things that have never been licit in the past and the bishops have allowed, not to say encouraged, these things to take hold. They have been defying the Vatican and continuing down this path for several years at least. They still hold high places in the Curia. Did Archbishop Roche tell the Germans to stop those blessings, to quit announcing publicly that you can obtain them, that a bishop will be forced out if he doesn't comply, that the clergy running that German synod will be persona non grata in Rome? I don't think so.
Anyway there are bishops besides the Germans who are defying the Church on various matters and the Pillar has run stories about them. Just saying.
I think you missed my point that the bishops who are stopping the TLM tend to be bishops obedient to the Pope whereas the German bishops don't care in the least what anybody else, the Pope or the head of a dicastery or even God, says because they are bound to do things their own way.
Germany needs to repent and turn from their heresies and schismatic dogmas. Where's the Inquisition when you need it?
Urgh. If you think Priests are a mixed bag when it comes to homilies, just you wait till you let all the Jans from the Parish council at it!