The Bully Pulpet
I was watching EWTN Live with Fr. Pachwa the other night and although I have forgotten his guest's name (sorry!), I thought that one of the studio audience posed and interesting question. He asked, and I am paraphrasing here, "With all the talk about stem-cell research, euthanasia, same-sex marriage and abortion, why do we not hear from the pulpets discourses on these great moral questions of the day?" The guest replied very honestly, "That's my question too."Mine too for that matter. For a long time now I have noticed a distinct void emanating from the pulpits of most of the Catholic churches that I have attended over the years. I say "most" because there was one priest a few years ago who was willing to tell it like it was. Not to get into a rant, let me just say that he has been re-assigned as a chaplain to a convent of nuns in another state. Lucky for them, bad for me. But I digress. Suffice to say that the vast majority of homilies that I have heard since I returned to the Church (yes, another re-vert) have been either warmed-over "community" oriented sermons or "can you please tithe a little more?" talks. Occasionally I have even been exposed to thinly disguised Democratic get out the vote sermons. If you haven't had to sit through one of those before, let me tell you that it can be more than a little disturbing to listen to a priest of the Catholic Church try to explain why it is acceptable to vote for a strongly pro-abortion presidential candidate. But again, I digress.
So why don't we as Catholics get the real "meat and potatoes" of Catholic doctrine from our local pulpits? Honestly, I don't know the answer to that one either. Not that I think that there is a single answer for such a thorny question as this. However, I think that there may be answers available and these answers will mirror what the local pastor or bishop thinks is most important.
I'm not listing these in order of importance, just the order they pop into my head, so bear with me.
Fear of Losing Popularity
No doubt a contender for the number one reason since it is a very common human failure in almost everyone. No one likes being disliked and since it is nearly impossible to please everyone in any given parish, the tendency is to side with the majority. That way you, as the pastor, are disliked by the smallest number of people, namely the orthodox bunch.
Alright, maybe I'm getting a little bit snippy about this, but take a good hard look around your own parish next time you go to Mass. Don't you think that most of the people there (and statistics prove this to be true over and over again) don't want to be reminded that artificial birth control is immoral? How many of the families there have more than one or two children? Maybe mom and dad are living a celibate life? Possibly they're just really, really good at Natural Family Planning? Well...maybe.
And what about abortion? If the contraceptives fail, don't they want an excape hatch? More than half of those describing themselves as Catholic agree with abortion to one degree or another. Or at least don't want to get involved with telling someone else what to do with their own (or their children's) bodies. Maybe their own daughter has a boyfriend who is almost, possibly ready to get married. If that all falls apart, especially because an unexpected pregnancy happens (isn't it funny how people just "accidentially" get pregnant?), don't they want their daughter to have the option to save the rest of her life?
So what happens to the priest who teaches the faith "in and out of season", in cases like this? Often calls are made to the Chancery about how rigid Father is being. Maybe Father is doing some things that he shouldn't? You get the idea. The smear campaign starts. Donations start to go down. The bishop's appeal isn't as big a success as it could have been.
Why go through all of that? Just be more popular. Father is just really, really nice.
Which brings us to our second reason:
Alright, maybe I'm getting a little bit snippy about this, but take a good hard look around your own parish next time you go to Mass. Don't you think that most of the people there (and statistics prove this to be true over and over again) don't want to be reminded that artificial birth control is immoral? How many of the families there have more than one or two children? Maybe mom and dad are living a celibate life? Possibly they're just really, really good at Natural Family Planning? Well...maybe.
And what about abortion? If the contraceptives fail, don't they want an excape hatch? More than half of those describing themselves as Catholic agree with abortion to one degree or another. Or at least don't want to get involved with telling someone else what to do with their own (or their children's) bodies. Maybe their own daughter has a boyfriend who is almost, possibly ready to get married. If that all falls apart, especially because an unexpected pregnancy happens (isn't it funny how people just "accidentially" get pregnant?), don't they want their daughter to have the option to save the rest of her life?
So what happens to the priest who teaches the faith "in and out of season", in cases like this? Often calls are made to the Chancery about how rigid Father is being. Maybe Father is doing some things that he shouldn't? You get the idea. The smear campaign starts. Donations start to go down. The bishop's appeal isn't as big a success as it could have been.
Why go through all of that? Just be more popular. Father is just really, really nice.
Which brings us to our second reason:
Fear of the Small Collection Plate
This ties in very nicely with the first reason. After all, how can an unpopular priest expect to increase the collection plate? Let's be honest here. Parishes and Dioceese run on the collection plate unless you live in an undeveloped part of the world where sweat equity is the major coinage. No cash, no heating and cooling. No money for Father's pet projects and refurbishing/redecorating plans. How is the new parish hall going to be built? Somebody's got to be hired to move that organ from the choir loft so that more people can be included (read: seen and noticed) in the Liturgical Celebration (ie: the Mass).
Everyone knows that happy parishoners are generous parishoners...or at least so I've been told. And that may may be right. I'm sure that those parishoners with no children have more money to spare for the collection plate than those with three or four. So how do you, if you are a pastor, keep your parishoners happy? First of all, be entertaining (an entirely different subject that I might get around to exploring), and above all else, don't challenge their morals, which is guaranteed to make them unhappy pretty darn quick. Why, they might even leave the parish all together and attend a church that is a little less challenging.
Everyone knows that happy parishoners are generous parishoners...or at least so I've been told. And that may may be right. I'm sure that those parishoners with no children have more money to spare for the collection plate than those with three or four. So how do you, if you are a pastor, keep your parishoners happy? First of all, be entertaining (an entirely different subject that I might get around to exploring), and above all else, don't challenge their morals, which is guaranteed to make them unhappy pretty darn quick. Why, they might even leave the parish all together and attend a church that is a little less challenging.
The Socialist Manefesto
I know many people are going to say that I am being more than a little harsh on this one, but honestly I think that especially among the older generation of priests, they are so extremely liberal, not only in their theological views but also their social views as to border on being socialists. I suppose one could be very liberal on social concerns such as government spending, the military and voting and still be faithful to the core beliefs of the Catholic Church but I can't think of one example where this was the case. There was a movement among priests during the 70's mostly in Latin and North America called Liberation Theology. Without getting into another deep discussion, suffice to say that this movement incorporated many of the beliefs of the Communist system about workers and social rights. I think that it is fair to say that priests who were caught up in this particular heresy were more concerned about the here rather than the hearafter. Just how far these priests would have been willing to go about sermonizing on abortion, euthanasia, stem-cell research or same-sex marriages, since these were non-issues in the 1970's, I can't say. I will say, however, that I haven't seen an ultra-liberal priest or anyone else for that matter who was overly concerned about these kind of moral choices. They are, so their thinking goes, choices after all and are indicative of how the Catholic Church has gotten out of step with the modern world. I suppose that in the perfect liberal world, there would be a popular church vote and as that referendum went, so would the church.
You know, when I started this piece, I thought that I would probably come up with five or six good reasons but they really boiled down to only three. The priests who will rarely if ever preach on the demanding moral issues of the day are: Father Popular (aka Father MC), Father Money and Father Liberal. If you have one of these at your parish, then I feel your pain (really). If on the other hand you are blessed enough to have a priest who loves the Magisterium and loves you enough to tell you when you are in peril of eternal hell-fire, then you had better: A) Give thanks to God who has blessed you and your family so much and then: B) Tell Father what a good job he's doing and that you'll stand by him when everyone else is against him.
You know, when I started this piece, I thought that I would probably come up with five or six good reasons but they really boiled down to only three. The priests who will rarely if ever preach on the demanding moral issues of the day are: Father Popular (aka Father MC), Father Money and Father Liberal. If you have one of these at your parish, then I feel your pain (really). If on the other hand you are blessed enough to have a priest who loves the Magisterium and loves you enough to tell you when you are in peril of eternal hell-fire, then you had better: A) Give thanks to God who has blessed you and your family so much and then: B) Tell Father what a good job he's doing and that you'll stand by him when everyone else is against him.
Labels: Catholic, Catholicism
posted by Norm Johnson @ 10:54 AM
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