I am convinced that cloning is in fact going on, and has been for many years. For instance, the so-called “cantor” at most suburban Catholic parishes has been cloned. I was on the road last week in the High Plains of Kansas and the cantor for Sunday Mass was the same cantor I’ve seen everywhere – white middle-aged woman with short dark hair wearing a jumper and singing in a female falsetto, off-key. I felt so much at home. I’ve seen this same cantor in Missouri, Maine, California, the Bronx.
But bad as the singing was, the homily was right up there. It was, in its own way, brilliant. Imagine the challenge the homilist faced – how can you deliver a homily on All Saint’s Day, one of the most stirring feast days of the year, a day on which the Gospel reading is the Beatitudes, in one of the most beautiful old churches in the mid-west and still make it uninspiring and listless? That ain’t easy to do. To the homilist’s credit, there was nothing heretical, nothing appalling, nothing disturbing about what he said, there was nothing being said at all. It was pretty much, “The saints are our friends and let’s let it go at that.”
Anyway, I’m devising a plan on how to combat the Dreck that passes itself off as music and homiletics in our liturgies. The first step in this plan is “know your enemy”, and with that in mind, I present a post I wrote on my own blog a few years back, A GUIDE TO BAD HOMILIES. Indeed, as with cloned “cantors”, bad homilies have very few differences between them. Indeed, I’ve noticed over the years twelve distinct types of Bad Homilies. Without further ado, there they are …
1. JESUS WAS NICE – YOU BE NICE TOO
This is the homily we usually hear in our suburban parishes. Love = quiescence / Fighting for what you love = evil. If this theme describes what you’re hearing … it might be a bad homily.
2. WWW.HOMILIES-R-US.COM
Beware of homilies that start with anecdotes about cute crap. “A boy at camp whose mother sent him cookies …” “There was a woman who found she had a terminal illness …” Anything with a Reader’s Digest flavor to it is probably from www.homilies-r-us.com, which is what I call the clearing house for shallow thinking sermons that fit easily into a template. If your priest sounds like he’s beginning his talk with a canned anecdote … it might be a bad homily.
3. DON’T GET IT WRONG, BUT DON’T GET IT RIGHT ENOUGH. This is very common. The priest doesn’t say anything wrong or heretical per se, but he makes a huge implication about the nature of the Faith in what he leaves out of his homily, in what he does not say. If the homilist were a literary critic and speaking on “King Lear”, he’d say, “a daughter should be nice to her father”. Well, true, but that sure leaves a lot out.
If your homilist Doesn’t Get it Wrong, but Doesn’t Get it Right Enough … it might be a bad homily.
4. SHECKY GREEN PRESENTS
If your homilist tells more jokes than Heny Youngman with a fiddle … it might be a bad homily.
5. IT’S ALL ABOUT ME
A quote from a homily I once heard: “My mother suffered. My grandmother suffered. My grandmother made my mother suffer. My father suffered. My father made my grandmother suffer. My grandmother made my father and my mother suffer. Our house was filled with suffering.” Note to homilist: we are not your therapists, and that’s way too much personal information.
The corollary to “It’s All about Me” is “It’s All about the Musicians”. And we all know what that message sounds like.
So, if your priest or deacon sees the Gospel as a Rorschach of his dysfunctional background … it might be a bad homily.
6. I’M SO HOLY I HARDLY BREATHE
This infects all of the liturgy and not just the homily. It’s the mistaken attitude that going … really … slowly … means you’re being … really … pious.
If the homily and the Lord’s Prayer both take the same amount of time, 40 to 45 minutes each … it might be a bad homily.
7. AND NOW A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR
If anyone other than a priest or deacon is invited to talk in place of the homily and solicits contributions … it might be a bad homily. (In fact, technically it’s not a homily at all.)
8. WE’RE JUST FINE, THANK YOU
This homily is used for school assemblies, eulogies of the retiring but still living, and for that dreaded monster, Catholic Schools Week. It consists of praising everything about the person or institution being honored, when in reality things are a mess and everyone knows it.
If Principal Power-Grab is praised to no end, even after teaching your kids pop-Buddhism and no-math … it might be a bad homily.
9. I HAVE SO MUCH LEARNING I’M PRACTICALLY AN ATHEIST. JOIN ME, WON’T YOU?
Any time the priest says, “The alleged author of the Gospel of John” or “The Q Source for this reading” or “scholars know this didn’t really happen, but this was included to make a point” … it might be a bad homily. You’d do better watching a Discovery Channel special.
10. THE POSTURE-PEDIC
When a homilist twists the faith to suit our tastes … it might be a bad homily.
11. LISTEN! I’M LISTLESS!
See the “All Saints” homily described above. If the homily fits none of the other classifications, but still leaves you feeling like crud, sleepy, annoyed, on the verge of despondency, wondering why you came and why you could learn as much about the Christian Faith from watching “Oprah” … it might be a bad homily.
12. DELIBERATELY MISSING THE POINT.
My favorite example of this is the probably-copyrighted Liberal homily on “Who do you say that I am?” Although the Gospel reading makes it astonishingly clear that there is a right and a wrong answer to this question, the homilist will say, “Who do YOU say Jesus is? Who is he to YOU? Look inside yourself and find out who YOU say he is. It’s all about YOU.” The other one is turning the miracles of the loaves into miracles of “sharing”.
If you begin to wonder why heretics are no longer burned at the stake … it might be a bad homily.
Anyway, more next time … including how to begin to combat this stuff.
Lame homilies certainly merit lamenting; a world of lame homilies calls for a certain rebuke.
However, whatever the worth of Mr. O’Brien’s comments, he falls into a similar trap as that of the deformed homilist. The homily is not so mundane a thing as to be all about its hearers. The homily is of liturgical species. The greatest offense of a bad homily, then, is not that it offends or enervates its listeners, even such an astute and pastorally informed one as Mr. O’Brien. The worst thing about a homily is the measure in which it confuses and stifles the Truth, and therefore renders less-than-fitting worship to God. Of course, Mr. O’Brien is ultimately making this very point. Nevertheless, a priest/deacon whose seminary training, or whose personal study and devotion does not rightly attend to the transcendent Revelation of God as handed on by the ecclesia docens and manifested through her Saints… well, good luck on changing his homilies. It’s not about getting you right; it’s about getting God right.
Prayer and penance in your priests’ behalf is a surer bet at changing things, (especially during this Year For Priests).
I agree entirely with the assessment. And I truly feel for those who have to suffer through the near-evisceration of the faith’s splendorous truth and sacramental majesty. (The laity are not alone in this trial!) It’s an undesirable extension of our Lord’s crucifixion, where our own ostensible proclamation of Him is a cause of suffering! However, the Mr. O’Brien’s perspective appears awfully similar to those from the far other side of things, who equally believe it their right — as the self-appointed “voice of the faithful” — to “combat” that which its clergy do poorly and unjustly.
While I imagine this post is able to draw a vast degree of sympathy from its readers, I can hardly imagine any regular reader of this site drawing fresh insight from it.
The critique of vacuous homilies can itself sound equally hackneyed and trite.
One therefore wonders what the actual end of such a post, after all, is: To draw its reader to recognize certain traits of a bad homily, in order that he might guard himself against spiritual deformation… or to give its reader delight through its author’s wit?
The artist-as-cultural-and ecclesial-critic should be careful of what he subordinates to the ends of his craft.
Number 3 is the worst.
At least with something like number 12 people get a chance to just get sick of it.
Number 3 can go on indefinitely without anyone waking up to malformation.
Kevin, I appreciated the chuckle. Laughing at one’s suffering is therapeutic, and much more effective than ranting. And yes, hearing our Lord and the Gospel trivialized is in fact a form of suffering. I believe he knows that those who love him find such treatment of him objectionable.
I confess a fondness for good satire, and I think it’s the job of any artist to pursue in his art the Truth and to reveal it, even if–maybe especially if–the revelation is not flattering. I refer you to the words of John Paul II and Benedict XVI on this subject.
This was wonderful! Thanks, Kevin!
Years ago, I heard a sermon (I personally still can’t quite stomach “homily”) that suggested that Jesus was just like Buddha. This would come under the heading of “We are all one.”
One what? Hard to say, but you can bet that this sermon would also suggest that Jesus and Buddha were both nice guys!