Article: What a priest said when he was asked is it okay to leave and have a cigarette while my priest gives his sermon? Last Sunday he spent most of

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I think I’d take rambling and boring over the one from last Sunday. Apparently he assumes everyone in the pew is 10 years old. Lenten penance, lenten penance, lenten penance.
 
We have a very elderly priest in our parish whose Sunday homilies wander all over the place, and last a good 15 minutes, maybe 20. I mentioned this in confession to our pastor, who gives really good homilies. He suggested I pray a rosary when the elderly priest gets too convoluted or long-winded. I’d have just about enough time to squeeze in 5 decades.
 
Some parishes (especially in Australia where we often “import” priests from overseas) could do with a volunteer typing everything the priest is saying during his homily and putting it up on the projector for the benefit of the people who can’t understand him through the accent
 
I snoozed a bit during the diocesan appeal video yesterday. I’d already watched it the week before, so…
 
“Then pray that he will become a holy borrower,”
Love it!
And his response about hand holding, priceless! He lists some “innovations” I’ve never seen or even heard of…fortunately. Sand in the holy water fonts? 😬
 
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I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that, for the most part at least, people can overlook boring homilies, think-accented priests or even innovations such as sand in the fonts (I’ve seen sackcloth but not sand) if the priest is committed to caring about them. By that I mean he does what I would call the basics, visiting/anointing the sick, greeting people after mass, answering his phone after hours, and generally just showing up - especially when something of significance is happening. Sure, we’d all love it if every priest could deliver stunning seven minute homilies rich in theological content but delivered in a down-to-earth way which everyone can understand, was an dab hand at DIY, could hang with everyone from pre-schoolers to the elderly and could chant the mass in pitch perfect tones! Sadly, we of course live in an imperfect world and priests are human (and thus imperfect creatures).

Delivering a homily each week (never mind each day) is much harder than it looks and not all priests have talents in the area of public speaking. A friend of mine labours over his homilies each week, writing them out labouriously by hand. they’re drier than the desert and his voice isn’t exactly invigorating either but the people of his parish don’t care; they love him because he loved them first.
 
Do you remember men going out for a smoke during the sermons when you were growing up? It was common in my parish.
 
prayerrider said:
“Then pray that he will become a holy borrower,”
Love it!
And his response about hand holding, priceless! He lists some “innovations” I’ve never seen or even heard of…fortunately. Sand in the holy water fonts? 😬
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Lucky you. For several years we had sand in the holy water stoups at the entrance, because, dontcha know, “We are a desert people.”

We thought that would change when we got our new pastor in 2012. It changed only in that we had no sand. For the first few days of Lent 2013 we saw a game of “Water, water, where’s the water?” Father would dump the holy water, the sacristan would bring it back, Father would dump the holy water, well, you get the picture. That went on until he just took the bowls out of the stoups completely. For the next 2 Lenten seasons he made sure the bowls were gone before Ash Wednesday.

Since the Administrator took over, sadly after the death of our Pastor, we have holy water in the stoups all through Lent, as it should be.
 
Phemie said:
Do you remember men going out for a smoke during the sermons when you were growing up? It was common in my parish.
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Same here. But while my dad was a heavy smoker, I don’t ever recall him leaving during Mass to smoke. And interestingly he was an Anglican. My mother was Catholic, and they were married with the appropriate dispensation and the commitment to raise the children as Catholics. It was a commitment my father took so seriously, that when my mother was ill and couldn’t take me to Mass, he would. I never recall him ever going to Anglican services in my childhood though my memory could be foggy (he died when I was 12 and I’m now 60). But he often came to Mass with my mother and I, though not every Sunday. I was sort of an only child, I had a brother who died before I was born, of a childhood cancer which was incurable in the 1950s, but would be very treatable today.
 
OraLabora said:
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Phemie:
Do you remember men going out for a smoke during the sermons when you were growing up? It was common in my parish.
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Same here. But while my dad was a heavy smoker, I don’t ever recall him leaving during Mass to smoke. And interestingly he was an Anglican. My mother was Catholic, and they were married with the appropriate dispensation and the commitment to raise the children as Catholics. It was a commitment my father took so seriously, that when my mother was ill and couldn’t take me to Mass, he would. I never recall him ever going to Anglican services in my childhood though my memory could be foggy (he died when I was 12 and I’m now 60). But he often came to Mass with my mother and I, though not every Sunday. I was sort of an only child, I had a brother who died before I was born, of a childhood cancer which was incurable in the 1950s, but would be very treatable today.
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Dad quit smoking when I was an infant, so he never left during the sermon. Not to mention that it wouldn’t have looked good for the guy who’d been an altar server for almost 30 years to avoid the sermon. 😀
 
Sometimes there are homilists who “talk down” to the congregation, making everything at the level one would use when teaching a 10 year old.

I simply sit there and offer it up as part of my Lenten Penance, my desire for thoughtful, insightful teaching during the homily is part of what I give up for Lent.
 
Phemie said:
Dad quit smoking when I was an infant,
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I wish mine had, it killed him at 58, of a massive stroke. It didn’t help that he was also diabetic. Oddly he was very strict about his diet, and never touched alcohol. I suspect two beers or glasses of wine a day would have done him a lot less harm than two packs of cancer sticks a day…
 
OraLabora said:
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Phemie:
Dad quit smoking when I was an infant,
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I wish mine had, it killed him at 58, of a massive stroke. It didn’t help that he was also diabetic. Oddly he was very strict about his diet, and never touched alcohol. I suspect two beers or glasses of wine a day would have done him a lot less harm than two packs of cancer sticks a day…
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Lung cancer took my mom at the age of 61. She was a heavy smoker. Only our oldest remembers her. The younger ones were only 1 & 3 1/2 when she died. Oldest was 6 and had had a lot of contact with her between the age of 1-4. We were a military family and were posted close to both our families during daughter’s early years.
 
TheLittleLady said:
Sometimes there are homilists who “talk down” to the congregation, making everything at the level one would use when teaching a 10 year old.
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Fair enough.

Let me ask you: if you were speaking to a crowd of mixed backgrounds, catechesis, interest in the topic, demographics, and age, and some of them were at the level of a teen (either in real years, or extent of catechesis, or whatever), at what level would you speak to them? Would you offer a graduate-level exegesis of the subject matter?

Sometimes, as a speaker, it’s pretty difficult speaking to a heterogenous audience. That’s the conundrum priests and deacons face each week in preparing their homilies. (My personal preference is that they mix it up. Sometimes, it’s ‘beneath’ me, and that’s ok. Sometimes, it’s at a comfortable level for me. Sometimes, it’s in the clouds, and it challenges me. And I’m good with that.)
 
Our parish has been blessed with good homilists for decades.

When I do public speaking, for a mixed age group, I know how to speak in a manner that will engage the adults and pique interest in those who are children. Understanding how to speak to a mixed group is a teachable skill.
 
Before our previous pastor retired, he would sometimes say at the end of Mass announcements:

“Please be seated for a few brief announcements. Should only be 15 or 20 more minutes”.
 
TheLittleLady said:
When I do public speaking, for a mixed age group, I know how to speak in a manner that will engage the adults and pique interest in those who are children. Understanding how to speak to a mixed group is a teachable skill.
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Good on you. 😉

That doesn’t mean that all share your opinion on how to do it well.

Nor does it mean that priests have time, given the requirements of their formation program, to learn that skill, let alone time while in the priesthood to study it. 🤷‍♂️
 
As we were taught in public speaking training, when in doubt, speak to the majority of the listeners. In the parish on Sunday morning there are far more adults than children (this holds true for all of the English language Masses).
 
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