Asking all priests: Why not talk about the hard issues at Mass?

[Mary888]

I think they have to link the preaching to the homily which must stem from the Gospel of the day. Probably many priests have problems doing this like, it’s not easy.
The internet is full of information. People compare all priests with the Church Fathers and want perfect homilies. There is a reason why Church Fathers are Church Fathers.
The homily based on the Gospel may also work in mysterious ways because the Gospel is inspired by the Holy Spirit. The point is not to stir people up and change the world.by fighting a new war, but to change people from.within in the unseen way of the Unseen, the Creator. A good homily just take you close up to Christ that you womder yourself about why you do this and that.
Preaching outta blue what the priest is worried about and what was in the news is just a charismatic presentation anyone can do in and out of church. It doesn’t take a priest to do.so.

 

[adgloriam]

Okay, so you don’t care about the poor if you don’t want someone to possibly overdose on your own dime by giving money to anybody on the street who asks for it? Even if you already donate trustworthy charities? Even if you WORK for a charity? You are just a horrible Christian and a human being if you won’t give money to anybody to ask for it? Jesus talked about leaving behind father and mother to follow him on today’s Gospel. I didn’t hear anything about leaving behind your brain.

I don’t exactly know what you are saying here, or why (didn’t follow the exchange)…

But I think it’s brutal in phrasing and approach.

 

[phil19034]

You don’t have to search far in CAF to realize many people here are totally against discussing any of these issues with their children. They are afraid of the ideas it may expose them to, or it may scandalize them. Since attending Mass as a family is encouraged, it is no mystery to me why preists aren’t discussing these issues from the pulpit.

I think you might be onto something here. I’ve heard priests talk about getting nasty letters from people complaining that a homily wasn’t G rated enough.

 

[HeDa]

I have taught primary school aged children for many years and by the time children are 8 all know how babies are conceived.

Babochka: In order to be able to ask a question you know that there is an answer to it. Your young child was smart and for a 5-6-year-old that is the normal reaction. I had an 8-year-old boy tell the whole class what his parents were doing in the bedroom. He was peeking through the keyhole and was mighty proud to be able to tell the other children in a loud voice about the “yucky thing” his parents were doing. It was during lunch and that kid never stops talking when he starts. One of the teachers said “Well Charlie, this is what moms and dads do and you might have a sibling in 9 months time.” The majority of the children were screaming to Charlie to close his mouth which is also a normal reaction of 8-year-olds.

With children´s bodies developing much earlier today than 150 years ago it is important for parents to talk about the human body and how boys/girls bodies develop into a man and a woman´s body. This as early as 9-10 as some girls have their first period at that age. The brain on the other hand doesn’t develop earlier which we can see from irresponsible actions bordering to plain stupidity.

 

[edwest211]

Really? That’s not my reading of what they’re doing. I work in the book business and Amazon is just realigning a few things, as others are. No, it’s the same old game: keep people frightened. That way, they might do what others are telling them to do. A bit of research tends to reveal that 90% of the mainstream media is not providing accurate information and presenting what they do have in such a way as to frighten people. Reliable and factual information can be found.

 

[on_the_hill]

Our priest talked about Internet porn (he used euphemisms) in a homily and my teenage daughter felt it was totally inappropriate for church. Her perspective is that it’s wrong, disgusting, and she doesn’t want to hear about it.

 

[babochka]

I have taught primary school aged children for many years and by the time children are 8 all know how babies are conceived.

Babochka: In order to be able to ask a question you know that there is an answer to it. Your young child was smart and for a 5-6-year-old that is the normal reaction. I had an 8-year-old boy tell the whole class what his parents were doing in the bedroom. He was peeking through the keyhole and was mighty proud to be able to tell the other children in a loud voice about the “yucky thing” his parents were doing. It was during lunch and that kid never stops talking when he starts. One of the teachers said “Well Charlie, this is what moms and dads do and you might have a sibling in 9 months time.” The majority of the children were screaming to Charlie to close his mouth which is also a normal reaction of 8-year-olds.

With children´s bodies developing much earlier today than 150 years ago it is important for parents to talk about the human body and how boys/girls bodies develop into a man and a woman´s body. This as early as 9-10 as some girls have their first period at that age. The brain on the other hand doesn’t develop earlier which we can see from irresponsible actions bordering to plain stupidity.

There is a big difference between “before Kindergarten” and 8 years old. When my son was barely six, he was not quite ready to process that information. I’m not saying that there was anything wrong and giving him that information, his mind just didn’t make sense of it at that time.

I’ve always been really open with all of my kids about issues of human development with my kids. Some of them have appreciated it, others let me know that it’s too much information. The particular child that the story was about is now 17 and has told me how much he likes the fact that I’ve never had a sit down, “we’re going to talk about the birds and the bees” sort of talk with him. It has all just been very natural. He was home schooled until High School and we have had plenty of time with him so that these subjects could come up naturally.

 

[VeryBlessed]

As others have said, I have heard that priests are very strongly encouraged to make the homily about the Scriptures, and the gospels especially are pretty silent on some of these controversial topics of today. And homilies are short, and not the focus of the event. There’s no intentional cover-up or ignoring of the topics, there’s just no time, and it’s not an appropriate setting.

I do wish the priests would offer a once a week or once a month treatment of some of these issues, in a setting apart from mass. But they are so busy…!

My church has teaching CDs on a rack in the lobby, and many of these address some of these controversial topics, and I found them to be excellent.

 

[TheLittleLady]

Now that you say that, I did see where Amazon is opening brick and mortar stores!!

 

[VanitasVanitatum]

On this very thread, someone is talking about “panhandlers”.

So one person. 10>1.
And the person in particular doesn’t really fit your description.

 

[Dovekin]

Good intentions does not necessarily make a good philosophy (which is really an objective languages arts logical discipline) but easily emotionally distorted with subjective ‘straw man,’ & other ways arguments; ideologies, and agendas.

Agree totally. I do not like subjective straw man arguments, ideologies, and agendas. That was why I pointed out a simple fact about Fulton Sheen. It should be recognized and incorporated with quotes from him imo. Instead of wild speculation about him prophesying today’s troubles, an awareness of who and what he was criticizing is important.

I have no idea why you addressed this note to me, since it does not have much dispassionate analysis in it, which is what I prefer.

 

[Aquinas11]

Vigano answered this in recent Wapo interview (paraphrasing) “this crisis extends throughout the Church hierarchy. Some of hierarchy benefit from the corruption and others fear its wrath, yet these are the only groups with any power to solve the problem, thus leaving Church in a state in institutional paralysis…”

Many priests are in latter category of “…fearing its wrath” thus afraid to speak out against those issues involving the crisis…

 

[IsaiahSpirit]

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.) Dovekin

I have no idea why you addressed this note to me, since it does not have much dispassionate analysis in it, which is what I prefer.

__
Yes, your are right, I just gave you some of the dispassionate conclusions that do reflect some of the passionate realities of our time; that has an urgency of ‘now.’
I’m very sorry for that, and besides I must have made a mistake in clicking the wrong ‘reply’ because I needed to know from you from your other response.

Thanks. i just find juxtapositions like this jarring. If you do not see the problem, you are lucky. Thanks for explaining.

---

Your comment confuses me. What do you mean by ‘juxtapositions’ that I don’t see the problem?
The infiltration which Fulton Sheen taught of, even those of good will unknowingly participating hurts the reputation of The Church detracting from the Remnant Authentically Participating in Christ Church;
the truth of this does not hurt the reputation of The Church, it exposes the darkness without railing against it or fretting about it. As you know, Part of Evangelization is to bring clarity to historical times.
I’m sorry, right now I have limited time; for some reason, I thought you must have been familiar with the testimony given by Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, once on ‘Life is Worth Living’ and other places; and the book, ‘School of Darkness,’ by Bella Dodd, who was received into the Church by Fulton Sheen. If you are interested the information in specifics is readily available online with direct quotes.
Peace.

 

[JoeShlabotnik]

Amazon is branching out. Next up, they want to put retail stores like Walgreens and others out of business by selling meds from pharmacy companies directing to customers. This is their plan for clothing, etc.
It is not fright story. It is reality and only a matter of time before they do it. Millions of people will lose their jobs.

 

[JoeShlabotnik]

Amazon is slowly going to branch out into selling everything they way they sell books now.
Retail sales people had better start thinking about other kids of work.
Over the next 10 years, millions of people will lose their jobs.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Is anybody posting going to actually talk to a priest?

I’m not, because 99 percent of the time I don’t have any issue with the homilies. I think they’re fine. I don’t need to have a priest up there blasting away about sex or whatever, especially when most of the Masses I attend daily are full of people over age 50 for whom sexual morality is likely not a big issue anymore. What I like is to get some insight on the readings I just heard, and the priests do a lot better with that nowadays than they did back in the 80s.

The homilies I have issues with are usually the ones given by certain deacons, who seem to have less experience preaching, tend to speak for much too long or try to cover too much ground, and have a propensity to inject the personal pet issues, such as terminal illness or immigration, into their preaching. It’s not really worth going and complaining about these when it’s just one deacon at a parish here and one deacon at a parish there, and I get the sense he is working very hard and trying to learn to give a good homily but maybe just isn’t quite “there” yet. I offer it up and if necessary I just covertly read some Scripture out of the missal while he’s talking.

Then again I’m also not one of these people who goes around thinking the Church is going to hades in a handbasket because the priests didn’t rail on about gays or abortion from the altar for 20 minutes on Sunday. Especially now that the Internet is full of all kinds of laypeople and a few clergy doing that all over blogs, Catholic websites, and Youtube.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

There is a big difference between “before Kindergarten” and 8 years old. When my son was barely six, he was not quite ready to process that information. I’m not saying that there was anything wrong and giving him that information, his mind just didn’t make sense of it at that time.

Thank you. I went to kindergarten at age 5, so my mom would have had to have been teaching me the birds and the bees at age 4. At that age I was not even aware of the physical differences between the genders (I didn’t have any brothers and my dad didn’t walk around without shorts on), nor did I care, nor did I want to hear about or see how babies were conceived or born, even baby animals. I suppose if I’d grown up on a farm this would have all been quite a natural part of the landscape, but I didn’t and I just wasn’t interested in that stuff.

When I was about 7 or 8 was the first time I remember taking any interest in how babies were born or anything remotely sexual, and starting to have the discussions with my friends that would lead to conversations with parents. Even then I was more interested in how the baby got out of the mom’s tummy rather than how it got in there.

Kids are all different, maybe there are some who are precocious and ask questions earlier, but I think a lot of kids are just not ready for sex ed at age 4, 5, or even 6.

 

[Joe_5859]

As others have said, I have heard that priests are very strongly encouraged to make the homily about the Scriptures, and the gospels especially are pretty silent on some of these controversial topics of today. And homilies are short, and not the focus of the event. There’s no intentional cover-up or ignoring of the topics, there’s just no time, and it’s not an appropriate setting.

Exactly.

I actually have heard priests talk about hot button issues during their homily before. I don’t necessarily feel like my life is that much richer because of that.

What I find interesting about this topic whenever it comes up is how much many of us as lay people want to lay everything on the shoulders of priests. It’s as though we think, if people are ignorant of Catholic teaching on contraception, it’s because Father doesn’t talk about it for 5 minutes twice a year during Mass. And if only Father were willing to do that, millions of people would be convinced and converted to the truth of Catholic teaching.

Honestly, we all need to take some responsibility ourselves. We all are called to evangelize by virtue of our Baptism. The same Holy Spirit dwells in us. What are we doing to help catechize others with regards to these hot button issues? That’s a better question for us to reflect on rather than pointing our fingers at the priests as though it’s all up to them. It’s not.

 

[vsedriver]

our parish priest has given sermons on abortion and chastity usually a few times a year. He doesn’t do it with hell fire and brimstone. But the message is clearly there.

We also have daily adoration. And no, this is not a FSSP parish.

 

[IsaiahSpirit]

Actually, when creative compassionate assertiveness was called for when the infiltration of Western culture started happening; where one of their techniques was to gradually justify morality opposed to the Judaeo Christian Ethic; the lukewarmness to teach virtue helped empty the pews.
Sub-consciously or consciously they were taught regarding a lot of ‘social work’ and protest the establishment type of thing (good for equal opportunity employment & ending segregation);
so many didn’t see the difference of being relatively good person doing charitable works being outside the Church from being inside the Church. The deliberate gradual increased propaganda to paint religion as blind faith, old fashioned, oppressive to individual freedom and other things contributed.
~
All of these things, in a gradual propaganda war of attrition & more; over the decades were deliberately propagandized in colleges and every institution, including The Catholic Church. As far back to Pius X, who used the term ‘Modernism’ to those trying to explain away the Miracles of Jesus with ‘naturalistic’ explanations was already being done secretly by some clergy and others in The Church. Before that Leo XIII, knew the secular humanists were infiltrating with ‘social justice’ class warfare earthly needs based philosophies.
Teaching the Grace of God giving inner harmony by God’s Ways, God’s Virtue, including chastity in compassionate ways, only helps plant seed to truly seek this inner peace. Leaving parishioners uninformed only aids in letter them have an inner restlessness by their nature of being in the image & likeness of God at odds with their will & psyche opposed to this. Often anesthetized by distractions, but there none the less. It hurts people, it doesn’t help them.