Bishops Document On Preaching (Evangelization and Catechesis)

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Today, at the 2011 USCCB Spring General Assembly, the bishops voted to draft a “Conference Document on Preaching” to promote more evangelization and catechesis. Sounds like a great idea! With better preaching and teaching, more non-Catholics could be exposed to the truths of the Church and more cradle Catholics could better understand the faith, stay, and practice it.

Before the vote, several bishops offered comments in support of such a document, and they had some great things to say. Here are a few:
  • The Church has lost a generation to poor catechesis.
  • In Seminary, it was almost an unspoken understanding that the Homily should not be a time of catechesis. The Church should take advantage of the opportunity offered during the Sunday gathering.
  • There should be a greater emphasis on Biblical preaching (connected to Biblical text).
  • Preaching should not be just for Mass, but also for other services like Weddings and Funerals. For example, in funerals, people need to hear about Christ’s victory over death. Sometimes during services outside of Mass, Christ name is not even mentioned.
  • Many older bishops have been asking for such a document and guidance for many years.
  • A common complaint concerns the quality of preaching. Priests are often too busy to prepare.
 
The INSISTENCE that priests NOT teach the faith during their Mass homilies is a scandal that is bigger than the one that makes the headlines.

I’ve been complaining about this for YEARS … and the priests just say that those are their orders.

The people who pushed that rule through that the priests not teach created a terrible void. Not just one generation, either. Virtually everyone who grew up in the Church after Vatican II … almost three generations of dumbed down Catholics.

This is a real tragedy.

Finally, someone has paid attention to this crisis of deliberately inculcated ignorance.
 
I have been watching the 2011 USCCB Spring General Assembly today on EWTN, and have been very please with the changes that they want to make.

We need catechesis!
 
One of the reasons for the success of Catholic Answers is that people hunger for knowledge about the Church … and since the Church isn’t providing it … it fell to Karl Keating to fill the gap.
 
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