Odd Day at Mass

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Lest those who think that we who love the Mass of Paul VI have completely abandoned both our ability to critically think and to recognize idiocy, I offer the following observations on Mass today:
  1. Altar girl in what appeared from the choir loft to be bedroom slippers, but what turned out to be embroidered pink Oriental shoes without a heel. Very distracting as she slid about.
  2. Our opening song was “Seek the Lord,” by Father Roc O’Connor, SJ. Father Roc’s original version, based on Isaiah 55:6-9, had this for a chorus:

    “Seek the Lord, while He may be found!
    Call to Him, while He is still near!”
At some point, Father Roc revised it (the origianl he copyrighted in 1975) so as to read:
Code: 
 "Seek the Lord, whose mercy abounds!
 Call aloud, to God who is near!"
Now, God’s abounding mercy is the only hope I’ve got. I just can’t help wondering if the original isn’t a little more immediate, ie., “you’ve got a limited time to repent and call out to God, so you better do it toot sweet!” I also note that Father Roc, since 1975, has somehow developed an aversion to using a male pronoun when referencing the Diety.
  1. The Gospel reading for the day was the Beatitudes. Now every word Our Lord ever uttered was significant, but surely the Sermon on the Mount was among the most significant, the Magna Carta of the Kingdom of Heaven, if you will. What treatment of this awesome passage did our young associate pastor (seriously, his voice still cracks) decide to give? Well, he elected to make a connection between the most heart stirring words ever spoken and a ski trip on which he (the priest, not Jesus) fell down the mountain and broke his clavicle. I guess Jesus was on a mountain and then the priest was on a mountain and the priest thought, “Hmmmmm, could there be a connection?” He threw something in about Hope there toward the end, but by that time, I had developed an empathy for animals who will chew off a foot to escape a trap.
 
They really need to start teaching youung priests how to preach. Protestant seminaries do a far better job a this than catholic seminaries now a days.

I watch old shows of Fulton Sheen and say to myself why don’t priest preach like that anymore?
 
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Maccabees:
They really need to start teaching youung priests how to preach. Protestant seminaries do a far better job a this than catholic seminaries now a days.

I watch old shows of Fulton Sheen and say to myself why don’t priest preach like that anymore?
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Very true. I wouldn’t trade being Catholic for anything, but I do miss the sermons delivered by the Baptist pastor of my youth. I think our seminaries have turned out a whole generation of “counselor-” priests. They’ve forgotten that the clergy are supposed to call us beyond ourselves.
 
homeletics has never been our strong point. Before the Council, the sermon was not even a required part of the Mass. I can tell you Fulton Sheen, as wonderful as he was, certainly was not a typical parish priest of the 1950’s.

We do have some great preachers in the Church, but need more.
 
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katherine2:
We do have some great preachers in the Church, but need more.
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My alma mater, Baylor University, had and may still have an annual series on great preachers. They named about 5-6 great preachers in a year, did a series of articles on them, etc. One year, one of them was a Catholic priest, but I cannot remember who it was. The rector of the Cathedral in Gallup, New Mexico was a very good homilist, but I’m sure Monsignor Gomez has retired. He could teach young priests how to prepare and deliver a homily.
 
blessed with a pastor who is a great preacher, great theologian, and great liturgist. There was movie ways back with Jack Lemmon as a middle-aged priest mentoring a seminarian doing his internship in his affluent parish. Lemmon is a caricature of himself in the role, but flic is an excellent depiction of what went wrong with seminary formation in the 70s & 80s, and what still needs to be rooted out in the system. The young man’s first sermon was a masterpiece of navel-gazing and incomprehensible stream of consciousness. The overall message was don’t worry about holiness, morality, spiritual formation, or for heaven sake theology or academic preparation - just love the people and you will make a fine priest.

We attended Mass with newly ordained family friend up in Cleveland someplace, he was so full of himself it was pathetic. He was feeling good about himself, as he preached on the beatitudes, about helping the poor by giving them his old clothes and shoes he doesn’t need anymore now that he wears clericals most of the time.
 
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Maccabees:
They really need to start teaching youung priests how to preach. Protestant seminaries do a far better job a this than catholic seminaries now a days.

I watch old shows of Fulton Sheen and say to myself why don’t priest preach like that anymore?
Click to expand...
Amen!

Watch the televised EWTN Masses! Those Priests are excellent preachers. Father Dominic in particular is an oustanding preacher.

I went to two Masses yesterday. At my NO parish, the Priest played a taped message from our Bishop on the topic of Parish Share week. No homily.

At my TLM community mass, the Priest mentioned Parish Share week, then gave a stirring homily on the subject of the Mass as a Sacrifice. My cradle Catholic friend who attends the TLM with me said after the Mass, “Wow, I’ve never even heard that before.” Of course I was not surprised.
 
Scotty PGH:
Amen!

Watch the televised EWTN Masses! Those Priests are excellent preachers. Father Dominic in particular is an oustanding preacher.

I think that this is where we have to be able to criticize those that we love. EWTN has done wonders for me and many like me (young midwestern vocations floudering in the deluge of poor Catholic Education and even poorer catachesis), but most of those guys are terrible preachers. They are clearly holy men, and the substance of what they have to say is good, but their presentations are stiff and stolid, there is little vocal variation, and frankly, they make me want ot fall asleep. That being said, a little honest (and charitable) criticism can go a long, long way. We had a deacon back home who was an awful, awful preacher. A group of us went to talk with him about it and made some suggestions, and now he’s fabulous. We need to always pray for preachers and pray for hearers.
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FenianMan:
Scotty PGH:
Amen!

Watch the televised EWTN Masses! Those Priests are excellent preachers. Father Dominic in particular is an oustanding preacher.

I think that this is where we have to be able to criticize those that we love. EWTN has done wonders for me and many like me (young midwestern vocations floudering in the deluge of poor Catholic Education and even poorer catachesis), but most of those guys are terrible preachers. They are clearly holy men, and the substance of what they have to say is good, but their presentations are stiff and stolid, there is little vocal variation, and frankly, they make me want ot fall asleep. That being said, a little honest (and charitable) criticism can go a long, long way. We had a deacon back home who was an awful, awful preacher. A group of us went to talk with him about it and made some suggestions, and now he’s fabulous. We need to always pray for preachers and pray for hearers.
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Hmmmm surely you don’t mean Father Angelus. He’s outstanding. Same for Father Francis. Father Mark is a bit stiff, yes. And while Father Dominic doesn’t come off as the most naturally comfortable public speaker, he preaches on very important topics that absolutely need to be addressed in our modern churches (and rarely are)!
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katherine2:
homeletics has never been our strong point. Before the Council, the sermon was not even a required part of the Mass. I can tell you Fulton Sheen, as wonderful as he was, certainly was not a typical parish priest of the 1950’s.

We do have some great preachers in the Church, but need more.
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I’ve only been a Catholic since 1998, but that’s what I would gather from reading about the Church before VII. It goes way, way back, after all. One of the major points of the friars (Franciscans, Dominicans, etc) when they were founded was that they would go from parish to parish preaching, to supply the non-preaching habits of the parish clergy. And that’s 900 years ago!

Certainly as an ex-Evangelical, the only thing I miss (a little) is the excellent preaching one had every Sunday. Mind you, I don’t miss the three-quarters of an hour devoted to that excellent preaching. The best priests I’ve heard manage to say more in ten or fifteen minutes than some Evangelical expositors in an hour. All the same, they’re rarities in the Church: mostly, Catholic priests I’ve heard waffle on for about seven minutes (seems like thirty) about the way God loves us all, and how we’re all special, and how we need to love ourselves, etc, etc.

Even that’s better than the priests who focus on the Bad Old Days, and how (good God!) people had to (gasp!) do this or refrain from doing that on pain of mortal sin; or those (often the same ones) who scold us all about driving cars to church because of global warming.

Oh well. It’s all worth it to have our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.

Sue
 
Like others said, one can just point the tv onto EWTN and still see the likes of Father Angelus and the other Fathers give a great sermon and celebrate Mass in a respectable manner. Which is good to see since the sermons ranging from the great topics such as receiving new underwear for Christmas or about a priest being described as looking like Pee-Wee Herman are disturbing. The later comment came from a Father of Mercy priest. Of all priests, not what I was expecting. If he had respect for himself, surely he wouldn’t have made a comment like that especially knowing
 
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