Will you criticize your priest?

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Will you?

Not in a demeaning way, or critical way though that is the definition.

I’m referring to constructive criticism and giving him feedback on a particular subject.

I’ve heard some homilies where the priest was trying to make a point but he didn’t hit the ten ring. He was close but hit the 9 instead. Had he carried the statement another 45 seconds he would have nailed it. So would you write him a note the next week and suggest that to him, maybe take him out for coffee, etc. to point out your thoughts?

I know people say to pray for priests and nothing is wrong with that but I think maybe they need some feedback as well.

How involved are you on a personal level with your priest? Is it a comfortable relationship, a casual relationship or just someone you see once a month that he may recognize you on occasion?
 
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May he remain that way and may more be like him, what a praiseworthy man.
 
Jusy because I think he only got a B+ on the homily? Heck no.

I believe it should be reserved for times when he gets something badly wrong, like the time at a Feast of the Holy Trinity homily in which he spoke of God being three gods in one god. That’s the only time I’ve ever done it.
 
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SJstl said:
I’ve heard some homilies where the priest was trying to make a point but he didn’t hit the ten ring. He was close but hit the 9 instead. Had he carried the statement another 45 seconds he would have nailed it. So would you write him a note the next week and suggest that to him, maybe take him out for coffee, etc. to point out your thoughts?
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The only way I would ever bring up such as thing, or otherwise critique his ministry, is if he asked me, like “Hey, Beryllos, what if anything am I doing wrong? What can I do better?”

I certainly don’t expect priests to say things the way I would say them. It’s possible that the way the priest says it will hit a 10 and change the heart of someone else in the congregation.
 
the homily is just an example, not specific to that one topic if that helps clarify
 
The way you’ve framed it sounds nitpicky. Most priests aren’t going to receive such criticism of particular and minute details in homilies very well. I’d let it go. There’s a big difference between “he could’ve said that one sentence better” and “he’s constantly leading people away from the truth.”

-Fr ACEGC
 
My answer to your question is that it would depend on two things. First, how well do I know the priest? Am I confident I’ll find a way to get my message across without sounding like a know-it-all or a troll?

And the second question is, Am I completely sure that I’m right and the priest is wrong? You haven’t told us what the priest’s alleged mistake was in his homily.
 
My biggest criticism on my parish priest is that when he celebrates the Mass, during Communion, he has the Deacon and EMHC’s distribute Communion, while he goes over to the side to play his guitar and sing. Not only is this wrong, but although he plays guitar well enough, he thinks he has a good voice. 😉
 
edward_george1 said:
The way you’ve framed it sounds nitpicky.
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Right. I know the priests at my parish do a lot of public speaking between homilies and group gatherings and everything else. Getting nitpicky is not going to be helpful. I want to encourage my priests by complimenting them on the 99.5% of the things they say that are awesome, not make them discouraged by drawing their attention to the 0.5% that isn’t.

If the priest misspoke without realizing it and would want to clarify (such as making a slip of the tongue in explaining something at RCIA without realizing it), I may point it out to them as I know they would want to clarify and correct what they meant so as not to confuse the candidates. But that doesn’t happen very often.
 
I am on staff at a parish, so I get to know the priests better than many of the general parishioners. We work together on a professional basis so we already have a healthy level of communication. I have also developed friendships with priests when we shared interests away from church. Only once did I have a critique on a homily. I do not remember the specifics of what the reading were or what else was going on, but the homily brought up sexual marital relations. I remember felling weird hearing it with my kids there. A couple of days later I mentioned it to the priest - perhaps after spiritual direction - and he said I was not the only person that mentioned it to him. He was fine with it and happy that he had friends that would call him out on things like this.
 
SJstl said:
I’ve heard some homilies where the priest was trying to make a point but he didn’t hit the ten ring. He was close but hit the 9 instead.
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First, if he’s hitting the 9 then he still gets an A in my book.

Second, I don’t go to Mass to take notes on how the priest did so I can Monday-morning quarterback him on improving his performance. I save that for my local football team fan forum. I am concentrating on Jesus while at Mass. If I think the priest did a good homily I will congratulate him on it on the way out of church. Otherwise it’s a case of “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” Obviously if what he said was so bad it went against church teaching in a major way, I might make an appointment to talk to him about it, but I haven’t ever witnessed such a thing.

Third, as for being “involved on a personal level with my priest”, depending on which parish we’re discussing, the priest has between 1000 and 5000+ parishioners to minister to, I am also busy, and we each have more important things to do than be each other’s buddies. If the priest truly shared my interests so I was running into him at a concert or hockey game, then maybe we would be friendly over shared interests. If I worked in the parish office, we might be friendly as “office mates” or as a worker is friends with the boss. But the mere fact that he’s my priest doesn’t create a personal relationship, nor should it, any more than I have personal relationships with my doctor, my dentist, my lawyer etc.

I can name you off three priests who know me personally because I have been on 2-week pilgrimages with them several times. I can also name you a whole lot of priests who don’t know me except to say Hi when I greet them outside of Mass. I am not going to go up to any one of these priests whether I know them or not and start telling them how to do their job.
 
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I know my priest quite well I see him every day and could speak to him about something .
BUT, I respect his office and I respect him as a person and that he is older than me as well as being better educated then me on matters of the church and biblical studies. That being said, if he has missed something in his sermon as you said, I’d likely say nothing as he knows better than me what he wants to say, but if we were chatting I might add in what I thought and see what he thought about my point of view, rather than saying hey you missed this, say this is what I think … any good? the reason being, he can’t change the homily it being past anyway, and two it’s likely he knows better. He’s a humble chap he’ll admit if he missed something. He’d laugh at himself actually. But if he made a glaring heretical error then yes I’d go talk to him but again in the you said this, but i thought this… what is the difference, can you explain? rather than your missed it approach which to me is disrespectful to the office of priesthood no matter what I think (or what he has said).
 
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SJstl said:
I’ve heard some homilies where the priest was trying to make a point but he didn’t hit the ten ring. He was close but hit the 9 instead. Had he carried the statement another 45 seconds he would have nailed it. So would you write him a note the next week and suggest that to him, maybe take him out for coffee, etc. to point out your thoughts?
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In this scenario? No. I’d never even consider sitting down with him to tell him how to hit a 10 instead of a 9. Why would I bother making a fuss over something like that? I’m highly unlikely to say much about their homilies unless they ask. I do tell them when I think a homily was particularly good.
SJstl said:
How involved are you on a personal level with your priest? Is it a comfortable relationship, a casual relationship or just someone you see once a month that he may recognize you on occasion?
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I’m on very friendly terms with my PV. We chat often. The Pastor I do not know as well, but I do chat with him from time to time. I am involved with my parish, so I have reason to speak with both fairly regularly.
 
In a healthy marriage–meaning the ones the researchers have found are going in the direction of high marital satisfaction instead of toward a break-up–the spouses are communicating 5 messages that would be received as positive to every one they receive as negative.

We all know priests don’t get close to that. Yes, if you know a priest well and you are well into the positive range with him, sure, you could give constructive criticism. Honestly, though, I’d keep it to positive feedback excepting when there is something that simply has to be inquired about–for instance, asking him about it when something you think he was saying is not within the Faith or a something he does is a liturgical abuse, etc–because we can count on the totality of the feedback he gets to be feedback about where he needs to improve rather than recognition of what he’s doing right and the effort it takes. Even on the negative, I’d definitely give the message that the way I’m reading things is just the way I’m reading things and may not be the whole picture.
 
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If he comes up to the podium and says “Hey everyone, abortion is wonderful.” than yes, I’ll say something to him or the bishop. Other than that, absolutely not. The poor guy has enough to think about and doesn’t need me waving my finger in his face pestering him.
 
SJstl said:
Will you?

Not in a demeaning way, or critical way though that is the definition.

I’m referring to constructive criticism and giving him feedback on a particular subject. If he invited me to a conversation about his homilies I wouldn’t have any problem talking to him but not in the form of a critique.

I’ve heard some homilies where the priest was trying to make a point but he didn’t hit the ten ring. He was close but hit the 9 instead. Had he carried the statement another 45 seconds he would have nailed it. So would you write him a note the next week and suggest that to him, maybe take him out for coffee, etc. to point out your thoughts?
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No, I wouldn’t do this, and the reason is that it is subjective depending on the individual.

One of our priests has a tendency to expound his points about the Gospel very thoroughly with carefully chosen language. This tends to be somewhat tedious for me, but I like to read Catholic literature anyway and so for me a lot of it is old news. I tend to just prefer homilies that speak to the heart.

So… does that mean Father isn’t hitting the ten ring? Not at all. Just because he might be a bit boring to some members of the congregation doesn’t mean he isn’t doing something beneficial. He might be saying something extremely helpful to other people .
 
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I have had a pastor tell me that if someone comes to me with a problem having to do with him, I should encourage them to come to him directly. A lot of times, things are going on that he doesn’t know are a problem, and he can’t address problems he knows nothing about. It is worth considering first whether or not it is just something you can live with, though.

Anecdote: We had a priest who got a lot of people upset because he came in and started changing things immediately upon arrival. This was criticized as violating the “don’t change anything for at least six months” rule. The next time I moved to a different parish, I vowed that I wouldn’t give an opinion about anything or try to change anything for at least six months, but just accept the place as it was before thinking of things that “could be better.” I just thought I ought to see what actually doing that was like, since people expect pastors to do that. Unlike a pastor, I wasn’t in charge of anything, after all–it should be easy, right? Fred Rogers once told a story about how he once heard a sermon and was struck by every rule the speaker broke–there were many!–and how terrible it was, only to look to his side and see the woman next to him in tears. She said the message was just what she needed to hear. It was one of his stories about the value of listening with an open heart. I tried to do that, too.

You never know when you join a new parish what things would be like if you had done things differently, but I’d say this had an awesome and positive effect on how I saw my new parish and the pastor after I tried this experiment. When you’ve first done the work to accept a place and its people, including its pastor, the way they are and not the way you’d like them to be, you look at things that “could be better” in a whole different way. If you’ve never tried it, I would highly recommend giving it a spin. (Six months is the minimum; I’d say give it a year.)
 
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I guess I’m fortunate in the sense that I’ve never felt one of my priests needed a critique. If I felt the need to, I’d start with a positive thing he said, then transition into the critique, something like “Fr., could you clarify what you meant by XXXXX?”

On that note, I’m a fan of letting the priest know when he hit a home run, whether something he said in a homily, new times for adoration, etc.
 
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