When Church Sucks…

When Christians get together there’s really nothing we love to do more than to complain! In my experience, what we especially like to do is to have a good whine about the problems we have with our parish. In response to this, I would like to write a series of short posts about some common complaints I’ve heard. Today I’ll begin with one of the most common criticisms:

“Our priest’s homilies are boring…”

As I say, this is a very common complaint. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve heard people say something like this. Unfortunately, it’s often a reason given as to why someone left to join a Protestant congregation. 🙁

So what can be done? Here are my top five suggestions:

1. It’s not about entertainment. I know this is tough to hear, but the purpose of the homily is not to entertain, but to explain the Scriptures and to exhort you to holiness. One would hope that the priest would do this in an engaging manner, but this may not always be the case. If your priest is opening up the Scriptures and encouraging sanctity then you have a lot for which to be thankful.

2. Pray for your priest. If you want a better preacher, pray for the one you’ve got! When I returned full-time to the Catholic Church I was really disappointed with a lot of homilies I heard. In response to this, I got into the habit of praying for my priest during the week, as well as saying a short prayer for him just before the homily:

“Lord Jesus, please fill this man with Your Spirit. Increase in him the gift of speaking. May he speak Your Word with truth, love and boldness. Amen”

If the prayer of the righteous is powerful (James 5:16)….then hit your knees!

3. Listen. Out of love for Christ and respect for the priestly office, don’t switch off, but listen attentively. In addition to praying for the priest before the homily, how about praying for yourself too?

“Come Holy Spirit. Open my heart and mind to hear the words which are about to be spoken through Your minister. Help me to be receptive to what it is you want me to hear today.”

Matthew Kelly has this suggestion: just look for the one thing. As the priest is speaking, listen out for something which you can take to heart and apply to your life in the coming week. I can guarantee you that pretty much every homily will have something in it that you can take on board and which will help you live a more authentic Christian life.

4. Supplement your diet. If you want to get more out of the homily, put more into it! Spend some time with the Scriptures prior to Mass so that you become more familiar with them. You could read a commentary on the Readings to help you understand them more fully.

Since I started trying to get physically fit again, I’ve been taking food supplements. This means that, even if some of my meals are a bit substandard, I still get a good dose of vitamins every day. You can do the same thing with your Sunday homily. In the Catholic world there are some truly phenomenal teachers and preachers. So, in addition to hearing your priest preach each week, listen to some other homilies online. Here are a few suggestions

1. Dr. Scott Hahn
2. Fr. Robert Barron
3. Monsignor Charles Pope

5. Encourage your priest! Your priest is only human, so do what you can to encourage him!

And all men are ready to pass judgement on the priest as if he was not a being clothed with flesh, or one who inherited a human nature – St. John Chrysostom

Sometimes even shepherds need some affirmation! So, if one week your pastor says something in his sermon which you find helpful, tell him! Thank him and encourage him! Is his ordination anniversary coming up? Maybe consider purchasing him a gift such as the Catena Aurea or the Ignatius Study Bible.

It’s over to you. Any other suggestions?  

Next week I’ll look at the complaint: “There isn’t any community at my parish”.

21 comments

  • Thank you for reading my mind today!! I’ve been thinking a lot about praying for our priests and seminarians today — this is a great post David, i’m glad you wrote about this topic again right now.

  • Hi David, this is really interesting and something that I think about often.

    As a person without children, I completely agree with everything you said. An interesting complication arises, though, when you are not attending for your own spiritual development and formation, but for your children’s as well. At that point, just changing your attitude and starting to supplement your own spiritual growth with other resources may not be sufficient.

    When I was growing up, the reason my parents left the Catholic Church for a protestant church was because my siblings and I were not learning the faith at any of the local Catholic parishes.

    There are many things you can do to pass the faith along to the children in the home…the primary place of spiritual teaching. However, no matter what you do in the home to be good examples of Christ’s disciples, if the kids are not witnessing a life-giving and Holy Spirit filled parish congregation on a regular basis, it is hard to pass on the faith.

    That is just my personal experience, growing up where I did, where there were a lot of bleeding statues of Saints and other extreme forms of devotion with little fundamental gospel meat.

    • Hey Juliet, welcome to Restless Pilgrim!

      You bring up some really great points. Caring for your own spiritual development is one thing, but when you’ve been given the responsibility of caring for little souls, the dynamics do change quite a bit. Since I don’t have kids, I really don’t have much experience to draw upon, but here’s the way I hope I would approach it….

      I would get involved with Children’s Liturgy myself. I would try to do everything within my power to raise the level of engagement and the the quality of the education.

      (This is what my mother did when I was little and it was one of the reasons why our Children’s Liturgy and the Parish in general was in such good shape)

      However, if after some period of time the situation failed to improve, as a last resort, I would move my family to another parish. The responsibility for my children’s spiritual welfare would be my primary concern.

    • Actually, that gives me an idea for a future post: things my parents did which helped nurture my faith.

  • Well said! I especially liked #1 and #4.
    #1: Far too many Christians seek after “Churchtainment”. The sermons have to be great and the music has to be exciting. Of course this obviously shows that the person has a disordered sense of worship since the focus has reversed from God Almighty to our own person.
    #4: Far too many of us do no spiritual formation other than attending on Sunday. I think more of us should think of it like a career. After all, look at how much effort people put into their careers and especially career advancement!

    • Also, one thing I would add is to educate yourself on the Mass/Divine Liturgy to better appreciate it so that even if Father’s homily is blah you are too amazed by what happens in the liturgy to have your faith swayed.

      • This is also very true. It was because I had no real Eucharistic theology to hang onto that I started going to Protestant congregation.

        • Definitely the Eucharist is the most amazing part since it is after all the “source and summit”, but its always amazing to me the significance in all the prayers and gestures. For instance, it is an awe inspiring concept that Heaven and Earth united there.

    • Great points. It pains me when certain friends only go to mass when it’s convenient or when their social group is all attending. And when they do go, they either just wanted to see their friends or thought the music was good. And often these are people who’ve gone to Catholic school all their lives. ::sigh:: It pains me to see my generation this way.

      And good point on item #4. Up until a few years ago, my adult spiritual life pretty much only consisted of Sunday mass. Now I’m involved in parish and diocesan , reading the daily readings, reading authentic Catholic literature and news, incorporating daily prayer, attending weekday mass on a regular basis. As much as people think this all might seem to be a burden, it’s actually brought me much peace and has increased my faith greatly.

      Long story short… you get out of it what you put into it.

      • What I’m doing in these posts is trying to work towards examining what I’ve heard called “Ecclesial Consumerism”, approaching parish life with the question “What am I going to get out of it?”

        Ask not what your parish can do for you…

    • The thing about #1 is that we’re human and engagement is important. The message is critical, but if it’s delivered badly then it is immediately less appealing. For example, in the article I posted a link to a video by Fr. Barron where he speaks about ardour in preaching:

  • Jamie Muddiman Fraser

    David, I’m sure you have as much going on in your life as many of us do. This being the case you may have missed the decision I made to return to the church after my back has been turned for several years.

    Tiernan and I both now attend at least one service on Sunday, sometimes two and have continued interactions with the church through out the week and its made an AMAZING change to my life already in just a few months.

    This all being said I’m still trying to learn and feel my way through and the denominations are definately an issue I’ve not sorted. I’ve begun working my way through your posts and was wondering if you had a post or what planned that helped disguish denominations, faiths or where one should be.

    I post this here simply because several words popped at me on this page such as Christian, Catholic, Protestant.

    • Hey Jamie, welcome to Restless Pilgrim!

      That’s wonderful news 🙂

      I haven’t written much on Christian denominations in a while. Most of the issues that separate Christians boils down to the doctrine of “Sola Scriptura” (“Scripture alone”). I’ll endeavor to do a post on that soon.

      In the meantime, probably a good place to start is one of my first posts, “The Ecumenical Apologist”:

      https://restlesspilgrim.net/blog/2010/07/12/the-ecumenical-apologist/

      …and if you want to know what different denominations think of one another… 😉

      https://restlesspilgrim.net/blog/2011/10/01/how-denominations-view-one-another/

      God bless,

      David.

      • Jamie Muddiman Fraser

        Thanks David, I will give them a read and continue to follow your blog in addition to my daily readings. I think the Catholic side is my blindest spot, though not the only blind spot, at the moment and the only local church I have yet to visit.

        My mother was raised Catholic but we were raised Southern Freewill Baptist – trying to dust off and apply all the knowledge to decide where Tiernan and I should call home is very important to me. He’s still young enough to be raised in the right way but I have to be certain where I choose to to call our home.

  • Sometimes you just need to (politely) talk to him too. Our current pastor previously was a lecturer in scripture at the John Paul II Pontifical University in DC, so folks were complaining that his homilies were long and complex (instead of short and feel good?). So, they did what all “Good Catholics” do…they b*tched behind his back about it!

    As a grad student, a Lay Dominican, and the random parish Thomist who would chat after mass about faith & science with the him while helping clean up, I eventually took it upon myself to have a chat without naming any names about the concerns that I’d overheard (or had been directly complained to about by folks who assumed I would agree with them — of course, I could listen to exegesis about the origin of psalm motifs all day). He fully understood — and it helped cement our own relationship that I would be willing to be the one to discuss the parish’s concern on something like that, which I was the odd man out not mind.

    As a result, the homilies are *still* on the same general scriptural theme (as they should be), but usually they’re about half the length and include a lot more reference to his high school football days or his dog by means of analogy…

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