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Church needs to tap laity for preaching
Read the article / show / issue that provoked me to write a letter and my response below that or go straight to my response
Date Posted on this Site
November 4, 2008
Publication
The Catholic Register
Publication Date
October 24, 2008
Published Content
Written by Michael Swan
TORONTO - While bishop after bishop at the recently wrapped up Synod of Bishops on Scripture has decried the state of preaching in the church, Dominican Sister Mary Catherine Hilkert argues church leaders are ignoring a potential gold mine of superior preaching.
At the annual Dominican Family Justice Seminar at the University of Toronto’s Newman Centre Chapel, Hilkert said bishops should commission lay people to preach at parish Masses. A former president of the Catholic Theological Society of America, Hilkert led a small group in two days of discussion about the charism of preaching and how it is exercised in the church Oct. 17-18. It was the ninth annual Dominican Justice Seminar in Toronto.
The gift of preaching is rare and precious in the church, said the University of Notre Dame professor of theology.
“Preaching is at the centre of the church’s identity and mission,” Hilkert said. “A crisis in the church is always a crisis in preaching.”
However, following a period of experimentation in the 1970s, bishops have strictly limited preaching at Masses to priests and deacons since the 1980s. Though the 1983 Code of Canon Law and the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes) both insist lay people have a positive duty to preach in secular contexts (Canon 225) bishops have been keen to reserve preaching at Masses to the ordained.
Hilkert believes excluding lay people from the pulpit on Sundays amounts to turning our backs on the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
“Whenever we can find that gift why would we not realize that we need all of us?” Hilkert asked.
High school English teacher Jane Sagar said she felt the call to preach without it being any sort of backdoor attempt at ordination or undercutting the office of the priest.
“Just because I feel called to preach doesn’t mean I want to run a church,” she said.
Hilkert was at pains to emphasize she was not advocating a free-for-all of public speaking in parishes. Only those with proper formation and faculties from the bishop should be preaching the Gospel on Sundays, she said.
“It is not the task of a person to be a self-appointed preacher,” she said.
But bishops and the Vatican have insisted that the homily is a part of the liturgy and properly the function of the presiding priest. Hilkert agrees, at least in part.
“The homily is the hinge that holds together the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist,” she said.
But the priest does not actually have to give a presidential address to still clearly function as the presider at Mass, said Hilkert.
“The entire community celebrates the liturgy,” Hilkert said.
Assuming a lay person is able to preach authentic doctrine, bishops should be thrilled to have talented preachers at their disposal — especially on Sunday mornings when churches are filled with people predisposed to hearing the Word of God, according to Hilkert.
Major figures in church history — Origen, St. Francis, Tertullian — have all been lay preachers.
My Response Letter
Mr. Swan does a serious disservice to your readership by failing to provide adequate context for his article "Church needs to tap laity for preaching".
Instead of presenting the applicable law or the constant tradition and Magisterium of the Church, Mr. Swan disingenuously blames the bishops for the current prohibition against lay preaching, writing that the bishops "have strictly limited preaching at Masses" and "have insisted that the homily is...properly the function of the presiding priest", as if these were arbitrary decisions made without any theological or juridical foundation.
Where he does quote from the law or magisterial documents, he does so selectively, noting only that the Code of Canon Law and the Vatican II constitution Gaudium et Spes "both insist lay people have a positive duty to preach in secular contexts".
To be clear: the 1983 Code of Canon Law (Can. 767 §1) states that the homily is part of the liturgy and "is reserved to a priest or deacon" to the exclusion of all others. In Redemptionis Sacramentum (On certain matters to be observed or to be avoided regarding the Most Holy Eucharist), paragraph 161 affirms that "the homily on account of its importance and its nature is reserved to the Priest or Deacon during Mass". As with the Code of Canon Law, Redemptionis Sacramentum explains that lay persons are allowed to preach outside of Mass but only "if necessity demands it". Even Presbyterorum Ordinis, the Second Vatican Council's Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests, notes that preaching is a special function of the priesthood: "God gives priests a special grace to be ministers of Christ among the people. They perform the sacred duty of preaching the Gospel".
I strongly disagree with the notion that lay persons should be tasked with preaching during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, yet I am not opposed to reading about those who would argue in favour of such a proposition. I am, however, against substandard Catholic journalism that does not present the official teaching of the Church.
(In light of this article and others, one does need to ask why the Register feels compelled to publish regularly articles that challenge the Church's legal structure, authority, or doctrine?)
In Christ,
Jason Gennaro
Was my response published?
No