Fr Dwight Longenecker has a great post up on his blog, The Clash in Contemporary Christianity.
He asks: Are you a Christian or Moralistic Therapeutic Deist?
You'll have to read the article to find out!
If Catholic preachers can do just one thing to improve the quality of their preaching it is this:
Rid yourselves of the disordered/pathological desire to please the World in your preaching.
What we have seen in the last 50 yrs of Catholic preaching is a strong tendency among the clergy to preach the World to Christ rather than Christ to the World.
I think that this comes from a deeply held embarrassment about the faith among some Baby Boomer Catholics. Rejecting the overly-devotional Catholicism of their parents and grandparents, Baby Boomers longed for the approval of their cultural/social Betters (i.e., academic Protestants and intellectual elites) and thought that by rejecting the more supernatural elements of the faith they would get an approving pat on the head.
What they and we got instead was a de-transcendentalized faith, a naturalized liturgy, and a even more scorn from our Betters b/c they and we refused to destroy the Church faster.
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Rejecting the overly-devotional Catholicism of their parents and grandparents
ReplyDeleteFather, please tell me what you mean by "overly-devotional".
Sharon, "overly-devotional" means something like "using devotions as a substitute for practicing the faith fully -- sacraments, good works, bible reading, actually BEING a Christian. In many ways, the over-devotional Catholic resembles his/her pagan ancestors in that there is an almost total reliance on votive prayer to the saints as "updated gods." Devotional prayer is an excellent practice for growing in holiness, but these devotional acts cannot replace the fullness of the sacramental life and actually getting out there doing good for the greater glory of God.
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