Tips and Exercises for Composing a Homily

On occasion I get requests from priests and deacons to post a piece on tips for composing homilies. The most common problem seems to be generating ideas for the homily from the lectionary texts.

So, here are my basic guidelines for composing a homily with three heuristic exercises to generate ideas.

General Guidelines

Keep in mind: these are the guidelines I use. I didn't find them chiseled on stone tablets nor were they delivered to me in the middle of the night by an angel. They work for me. They may or may not work for you.

1. Give yourself firm word or space limits. When I start a homily I set my document parameters at 16 point, Times New Roman, double-spaced. For a daily homily: three pages with maybe three or four lines on the fourth page. This translates into about 5 mins. For a Sunday homily: six pages, or about 11 mins. Consistency in length over time establishes a contract between the preacher and his listeners. If your congregation knows that your homily will be no more than 5 or 11 minutes, then they are prepared to pay attention. Word/space limits are also a good way to force you to get to the point quickly and avoid rambling. What you want to avoid at all costs is preaching the Homily in Search of an Idea. Like making sausages and laws, nobody wants to watch you make a homily on the spot.

2. Always have a question in mind that the homily will try to answer. The heuristic exercises below will help generate interesting questions. What you want to avoid is simply repeating or summarizing the readings. It helps to repeat the question a few times throughout the homily to keep it fresh in the minds of your listeners. Restrict yourself to One Big Question, but don't be afraid to follow up with collorary questions if necessary.

3. Remember that you are writing for the ear not the eye. Your audience will not have a text of your homily to follow along. “Writing for the ear” means:

--using and repeating key words and phrases from the text;

--unpacking theological words or concepts using ordinary language (e.g., “Christmas is the Church's celebration of the Incarnation; today the Son of God takes on human flesh to walk among us.”);

--as much as possible use present-tense verbs in an active-voice, especially when referring to action in the text (e.g., “Jesus gathers his disciples, teaching his friends that walking the Way is the key to eternal life.”);

--make use of alliteration to emphasize a point (e.g., “Christ wins the war against our wandering ways. Our work is the work of surrender.”);

--mix up simple and complex sentences so that the ear doesn't grow bored or tired;

--if you have a choice between using a comfortable metaphor or image and using a jarring or shocking image or metaphor, choose the latter but only once or twice in any single homily;

--and mostly importantly, remember: you are preaching a homily to a congregation not delivering a lecture to students!

There's no need to “dummy down” a homily; however, it's not likely that your people will appreciate a discourse on the history of the fine distinctions the Church has drawn between “hypostasis” and “persona” in a homily on the Holy Trinity. You can be intellectually challenging without being academic.

4. Homilies are meant to be challenging without being off-putting. I hear from Catholics all the time that their pastors' homilies are forgettable precisely because there is nothing in them to wake them up, nothing in them to shake things around. You don't have to be controversial in order to be challenging, but it doesn't hurt to push a few limits to keep your people thinking. I've learned the hard way: no matter what you say, you will be misunderstood, misinterpreted, misheard and you will upset or offend someone. Every congregation has what I call They Who Wait to be Offended. If you try to craft a homily with the express purpose of avoiding anything and everything that might possibly be offensive to someone, you will find yourself standing in the pulpit staring at the congregation in silence. By the same token, there's no reason to go out of your way to be intentionally offensive or controversial. If you do this, it's a sign that you believe the homily is your pet project for personal aggrandizement.

5. Assume from the start that the readings are addressing an urgent contemporary problem. The crowds in first-century Judea have the same basic existential problems and concerns that twenty-first century people wrestle with: family, love, betrayal, sin, survival, desire to succeed, fear of death and sickness, need for mercy, etc. Our circumstances are different, the basic problems of human life are the same. The Word is eternal and the human predicament is enduring.

6. Write your homily out and preach it word for word. This is probably the most debated point in practical homiletics. My profs in seminary hated this idea because it tends to produce academic papers rather than homilies. When we start writing about scriptural texts, we are tempted to fall into student mode and type out seminar papers to be read silently rather than homilies to be delivered. If you follow the guidelines above this shouldn't be a problem. Writing out a homily and reading it helps you to avoid a number of common mistakes that preachers make: delivering rambling, disjointed speeches that make you look unprepared; falling into factual or theological error by using ill-considered language or images; saying something unintentionally controversial or offensive; and it is always nice to be able to produce the text of your homily when someone calls the bishop on you for preaching heresy! If you are gifted with the ability to preach well extemporaneously and stay within a reasonable time limit, then give thanks to God daily for this gift. If you write out your homily to read, make sure you practice it out loud several times so that you aren't just reading it like you would a novel or a newspaper article. Homilies are delivered, given not simply read aloud.

Heuristic Exercises

These exercises will help you generate ideas for a homily using the lectionary readings. These are exegetical in nature only to the degree that they will get you closer to the text in order to unpack it for ideas. I do not offer these as tools for getting at the real meaning of the text, or ferreting out secret teachings. If you are studying a text and simply cannot come up with an idea to preach on, then these exercises will jump start your creative engine.

Exercise One: Saying Not

Take the text and write out what it could be saying but isn't. Literally, write: “This text could be saying X, Y, and Z.” Then ask yourself, “Is this text saying X, Y, and Z?” Following your meditation on the question, write: “This text is NOT saying X, Y, and Z.” The next question is obvious: “Well, what is it saying?” For example, take the gospel text of the adulterous woman. This text could be saying that women are more responsible for adultery than men. It could be saying that public condemnation of sinners is a good thing. It could be saying that Jesus thinks adultery is OK because he doesn't condemn the woman. Now, negate each of these by writing: “This text is not saying. . .” Keep in mind here that the point of the exercise is not to find theological truth in the text but to generate ideas for a homily. By negating what the text could be saying you set up an opposition that might produce an interesting tension that could in turn develop into an excellent question for a homily. You are still obliged to preach the truth of the gospel, so you really can't preach that Jesus thinks adultery is OK because he doesn't condemn the woman to stoning. However, your homily could be based on the question: how do we handle public sinners in the Church? This leads to questions about the nature of forgiveness and how we go about not only forgiving sin among us but also how we understand our progress in holiness as one Body. Notice for example how Jesus binds the adulterous woman to her community by pointing out that everyone in the crowd is guilty of sin as well. Wouldn't it make for an interesting homily to ask: how does sin bind us together? Now that would be a great homily!

Exercise Two: First, Then

Take the text and divide it into a series of consecutive actions. I usually cut/paste the text from the USCCB website and then divide it up in my document. Assume that the actions described in the text are ordered the way they are for specific reasons. Once you have the action of the text divided out, ask: why are these actions put in this order? More specifically, why does act B follow act A? The answer might be completely uninteresting, e.g. you have to pick up a stone before you can throw it. However, asking the question forces you to think about why the text was written the way it was and this may lead you to an insight you have missed in the past. For example, I noticed in the readings from yesterday's gospel that the people in the crowd are astonished by the authority of Jesus' teaching before he performs an exorcism. Now, we can make the boring assumption that this is simply the way the actual historical event progressed. So what? But if we ask, “Why are they astonished by the authority of his teaching before he demonstrates his authority in the exorcism?” There could be a hundred reasons for this. Good! You have homily material for the next one hundred times this reading comes up in the lectionary cycle. What if the text is one where Paul lists the virtues of the individual who lives in the Spirit. He writes that this person is: merciful, loving, prudent, kind, patient, and fervent. Now, objectively speaking, it is very likely these are listed in this order for no particular reason (this is exactly what I did here). But you are assuming that they are listed as such for a very good reason. What could that reason be? Well, being merciful comes well before being fervent in the list. What could this indicate for our spiritual growth? Maybe nothing at all. But ask the question. Why should we be patient before we are fervent? How does being kind follow from being prudent? It's one thing to preach that we should be merciful, loving, prudent, kind, patient, and fervent. It's quite another to preach that we should be loving before we are fervent, or that being fervent in the faith is a product of first being loving.

Exercise Three: That's Absurd

If your reading contains a statement or a question, take that statement or question to its logical absurdity and see what happens. Every often you will find that a teaching in scripture will state a truth that either cannot be reduced to a more basic truth or that it can be reduced to something more fundamental. If it can't be reduced, then you have at least one topic for a homily. If it can be reduced, then you have not only the stated truth but the underlying truth as well. For example, Paul writes to the Ephesians: “In [Christ] we were...chosen, destined...so that we might exist for the praise of his glory...” Say to yourself, “This is absurd! Paul is claiming that the only reason for our existence is to praise God for his glory? The ONLY reason? Really? So, out of the billions of souls on earth, we alone were picked out to exist for seventy or so years to do nothing else but praise God? No family, no friends, no jobs? Just stand around and praise God. That's our reason for existing? Is this what we sign on to do when we were baptized?” Obviously, this is not what Paul is saying. But reducing his claim to an absurdity invites you to argue against the absurdity and clarify what it means to exist in order to praise God. Left alone, Paul's claim is interesting enough for a homily, but what else is there to do with it but repeat it with emphasis, or explain it in pedantic terms. You might even set up a challenge to Paul by saying, “I'm happy to praise God, of course, but I think I might exist for other reasons. . .” What are those reasons? Can those reasons be tied back to praising God? Can raising a family, or cultivating friendships, or working faithfully at a job be considered a form of praise? Would your congregation think so? By refusing to take a teaching at face value or in its simplest terms you set up a contrast that will produce another way of reading the text. And even if you reject your contrary reading as false, you have an idea for how to present a false reading of the text and a chance to correct it in your homily.

I want to emphasize again: these exercises are not meant to lead you to correct readings of the texts. Their sole purpose is to get your creative juices flowing so that you can present the gospel in a way that is interesting and useful to your listeners.

(This is more or less a first draft.  Revisions will follow as better examples occur to me, so check back on occasion.)

Excerpt from Treasures Holy & Mystical

Here's an excerpt from the introduction to my second prayer book. . .you will have to buy the book to read the rest. . .hehehehe. . .

Introduction

Anyone who prays will tell you that praying brings you closer to God. But what does it mean to be “closer to God”? If it's true that we “live and move and have our being” in God, then how is it possible to get any closer? One answer is to say that prayer is the best way to clarify and improve our awareness that we live and move and have our being in God. We don't actually move any closer to God in prayer, but rather we sharpen our sense that God is always with us. God is always with us, but we are not always with God. This is an excellent answer, one that most any good Catholic would give. But being proficient at prayer, being someone keenly aware of the presence of God is only half way to being what our tradition calls a mystic. Now, you might say that you not only have no desire to be a mystic, you have no vocation to living a mystic's life! Though an understandable response given what most people think being a mystic amounts to, it is also an unfortunate one. Why unfortunate? Because being a mystic is what you have already agreed to become. By denying that you are called to the mystical life you deny the very vocation you took on at baptism. What? You thought baptism was all about washing away original sin and becoming a member of the Church? Well, it is! And what do you think being a mystic is all about? Living in a cave, eating locusts and berries, and having visions of angels and such? Not so much. However, that too could be the life of a mystic. It's just not the life that most mystics live. . .

Coffee Bowl Browsing

Mark Shea tries to figure out what a "neo-Catholic" is. . .being one myself, I find the term offensive.  Oh well.  I've been called far worse.

Immigration is one of those issues that makes me crazy. . .especially when the USCCB takes it up as a Catholic cause.  As a part Choctaw indian, my general response is:  All you people need to go home!

Fr. Z. asks whether or not the Church should be blessing laptops and cell phones.  I say, "YES!"  And to demonstrate my fervor, my second book of prayers contains a prayer of consecration for the holy use of a computer.

I'm speechless (don't fall over!):  four women allowed to marry in the Catholic Church!  Does the Pope know about this?

If Google is a marker for cultural progress. . .we're in big trouble.

Once again the Pope is accused of being Catholic.  When will this bigotry end, O Lord?!

Sensible advice from a Jesuit.  Yes, I said it. .  .the Jesuit is right. 

This is what happens when you immerse Americans in portrayals of Platonic neo-pagan utopias that paint western civilization as an engine of greed, violence, and stupidity.

Vatican Radio reviews "Avatar," saying that the film is "a wink towards the pseudo-doctrines which have made ecology the religion of the millennium."  Notice:  the article uses the verb "reviews" for secular reviewers, yet the Vatican "passes judgment."  Figures.

Democrat Chris Dodd says that ObamaCare is "hanging by a thread."  It's more accurate to say that this monster is hanging by an umbilical cord. . .about 1.7 million umbilical cords a year.

Members of Congress burned through a couple of million in tax dollars to live it up at the failed Copenhagen Conference.  They would have done more good by staying home. . .or by staying in Denmark.

There may be just a little evidence of a double-standard in the media over the seriousness of racism. You decide. 

I have nothing against the Hamptons. . .but if you want to nuke them, here's your chance.

NB.  I've deleted the link to the pop-cultural depictions of  Jesus.  Thanks to those of you who picked up on some of the language and images there that I missed.

Is his teaching enough?

1st Week OT (Tues): Readings

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

SS. Domenico e Sisto, Roma

Either in person or on television we've all seen preachers exercising what they call healing ministries—miraculous cures, exorcisms, thousands of believers throwing off sin and coming to Christ. The more dramatic demonstrations of the Spirit include stadiums full of people being “slain in the Spirit” at the direction of the evangelist: dancing, laughing, crying, falling out, and speaking in tongues. These mass celebrations are evidence to many of us that the evangelist-in-charge speaks and acts with the authority of God to accomplish a divine purpose. To some, admittedly the less credulous among us, these shows of spiritual power seem touched more by the spirit of a circus than the spirit of God. We probably all know someone who will point to the antics of Christians on TV and say, “See. You people are not only gullible but a little crazy too!” It's all just mass hypnosis, or mob rule, or even the sort of public catharsis that Aristotle finds so useful in good theater. Not everyone is going to be astonished by the wonder-working power of the Church at prayer. Without prejudice in deciding the authenticity of televangelist ministries, we can say that Jesus managed to astonish and amaze with nothing more than his teaching. Mark reports in this morning's gospel that Jesus wowed the crowd by doing nothing more than preaching and teaching God's word with authority. It is only after he has captured their undivided attention that he performs an exorcism. And he cast out the demon only because it is outraged enough to speak against him. Are we still astonished by his teaching alone? Or do we need proofs of his authority?

Let's admit that this is something of a false dilemma. We can yearn for both Christ's teaching and demonstrations of his divine power. However, it's no accident that in this gospel account Jesus teaches first and then exorcises demons. Why? Imagine that the order were reversed. First, the exorcisms and then the teaching. Would the crowd still have been astonished? Very likely but for very different reasons. Had Jesus shown that he commanded unclean spirits first, the crowd would likely see him as a magician, or a prophet, or some sort of holy man not unlike many others at the time who laid claim to the ministry of healing through casting out demons. His authority as a man of God would be established on his demonstrated ability to perform acts of supernatural prowess. Sure, those in the crowd would have still listened to his teaching afterward, but the authority of the teaching itself would be based on supernatural acts publicly performed and not on the person of Christ himself. We are not saved from sin because the man Jesus could command demons and heal the sick. We are saved because the man Jesus is the Christ.

Jesus is able to do what he does because of who he is. His identity as the Christ is what gives him authority and his authority as the Christ is what establishes his teaching as divine. Mark is making the point here that Jesus is the exception to the normal rules that govern what makes the teaching and the teachers of God's word authentic. Jesus is the Word made flesh. He is the teaching itself given human form, the embodiment of the Holy Spirit of love that the Father and Son have for one another. When his words are heard and his deeds witnessed, the crowd is stunned not by the truth of what he says and does. They are amazed by Truth himself; that is, they witness a manifestation, an epiphany of Truth living, breathing among them. The unclean spirit, seeing him for who he is, does not cry out in despair, “You have the power to cast me out!” It cries, “I know who you are—the Holy One of God!” Even demons know the truth.

So, are we still astonished by Christ's teaching alone? Or do we need proofs of his authority? In truth, his teaching is all the proof we need of his authority. He is the Holy One of God!

Coffee Bowl Browsing

How Nanny-Statism killed California. . .will we let this be a lesson for us all?

Roger Kimball on the coming of age of "democratic despotism."

No, Harry Reid is not a racist. . .but it sure is fun to watch the Dems sputter, jump, babble, and dodge to explain away their faux outrage at Trent Lott's gaffe while defending Reid's.  Besides, I don't think the GOP really wants Reid to resign. . .they need him right where he is to take back the Senate.

B.O. is failing as President b/c he doesn't know the American people:  ". . .he is a man trying to govern a nation he doesn't genuinely know, stuck trying to communicate with, as we continue to find out, a nation that never really knew him when they elected him, so superficial and oh my God fantastic, if unrealistic, was the press bubble that surrounded him during the campaign."

On why we need the notion of human nature, or Why Nominalism is the Root of All Evil

Fr. Z. highlights a parochial program for establishing an all-male altar server guild.  I have to admit that I am still just enough of a 90's feminist to cringe at the idea of taking a co-ed server guild and making it all-male.  Don't get me wrong:  I get that that the boys love it, but my well-trained 90's feminist reflex jumps every time!  It doesn't help any that the usual suggestion for the girls' guild has something to do with cleaning, sewing, or wash up after Mass.  OY!

Looks like the anti-Catholic socialists in the U.K. want to see the RCC under persecution again.

If you are a compulsive back seat driver, you shouldn't watch this video. 

Ten apocalyptic scenarios. . .#5 is my fav. . . yea, physicists are very dangerous!  ;-) 

  

Grace trains. . .

Baptism of the Lord: Readings

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

SS. Domenico e Sisto, Roma

When hearing confessions or giving spiritual direction to university students—especially men—I frequently draw an analogy between developing spiritually and developing physically. Most of us have no illusions about what it takes to lose weight, build muscle, increase stamina, and get ourselves to the point where we are as fit as we can be. The whole unpleasant process begins with radical changes to the diet. Slowly increasing exercise. Maybe even a little weight-lifting. If you've ever started down this road, you know that you will not drop 25lbs in a week, nor will you be able to show off a six-pack by the weekend. Getting a flabby, overweight, diet-stressed body into some kind of shape requires determination, focus, commitment, and lots and lots of time. It wouldn't hurt if you had someone with experience to help. A professional trainer. A coach. Even a friend who knows how to keep you motivated. All of this applies to our spiritual growth as well. Being Catholics, we understand the sacramental nature of creation: the physical world is a sign of the spiritual, an imperfect revelation of God that both points to God's presence and makes Him present to us. We cannot, therefore, rightly divide the human body from the human soul and expect our spiritual lives to be fruitful. Just as the body needs proper diet, exercise, and a little hard-lifting, the soul needs its strength-training too.

We start our life-long regime at The Jesus Gym on the day we are baptized. From that moment on, “the grace of God has appeared, saving all and training us to reject godless ways and worldly desires and to live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age. . .” As Catholics, we don't have any trouble understanding grace as divine help, a gift from God to assist us when we need it. What we do have trouble understanding sometimes is that the help we get isn't always the help we want. Like the skinny 18 year old freshman who wants ripped abs in a week to impress his girlfriend, we sometimes approach the throne in prayer and ask not for assistance to accomplish some goal, but rather we ask God to accomplish the goal for us, instead of us. The freshman is very disappointed to hear that his six-pack will take a semester or two with lots of hard work. And we are no less disappointed to learn that grace does not prevent us from traveling the ways of the godless nor desiring what the world would have us desire. Instead, grace trains us how to be godly men and women. The hard work of chiseling out a ripped spiritual six-pack is all ours. But we do not work alone.

And not only do we not work alone, we cannot work alone. Christianity is a team sport. We play as a team, so we train as a team and the perfect model for teamwork is the Holy Trinity: three divine persons, one God. The more perfectly we imitate this model of Love in action, we closer we get to that Jesus Gym spirit we've been wanting. As noted above, the first step on this new regime is baptism. I did not baptize myself. Nor did any of you. The Church baptized us all with parents, godparents, friends, fans, by-standers, accidental tourists, all the angels and saints—every one in attendance. And because we were baptized by the Church, we might think that the only thing we got for our trouble is a life-long membership to the Jesus Gym. As wonderful as that is, it's not even close to the full baptismal package. Paul writes to Titus, “[God] saved us through the bath of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he richly poured out on us through Jesus Christ our savior, so that we might be justified by his grace and become heirs in hope of eternal life.” First, notice: God saved. . .He poured out. We did nothing (nor could we do anything) to initiate the renewal of our relationship with God. It was His move and His alone. Second, notice: through Christ, by the Holy Spirit, through our Savior, by his grace. Christ Jesus is the only mediator, the only mechanism; he is the only way. Third, notice: us, us, our, we, heirs. Not “Me & Jesus.” Not “Jesus, MY Personal Lord & Savior.” His grace is poured out on US. . .WE are saved by the bath of rebirth and the renewal of the Holy Spirit. . .Christ is OUR Savior. . .And WE are made HEIRS in hope of eternal life. This is what baptism does for us and to us: we are made just (righteous), so that we might work with God's abundant graces to get our spiritual bodies into the best shape possible.

But even before we can be baptized in water and the Spirit; even before we can be offered the chance at a right-relationship with the Father through Christ; even before it is possible for us to be heirs to hope in eternal life. . .The Jesus Gym must have a grand opening. It only makes sense. Plans were laid long ago with the prophets. They rounded up the initial investors. After a few false teachers and at least one wash-out (ahem), momentum starting building. Finally, the Plan was conceived and announced. And before it was fully born, there was one enthusiastic booster. Then, with some astronomical fanfare and a couple of sheep, the Plan was born, drawing its first foreign investors twelve days later. With this starting capital and two excellent CEO's, the Plan matured for a while and opened for business for the first time at a wedding in Cana. . .but the Grand Opening, the opening that makes The Jesus Gym not just another gym but The Gym for all peoples, tribes, nations, and tongues, this opening takes place at the River Jordan where Jesus' first booster baptizes him with water and then the Father baptizes him with His Spirit, saying, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” Now, The Jesus Gym is open for business.

If, after all the bad analogizing, you are still reading, let me quickly tell you why Jesus was baptized. Here's a nice summary from the CCC: “The baptism of Jesus is on his part the acceptance and inauguration of his mission as God's suffering Servant. He allows himself to be numbered among sinners;. . .Already he is anticipating the 'baptism' of his bloody death. Already he is coming to 'fulfill all righteousness,' that is, he is submitting himself entirely to his Father's will: out of love he consents to this baptism of death for the remission of our sins. . .”(n. 536). Remember, earlier we said that the Holy Trinity is the perfect model of teamwork. By imitating the work of the Trinity we come closer to the spiritual perfection for which we were made. By submitting to baptism, Christ demonstrated his acceptance of his Father's plan for our salvation. This shouldn't sound all that unusual: three divine persons, one God—perfect Love in action. The Son submits in love to take on human flesh in order to bring the Father's offer of renewal to us. And not only does he deliver the invitation, he becomes our sin; dies for us; rises again to the Father; and sends the Holy Spirit as our guide. The whole of his public ministry, inaugurated by the River Jordan, was to proclaim the Father's invitation and to leave us a body of teaching that serves to reveal what grace in action look likes. The Gospels answer the question: what does the perfected follower of Christ look like? Out of love, she dies for her friends.

Grace trains us for the godly life. What is the godly life? It is not scrupulous moral behavior. It is not meticulous orthodoxy. It is not righteous anger at injustice. It is not any one of these alone. The godly life is the life Christ left for us to follow. The godly life begins with baptism, grows with the Church, and ends with “Out of love, he ____for his friends.” How you fill in that blank will depend on how well you used your time and strength at The Jesus Gym. Most of us will spend our lives trying to decide if we have the courage to put “died” or “suffered” in that blank. Grace trains. But you have to do the work.

Questions...

Questions. ..

1).  I recently saw "2012" and "The Road."  Why do you think people, especially Christians, love these apocalyptic stories?

I'm not sure that Christians love these sorts of stories in any special way; however, we have inherited the Jewish apocalyptic tradition and our history is stuffed full of the faithful believing and acting upon end of the world scenarios.  Here's my armchair theorizing. . .movies/stories like "2012" satisfy a couple of human impulses.  First, we love the idea of starting over.  Everything is so screwed up; everything is beyond repair--let's just wipe it clean and try again.  Second, our fav villains are cast as the cause the disasters, so we get to wallow in a little Told Ya So.  In Jewish-Christian stories, it's the sinner who brings down God's judgment on the planet.  In the eco-theistic stories, it's evil capitalists, polluters, and Christians who cause the apocalypse.  One of the many, many things I love about The Road is that McCarthy avoids completely writing about the cause/blame of the world's destruction.  This single decision saved the book from being just another disaster story.  Third, and this is likely to be controversial, I think we want to be punished. . .not as individuals but as a whole.  Strong consciences are very much aware of guilt but survival instincts tend to keep us bobbing and weaving responsibility.  Wholesale destruction relieves guilt through punishment but also makes sure everyone else gets punished too.  Fourth, and perhaps scariest, these stories have a real wish-fulfillment element to them. Reviews of "Avatar" have pointed out that it is an adolescent suicide note to negligent parents (i.e., corporations, etc.), a sort "you'll be sorry when I'm gone" film that wants us to wallow around in the narrative's pretentious eco-preaching and then do penance by living lives of consumerist self-loathing.  For Christians, none of these should matter much.  God is in control; we aren't.  All things will be well.  The secret for us is to make darn sure that our priorities are properly ordered and that we know who we are in Christ.  Come the end, that's all that will matter anyway.

2).  You said in class at UD once that you aren't really interested in learning the Tridentine Mass.  Has living in Rome changed your mind?

Not really.  I understand and sympathize with Catholics who love the Extraordinary Form and want to see it used more widely and frequently.  If I were a pastor, I'd certainly make every effort to learn the form and celebrate it regularly.  As a religious priest serving in an academic setting, there aren't many opportunities for me to preside at Mass in any form.  But quite apart from these practical considerations, I cannot find any substantial flaws in the Ordinary Form of the Mass.  The current translation is a disaster, and there's ample evidence that the newest translation will have its problems too. . .but at the very least we will have language that doesn't read and sound like people gathering at WalMart to pray that the Eucharist "have an effect in their lives."  And for the record, I do not buy for one second the traditionalist pose that the E.F. is the only valid, only real, only True/Good/Holy Mass of the Ages.  Like all liturgical texts and practices, the E.F. has a history of origination, development, change, decline, revival, etc.  Jesus and the apostles did not write the E.F. at the Last Supper.  And neither did they compose the O.F.  The O.F. can be celebrated with reverence, great solemnity, and bring God's people closer to Him.  I'll end this by saying that I am 100% in favor of celebrating the O.F. ad orientum.

3).  Fr. Z. had a poll going about whether or not the Vatican ought to start using that big sedan chair for the Pope during processions into St. Peter's.  What do you think?

My immediate reaction upon hearing the suggestion was NO!  The last thing any pope, especially this pope, needs is to appear to be even further removed from the people.  Then, Fr. Z. posted an article by a security specialist who made a good case not only for security and visibility but also for relieving the Holy Father from that long walk up the aisle, a walk that usually precedes 2 to 3 hour liturgies.  I think a good compromise would be for someone to design and build a less throne-like sedan chair. . .something tasteful, elegant, but not quite so garish as we have seen in the past.  But even then, as I imagine being at the Vatican and seeing BXVI being carried in, even then I get sort of queasy and wonder if there isn't a better way.  If you can't tell, I don't have much taste for the Imperial Papacy and its trappings.

Fr. Bob's Philosophy Problem

So, you go to Fr. Bob with marital (!) problems and he reads the Wedding at Cana story to you.  And even though you ask him good questions about how this story to relevant to your difficulties, all Fr. Bob will do is re-read the story. . .again and again.

Is Fr. Bob stupid?  Is he being coy?  Zen-like?  What!?

None of the above.  Fr. Bob is an extreme practitioner of a PoMo theological innovation called "narrative theology" (NT).   Since modern science has eliminated metaphysical problems, we can leave aside all that medieval mumbo-jumbo about cause, being, essence, nature, etc.  But leaving aside metaphysical questions in philosophy means leaving aside all of the theology that this sort of philosophy supported, that is, centuries of traditional Roman Catholic theology.

No problem.  Modernism has us covered.  Well, except that postmodernist philosophies have weakened the modernist's strangle on claims to rational truth by pointing out that all truth claims are made within an interpretative field; therefore, truth can never be evaluated from a non-interpretative framework, including the rationalism.  IOW, logic/science/reason are not privileged means of examining the truth claims of other human ways of knowing; they themselves are subject to evaluation.

If Catholic theologians "forget being" and "go beyond metaphysics" AND abandon the modernist grand narrative of Logic and Science, where does this leave them?

Telling stories.  The basic (very, very basic) premise of NT is that all the metaphysical speculation of scholastic theology and all the high-minded rationalism of modernism obscure the gospel story by loading it down with the yoke of post-testament philosophical problems, problems not found in the stories themselves, problems not even implied by the stories.  The way out of this mess is to simply return to the narratives of the gospels and connect them up with the everyday lives of real Christians. 

So, rather than spending a great deal of time worrying about the metaphysical problems of the resurrection or proving within scientific probabilities that the resurrection occurred, narrative theologians simply say, "Here's the resurrection story. . .what did it mean then, now, and for the future?"  Their concern is that we choose the gospel narratives as true descriptions of how our ancestors in the faith understood their relationship to God and how the gospel story shaped their lives.  Having chosen these narratives, we make them our own.  NT does not claim that the gospel stories are merely stories meant to inspire good moral behavior--that's just early 20th-century Protestant liberalism, the social gospel.  By making the gospel narrative "our own," we adopt the worldview of the narratives as our primary interpretative lens for seeing and understanding the world.

This approach poses no great difficulties for Catholic theologians until we start to ask philosophical questions about the narratives.  Now, narrative theologians will cry foul and assert that getting away from philosophical questions is exactly what they are trying to do.  But here's my point about Fr. Bob's pastoral counseling method:  you can't just tell a story and wait for enlightenment to strike.  Stories provoke questions within a context.  The storyteller needs to be able to understand the questions and apply the story accordingly.  This doesn't mean that the storyteller has to adopt complex neo-Platonic metaphysical categories to do his job, but he cannot avoid philosophizing if he is to do his job.  If we take philosophy to be the love of wisdom, then the pastor confronted with a difficult pastoral situation will need to love wisdom in order to be of assistance!  Wisdom is exactly what's call for here.

In order to make a point, I've done a poor job of describing NT.  Narrative theologians do not reject all philosophy as pointless.  However, you will find some in the Catholic world who use a bastardized form of NT to undermine our philosophical tradition in order to arrive at theological conclusions more in line with their reforming ideologies.  I've seen the pattern over and over again:

Complex theological system taught at elite theological school --> system filters down through journals, popular accounts in books, etc. --> enterprising individual simplifies the system and gives it a "sexy spin" (e.g., links to eco-concerns, etc,) and offers workshops --> religious, priests, DRE's, etc. attend workshops --> return to convent/priory/parish --> offer classes to those interested, etc.

What happens at each stage of this process is that complications and nuances are dropped off for the sake of simplicity.  Arguments are replaces by slogans.  And the original intent of the system is reduced to a trendy way of exercising one's will over some problem in theology.  I've seen this sort of thing happen with the Myers-Briggs, the Ennegram, eco-theology, process theology, men's theology, ritual studies, and on and on.

What shortcuts this sort of devolution is a healthy does of philosophical inquiry!

Coffee Bowl Browsing

[NB.  Websites display ads relative to the geographic location of the accessed server.  IOW, the ads I see here in Rome may not be the ads you see in the US or the UK, etc.  If a link is leading you to a site with inappropriate content, just let me know.]

Though not the Final Step of our nation's sink into debauchery, it's one of the last few:  male brothels.

And in related news:  do you know an adulterer?  Do these sorts of polls bug you?  I always get the feeling that they are used to normalize aberrant behavior:  "See!  It's OK.  Everyone's doing it."  

"America Rising": this anti-B.O./Pelosi/Reid vid is all over the internet.  I've watched it two or three times and for some reason it's just not pushing any of my buttons in the right way.  Though I agree with the basic message, something about it just doesn't square up. . .I dunno. . .it could be that the vid starts off by using "we" to describe BO supporters.  Since I've never thought of BO and the Dems as our Savior and His Cloud of Angels, the sense of betrayal that the vid tries to convey falls flat.  I just kept thinking:  "Who's 'we,' buddy?  You got a mouse in your pocket?" 

Andrew Breitbart launches BigJournalism!  I lie awake at night thinking of ways not to make this man mad at me. . .

Gulp!  Trendy, modernist French bishop gets booed at Mass!  And not a few French grannies go at him for his ridiculous rainbow vestments.  I'm not in favor of booing anyone at Mass. . .however, from what I'm reading about this bishop, he should have been prepared for far, far worse.

I sent this to my dad. . .he's a gun safety instructor for the state.

Lots of Geek Cupcakes!

We used to call this semiotic dissonance.  Now we call it global capitalism.

Tired of being plain ole "Mister" or "Misses"?  Get a royal title!

Love harder and more faithfully

[Repost from one year ago today. . .I've been pecking away on an Epiphany homily since Friday, but it won't come.   The idea is either too big or too small for a homily. . .]

Christmas Week (T): 1 Jn 4:7-10; Mk 6:34-44

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

Convento SS Domenico e Sisto, Roma

How casually do you use the word “love”? How quickly does it trip off your tongue when necessary, yet means almost nothing at all? Or, are you some kind of Christian freak who uses “love” to mean Love and in doing so, really mean it? In English, superlatives like “awesome,” “greatest,” “wonderful,” are quickly emptied of their strictest meaning by meaningless repetition. I listened to an American comedian over the weekend who riffed on the overuse of the word “awesome.” He noted that Americans will describe hot dogs as “awesome.” He asks, “What does the next astronaut do when he lands on Mars and receives a call from the President asking him to describe the Red Planet? ‘Mr. President, Mars is awesome!’ ‘You mean like a hot dog?’ ‘Um, well, yeah, but like a billion hot dogs!’” See the problem? When everything is awesome, nothing is awesome. If love can mean something as trivial as “I don’t hate you…much” or “this is my preference,” then love is emptied of its meaning. So, for Christians, what does Love mean?

In his first letter, John writes: “…everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.” God is Love. Now, the first thing we must do is quickly move beyond any vacuous secular notion of love and settle firmly in the middle of the Christian tradition. Love is not a fluttering stomach, or a swooning head, or a surge of hormones. Those can be signs of love, but they are not Love Himself. If we are to know God, we must love. And we are capable of loving because God, who is Love, loved us first. Since God is the source and destination of our love, when we love we come to know Him. But if our love is to be anything but an abstraction, we must love each other; that is, our love must be for other people. This means we come to know each other in and through God as God knows each of us.

How is this possible? How is it possible that we, mere humans, can come to love another as God loves us and come to know Him and others all the while loving? In his 2005 encyclical, Deus caritas est, our Holy Father, Benedict XVI, writes: “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction”(1). We just celebrated the event: the Nativity of the Christ Child. We have just met the person—fully God, fully Man—Jesus Christ. In this event and this person, we have Love given flesh! To participate in this event, our baptism, and to meet this person, in the Eucharist, our lives as “mere” humans are transformed; we are given new life, a new horizon, a fresh ambition; we are given a decisive direction, set on an unsullied path, and gifted with every grace we need to arrive in His divine presence whole and secure. The Christ Child—human and divine—is Love in the flesh. Know him and know the One Who sent him: God.

This messy business of loving sinful men and women is no less messy because we must do so with and through Love Himself. But loving God and one another is one superlative that will not be emptied by overuse. Quite the opposite: “God sent his only-begotten Son into the world so that we might have life through him.” The longer and harder and more faithfully we love, the more we come to our perfection in this flesh and blood life of Christ.

Infinitely Weird Fat Head!!

"Bob" left the following little puddle in one of the comboxes below. . . 

You infinitely weird Fat Head, [great opener, seriously]

  

People are appalled that you DO post the stuff you do. [well, a small vocal group seems to be appalled, but from what I can tell there are about four of you and three of the four are the same person hiding behind various fake ID's. . .remember:  I can see ISP addresses.] 

Got that???? [Yes, you disagree with me.  I got that.  And. . .???] 

It's simple. Even you should grasp it. [I do grasp it quite well.  I grasp that a tiny little group of my readers don't like my anti-B.O./anti-Left liberal posts so they scream bloody murder in an effort to intimidate me into being quiet. . .is that about right?] 

You are declaring your in control of a bunch of crap that's run amok and you're PROUD of it. [Define:  "run amok."] 

You are the biggest jackass EVER.  [You could be right there. . .] 

Please tell me how this is supposed to help. . .I mean, it's funny and all. . .but not of much practical use.  

I love "infinitely weird Fat Head," by the way!

Bob, just FYI:  I worked in an adolescent psych ward for almost five years.  I was the Team Leader, the disciplinarian, absolutely nothing you can say/write/think can even come close to the verbal abuse I endured for those four-plus years.  I've had every imaginable bodily excretion thrown, smeared, or spat at me.  You name it, I've either dodged it or wash it off.  And just like the hysterical, out of control teens that called me those names and flung their bodily excretions at me, you aren't going to get your way with me either.  Not by acting the attention-seeking adolescent anyway.  If you would like to chat privately about what's bothering you, leave your email in the combox, and I'll contact you. . .Just to be clear:  I'm not having this discussion in the comboxes with you or anyone else.  

Coffee Bowl Browsing (Mini-Edition)

Apparently, being tattooed, shirtless, and generally unkempt is required for mafia membership

Zombie Rabbis gather on the beach at sundown. . .OY!

The priests of the Church of Global-Warming preach, "Don't believe your lying eyes!"

Eastern Potentate demands Papal submission

Maxims and sayings of St. Philip Neri (H/T: Patrick Madrid)

Coffee Bowl Browsing (Remembering the '00's Edition)

Apologies for the sparse posting over the last few days. . .around 11.2o p.m. New Year's Eve, lightening knocked our internet connection out.  It wasn't restored until 11 a.m. New Year's Day.  Then last night around 7.15 we were knocked off-line again.  Connection restored about an hour ago.

Anyway. . .on with Coffee Bowl Browsing!

The 100 Most Iconic Internet Vids of the '00's.

100 Best Movies. . .how many have you seen?

10 Best Debut Novels. . .I've read only three of them.

50 Best Albums of the Decade. . .I'm not a music fan, so I'll just take their word for it.

10 Most corrupt politicians from Judicial Watch

Happy 2010!

Felice Anno Nuovo!

Thank you all for your support:  the hits, the comments, the emails, the books!

Happy 2010. . .!

Stories aren't enough!

As noted in a post below, there are some contemporary theologians and philosophers of religion who are challenging the dominance of what they call "onto-theological thinking," that is, following Nietzsche and Heidegger, these folks argue that it was a big mistake for the Church's earliest theologians to translate the Biblical witness of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob into the Greek language of substance metaphysics:  "Yahweh" becomes "Being Itself."

The identification of Abraham's God with Plato's One seems natural enough when you consider Exodus 3.14, "I AM that I AM" (or any of the dozens of renditions).  With a name like "I AM," you are inviting metaphysical speculation on the nature of existence and your place in the scheme of things.  If God is not a being like all the others in the world, and yet He somehow manages to exist . . .how exactly are we supposed to understand what it means to exist but not as an existing thing?  Aquinas' answer:  God is not a being; He is Being.  He doesn't exists; He is existence.

Now, we could interpret the last two sentences above in purely metaphysical terms.  "God" and "Being" are two names we give to the persistence of existing.  No bible necessary here.  We could also interpret those same two sentences in a purely Biblical sense, using Exo 3.14 as our text and show that "I AM" is a religious and not a philosophical concept.  But as Gilson argues in the post below, this sort of splitting your worldview up into separate parts in order to keep them compartmentalized is dishonest.  So, an honest believer's religious, philosophical, theological, etc. worldviews need to be consistent with one another.

Aquinas, wanting to be consistent, uses the first part of his Summa to address the question of who and what God is.  To keep this post within a reasonable word count, I will simply quote Brian Davies on Aquinas' notion of God:  "God. . .is the beginning and end of all thing, the Creator of the world which depends on him for its existence. . .Aquinas also holds that God is alive, perfect, good, eternal, omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient. . ."(129).*  Taking up the characteristics usually assigned to The One of Platonic metaphysics, Aquinas attributes them to God and then argues that though we can have some limited knowledge of God, we cannot know God perfectly this side of heaven.**

Skipping over a couple of centuries of development in philosophical theology, we arrive at what is usually called "the Problem of Evil."  In the past this argument has been more or less used by religious skeptics and atheists to poke holes in theism.  For some, it's THE argument against theism and moves them to quit religion entirely.  The classical form of the argument goes something like this:

1. God is omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient.
2. Evil exists.
3. Therefore, one or more of the "omni" attributions in #1 must be false.

#3 here is usually taken to mean that God cannot be all-knowing, all-powerful, and everywhere present if evil exists.  He could be a combination of any of the two but not all three.

There are hundreds of different reasonable responses to the Problem of Evil.  I'm keen on the Free Will Defense myself:  evil is allowed by God so that human freedom may be maximized; or since God wills that human freedom be maximized, He allows evil, which inevitably results from the abuse of human freedom.  This is basically Aquinas' response, so we know it's the correct one.  :-)

This is an example of philosophy helping theology untangle a problem.  However, couldn't we say that philosophy caused this problem in the first place?  There would be no Problem of Evil if we had resisted the temptation to translate Yahweh into Being Itself.  Yahweh is not presented in scripture as possessing the three-omni's of Plato's One.  When Yahweh is addressed as "All-powerful Lord," He is being praised in emotive language and not assigned the philosophical label "omnipotent."  Etc. for the other two-omni's. 

Our Nietzschean and Heideggerian theologians/philosophers would have us abandon the God of Plato's metaphysics and simply stick with the Biblical God of Abraham, etc.  This notion of "forgetting metaphysics" has a number of different names in the academy, but the most common is "narrative theology."  Generally associated with the Yale Divinity School, narrative theologians are impatient with complex metaphysical problems and all the messy philosophical waste that seems to be secreted from the history of onto-theological discourse.  Their goal is to rescue biblical revelation from the clutches of onto-theological-philosophical obfuscation and return it to the center of the Church's communal life.  This strikes me as a important consideration for the development of a Catholic theology of preaching. 

However, in theology more generally, how we go about separating out philosophy from narrative in the biblical witness is beyond me.  We could, I suppose, focus only on metaphysical language (being, cause, essence, etc) and remove it from our theologizing about revelation.  But then that leaves us unable to ask epistemological questions (i.e., how do we know?).  We could just say that philosophy is really about wisdom and telling stories is the best way to disseminate and promote wisdom.  I wouldn't disagree entirely with this, but we are still left with deciding what counts as wisdom and what doesn't.  We also have the problem of interpreting and applying a story's wisdom to concrete situations.  That's called hermeneutics.  And it comes with a whole mule-load of philosophical considerations. . .and so on.

So, our theological enterprise is not doable without philosophy.  We might disagree about which philosophical approach to take, but philosophy as a way of thinking and talking about problems in human discourse is a non-negotiable.  It's here to stay.  To paraphrase an old prof of mine:  "Philosophy always seems to be its own undertaker!"

*"Aquinas on What God is Not," in Aquinas's Summa Theologiae:  Critical Essays, ed. Brian Davies, Rowan and Littlefield, 2006, 129-144.

**It is this "divine hiddenness" that causes some sceptical philosophers and theologians to question the possibility of knowing anything at all about God.  Some go so far as to argue that the obscurity of God--intended or not--is sufficient reason to withhold belief in His existence.  The argument goes, if God loves me and wants me to be saved; and if believing in God is all-important to my eternal salvation; then revealing Himself to me would be an act of salvific love, while remaining hidden is an act of cruelty.  I'm skipping over several crucial steps in the argument, of course, but you get the idea:  divine hiddenness is an epistemological nightmare.