Fr. McTeigue is concerned that listening is replacing preaching. Listening has its place in the life of the Church, but when listening becomes the ultimate principle, one must ask: who, then, is teaching?
A friend recently his attention to a document of Pope Benedict XV’s Humani generis redemptionem, about the urgency of preaching. Vocabulary has shifted.
Back then: redemption, death, altar, Cross, obedience, eternal life, belief, conversion. This is preaching that confronts the absolute choice between life and death.
Yet today we are told instead to sit in circles, to dialogue, to wait for vague murmurings of the Spirit from people who have given little evidence of prayer or study.
We are told not to insist on doctrine and dogma, but simply to be “attractive,” as though Christ were merely one option among many competing for the attention of busy modern people.
Something is wrong.
Loading ...
What would happen in the confessional if all the priest did was listen? Certainly listening is a necessary part, but it is ordered to counsel, correction, and teaching. Listening is not a virtue if it is passive and not ordered to a response.
My experience is that people who stress listening are hiding the qualifier, that only certain people should be listened to, and Jesus, the magisterium, and the church fathers aren’t among them.
Matt Fradd has an interview with Bp. Schneider in which the good bishop makes much the same point regarding the recent consistory. The talk there was all about evangelizing, but who are we evangelizing, and with what, if we don’t have our doctrine in alignment?! How can we preach Christ and Him crucified, if we don’t know Who Christ is and what He came to do, for instance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkpzxMM2oZI, starting around the 11:41 mark.
Re-Imagining St John Chrysostom seated at the bingo tables listening, dialoging, synodaling.
When the Apostles sat around for 10 days after the Ascension talking amongst themselves nothing happened. Once the Holy Spirit came they did not dialog among themselves, they went out preaching the Good News. Our Bishops should know what to do, but seem afraid.
I think it was the late Catholic author Solange Hertz who wrote that the Devil was at work any time someone said, “Let’s all sit in a circle.”
I’m grateful that Father at the parish I currently attend is pretty doggone good about preaching. I take issue on occasion with his preaching — I wish Father, or pretty much any clergyman, would draw the distinction between the immigrant and the thief, plunderer, and invader — but he’s unambiguous and doesn’t hesitate to call sin by its right name.