WE'RE MILLIONAIRES, SO TO SPEAK
DISSEMBLING, PRIESTLY STYLE
MORE STRAIGHT TALK FROM BAKER
Dear Friend of Catholic Answers:
When I say "millionaires," I'm not speaking in terms of money. I'm speaking in terms of postings at the Catholic Answers forums. Last Friday saw the one-millionth message written at our forums.
The writer is a man from Ohio named Edwin. What is coincidental is that last week Edwin also became the first forums member to have written over 10,000 messages. Two other members have each written more than 9,000 messages, and 140 members have written at least 1,000 messages.
Among Catholic Answers staff members, our Forum Administrator (yes, that's his real name--I don't know what his parents were thinking) has written more than 2,000 messages, apologist Michelle Arnold has written more than 1,400, and apologist Fr. Vincent Serpa has to his credit nearly 1,200. Me? Only 758, which puts me out of the running for even a consolation prize.
NEITHER THE SPIRIT NOR THE LETTER OF THE LAW
The rubrics of the Mass are quite clear. This is nowhere truer than when it comes to preaching at Mass.
The rule is very simple: Homilies are restricted to bishops, priests, and deacons. No unordained person, meaning both laymen and religious, may give a homily. This has been the rule for, oh, a couple of millennia now. But a priest in the Diocese of Rochester has a different take on things. He put these comments in his column in his weekly bulletin:
"While it is true that a lay person may never preach the homily, this does not mean that a lay person may never preach at the liturgy. The homily is only one form of preaching, that is done by a priest or deacon at [the] liturgy. The law specifically allows a lay person to preach at a liturgy by using words other than 'homily' which are referred to as 'explanation' of the readings and speaking after the Gospel.
"The laws in question are found in the liturgical books and in other liturgical documents such as the 1973 'Directory for Masses with Children,' the 1988 'Directory for Sunday Celebration in the Absence of a Presbyter,' and the 1984 'Book of Blessings.'"
The priest goes on to say that "authority to preach at the Sunday Eucharist is received from the local ordinary"--which is misleading. The local ordinary cannot grant what he does not have the authority to grant, and he does not have the authority to allow laymen to preach the homily, which is really what is being talked about here.
The priest says that his bishop has "made it clear that the presider speak immediately prior to the lay preacher," but in his own remarks the priest is clear enough in his intentions: He will say a few words and then let a lay person give what really is the homily. The trick is that no one will call it a homily; it will be called an "explanation" of the Sunday's readings.
Let's look at the justification given for this workaround.
The priest says that authority for laymen preaching, so long as the preaching is called an "explanation" instead of a "homily," comes from three sources. Is that so?
1. The "Directory for Masses with Children" concerns only Masses for children. Those are Masses with special Eucharist prayers and with other special provisions. The Mass celebrated at your parish on Sunday, even if it includes a large number of children in the congregation, is not a Mass for children as envisioned in that document. Thus, any special permissions given in the "Directory" simply don't apply at regular Sunday Masses.
2. The "Directory for Sunday Celebration in the Absence of a Presbyter" indeed does concern itself with what happens on Sunday, but its concern is what happens on Sunday when there is no priest to celebrate Mass. What the parish ends up with is a prayer service or Communion service, not a Mass. In such a situation it is okay for a layman to speak about the readings, and by definition it is impossible for a priest to do so since there is no priest present! But there is a priest present at each Sunday Mass, so this "Directory" also is inapplicable.
3. Third comes the "Book of Blessings," which, perhaps not too surprisingly, deals with blessings and not with homilies or "explanations." Portions of the "Book" refer to blessings that may be given by unordained persons, but one can't jump from that to a permission for those same persons to preach at Mass.
In other words, the priest has provided no justification whatsoever for his practice of having laymen give homilies. He has not given a good explanation for having "explanations," but he has given a good example of priestly dissembling.
BISHOP VASA DOES IT AGAIN
Some time back I mentioned in this E-Letter Bishop Robert F. Vasa of the Diocese of Baker. I will be able to meet him, finally, on Thursday when he gives a talk ("The Proper Understanding of Subsidiary in the Church") at the Catholic Leadership Conference, which this year will be held in Phoenix.
CLC is a lay-run gathering of leaders from dozens of Catholic ministries. We get together annually to figure out how to work with one another more effectively and how best to focus our work toward the good of the Church.
Bishop Vasa caused a bit of a stir three weeks ago when, in a column written for his diocesan newspaper and reprinted at the diocesan web site (www.sentinel.org), he wrote about the Charter for the Protection of Children, which, he said, "has been interpreted to include mandatory 'safe-environment training' for all children of or connected with the Church." This includes both children who attend parochial schools and children who do not. The training for the latter apparently is intended to adhere to a format applied nationally.
Bishop Vasa noted that the Diocese of Baker is handling such training for the children in its schools. After all, the Diocese can design that training as needed to conform to Catholic moral principles. But the Diocese has "not taken on the nearly impossible task of assuming responsibility for every child in the Diocese."
It is likely that this position will result in having the Diocese of Baker be declared to be "Not in Compliance" after the annual "Charter Audit." Such a finding may result in a "Required Action" which, Bishop Vasa said, "I am prepared, at this point, to ignore."
"I say this," he explained, "not because I resist efforts to protect children but rather precisely the opposite." He said there are questions he needs answers to "before I could mandate a Diocesan-wide program of 'safe-environment training.'" Among those questions:
"Do such programs impose an unduly burdensome responsibility on very young children to protect themselves rather than insisting that parents take such training and take on the primary responsibility for protecting their children?"
"Is is true that Planned Parenthood has a hand [in] or at least huge influence on many of [these programs]?"
"Is it true that other groups, actively promoting early sexual activity for children, promote these programs in association with their own perverse agenda?" (In a later column Bishop Vasa named SIECUS, which has said that "incest between adults and younger children can prove to be a satisfying and enriching experience.")
"Do such programs involve, even tangentially, the sexualization of children which is precisely a part of the societal evil we are trying to combat?"
"[Do such programs] invade the Church-guaranteed right of parents over the education of their children in sexual matters?"
Bishop Vasa concluded his column by saying that "even the possible unsatisfactory answer to any of the questions above leaves me unwilling and possibly even unable to expose the children of the Diocese to harm under the guise of trying to protect them from harm." In other words, if the programs that are being insisted upon don't really live up to Catholic moral standards, he won't use them.
I think I'm going to like meeting a bishop who thinks this way.
p.s., If you have a comment about anything appearing in this E-Letter, please do not hit your Reply button. Instead, go to Catholic Answers' discussion forums at
http://forums.catholic.com
where you may post your comment in the forum dedicated to the E-Letter. You will find a thread devoted to this issue of the E-Letter. Feel free to add your comment in the form of a reply to that thread.
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