Posted on 12/19/2019 8:29:28 AM PST by Salvation
Monsignor Pope Ping!
Goes back to a certain Pope Francis saying to keep the homilies short.
I love this guy. Gosh I’d love to sit with his intelligfent words flowing down from the pulpit and his parishioners all around me.
All faiths seem to have about the same attention span and tolerance for a typical service. That time is about 50 minutes.
Because the Catholic mass spends 20-25 minutes on the Eucharist, and another 15-20 on the readings, gospel, collection, and petitions, that only leaves about 15 minutes for a homily.
Our Roman Catholic friends would be “woke” if they knew how long the early church services were.
Our service lasts about an hour and 15 minutes. the sermon is usually about 20 minutes long, +/- 5 minutes depending upon the topic. I remember one winter service where it was cut to about 10 min when a storm front arrived earlier than forecast.
I'd argue it's because Roman Catholic priests are trained primarily to conduct the Mass....not preach.
In reviewing degree requirements at various RC seminaries this becomes pretty evident.
No, it doesn’t. It’s been the same for decades.
That’s a good observation. I do think culture affects people’s attention span, though. When we have a visiting priest from Latin America, he’ll often speak for 30 minutes or more. Because of the time of our Spanish Mass (1:00 p.m.), it’s usually not a problem if it runs very long: the next Mass isn’t until 4:30 p.m.
However, when a priest has one Mass after another on a Sunday morning, he’s got to keep an eye on the clock. As you observe, the Scripture readings take a certain amount of time, and the Liturgy of the Eucharist another length of time, leaving a limited window for the homily.
Is Pew aware that most of those “other services” with longer sermons don’t have anything else going on, like....the celebration of the Mass?
In today’s gospel (Luke 1:25)
He will be great before the Lord,
He will drink neither wine nor strong drink.
He will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb,
and he will turn many of the children of Israel
to the Lord their God.
It is interesting to read that “He will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb,” While I have not seen any official comment, it appears to me that if John is filled with the Holy Spirit in the womb, then is he free from sin?
Good grief....are you serious?
One Priest at my church speaks seven languages.
English is number five or six on the list. Ask him to give a 57 minute sermon and he’d probably have a coronary.
We had one pastor who would finish at 12:05 regardless of when he started. He came out of the great depression era and as he put it I was a long winded preacher for a while until one little old lady who was a very faithful member of his congregation at that time got up at 12:20 and walked out. The next time he saw her he asked if everything was okay, was there an emergency or something. No she replied, my husband and I are limited on our income and Sunday dinner is our big meal of the week and I put a roast in the oven and it was set to come out at 12:30. I burned two because you preached until 1:00 o’clock and 12:45 o’clock the last two Sundays, I won’t burn another one.
Our current pastor can be long winded but usually is done 12:30 for the most part. Our biggest problem is we have a couple of members who don’t know when to shut up. In our services Sunday/Wednesday evening a deacon will take prayer request from the congregation after the last song the choir sings. We have one lady who will carry on for 10 mins. about everything under the sun, and have one request at the end.
The other is a lay preacher and he will tell you everything in the world, scripture, the miracle of medicine, damning his nephew to hell, even playing grab ass with his wife and he will never get to a prayer request and take 15-20 minutes to do it! At times he pops up in the middle of the sermon and tries to interrupt and at the end of the sermon with the spirit moving, he is the devils sprinkler system, he will hope up and tell everyone what the pastor actually meant to say or said. He’s infuriating to no end.
His wife has told him to sit down and shut up and up he goes. He’s been run out of two Sunday school classes because he won’t shut up and bless his heart if him and the other long winded lady got locked in a room with one typewriter they had to use to express themselves there would be a blood bath over who got to use the letter I on the keyboard and then it would be worn out in a couple of hours!
If we can keep these two windbags quite our service generally starts at say 11:00am and after the singing and offering the pastor will start around 11:30-11:35 and finish 12:00-12:15. Evenings are a different story, with prayer requests and the windbag show. I know some people who have stopped coming to these services because of these two windbags.
Yikes. That sounds pretty brutal. haha
If a pastor has only ONE shot a week, then his/her sermons WILL be longer. But priests can speak to us every day of the year, even twice a day, so those sermons don't have to be so long.
Also, the Church has a three-year rhythm, that is, we get different readings every day for three years, then they repeat the three-year cycle of readings.
Catholics also have confessions, novenas, Masses for weddings, funerals and baptisms, first Holy Communions, Confirmations AND the Liturgy of the Hours (The Liturgy of the Hours (Latin: Liturgia Horarum) or Divine Office (Latin: Officium Divinum) or Work of God (Latin: Opus Dei) or canonical hours,
[a] often referred to as the Breviary,
[b] is the official set of prayers "marking the hours of each day and sanctifying the day with prayer".
It consists primarily of psalms supplemented by hymns, readings and other prayers and antiphons. Together with the Mass, it constitutes the official public prayer life of the Church. The Liturgy of the Hours also forms the basis of prayer within Christian monasticism.
At our Church there is the morning prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours.
Also at 9:00 every morning there is a group of us who recites the rosary. Here we offer special intentions for people for various reasons: illness, injury, death of a spouse, hurt shoulders, etc.
There are SO many, many times that we come together that the sermons can be shorter.
I've gotten so I recognize the same sermons every three years...that's how long I've been attending Mass.
So who can blame the pastor for his/her uber-long homily when s/he gets so little time to preach? I sure don't blame them.
And those RCs who do attend each and every day are a small percentage of Roman Catholicism.
•Fewer than four in 10 Catholics attend church in any given week.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/232226/church-attendance-among-catholics-resumes-downward-slide.aspx
I've gotten so I recognize the same sermons every three years...that's how long I've been attending Mass.
So it's rinse, wash, repeat?
Boy, what you don't know about Catholic priests...
In the United States, priests must have a four-year university degree in philosophy plus an additional four to five years of graduate-level seminary formation in theology with a focus on Biblical research. A Master of Divinity is the most common degree.
They are also counselors in every aspect of human life. They counsel in confession, pre-marriage counseling, troubled marriages counseling, abuse counseling...in every aspect of human living. They visit the sick in rest homes, hospices, family homes, bring Holy Communion to the home-bound and to all the above mentioned.
They perform weddings, funerals, baptisms, first Holy Communions, annointings of the sick, Confirmations and any other special event.
They were on the battlefields during the wars, helping the injured...and giving Last Rites to the dying...even to non-Catholics who requested it.
So, all priests have a Master's Degree--their minimum in education. Many of the priests also have their Ph.D. in something else, like Canon Law.
Their sermons are a teaching/preaching/counseling tool and now you know that. .
Pax tibi.
And God bless you and yours.
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