{"id":2717,"date":"2008-10-11T09:42:00","date_gmt":"2008-10-11T09:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2008\/10\/pell-on-preaching.html"},"modified":"2008-10-11T09:42:00","modified_gmt":"2008-10-11T09:42:00","slug":"pell-on-preaching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/10\/pell-on-preaching.html","title":{"rendered":"Pell on preaching"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australia’s Cardinal George Pell took a moment from attending the Synod of Bishops in Rome to chat with John Allen about what’s been happening there — and, at one point, turned to the topic of preaching<\/a>: <\/p>\n

There\u2019s been a lot of talk at the synod about the weakness of preaching. Do you think things are as bad as it sounds?<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/a>No, I don\u2019t. I can speak primarily about Australia. I was pleasantly surprised in some of the survey\u2019s we\u2019ve done of church-goers to find a high level of satisfaction with the homilies. Now, you might say the survey is skewed because we\u2019re not asking the people who aren\u2019t there, and it\u2019s possible some people don\u2019t go because they don\u2019t like the homily. But I was pleased and slightly surprised by the approval rating of sermons in Australia among church-goers, and I don\u2019t think that would all be explained by loyalty to their local priest.<\/p>\n

One thing I can say, without any fear of contradiction, is that there\u2019s immense variety in the Catholic world. There\u2019s immense variety in my diocese, in terms of levels of affluence, educational levels, ethnicity, level of church practice, and so on. These are multiplied ad infinitum across the Catholic world. It\u2019s difficult to generalize about anything, including the quality of preaching.<\/p>\n

Bishop Kicanas mused aloud about declaring 2009 a \u2018Year of Preaching.\u2019 What did you make of that?<\/i><\/p>\n

It\u2019s an interesting idea. How much will come of it, I just don\u2019t know, but it\u2019s a good idea.<\/p>\n

Is there a risk of asking the homily to carry more weight than it\u2019s meant to bear?<\/i><\/p>\n

Yes, and I also think there\u2019s also a danger that we will invest the sacred scriptures with more tasks than they were designed to carry. Newman said something like the scriptures weren\u2019t written to offer a program of conversion, but to preserve the memory of the person of Christ and his teaching.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been thinking about the World Youth Day \u2018Way of the Cross\u2019 in Sydney, which was just a public re-enactment of it, and which was a spectacular success. I think that in this new media age, we need the equivalent of the medieval mystery plays, without all the traditional distractions. I\u2019ll probably also say [in the synod] that at the time of the Reformation, we weren\u2019t the first to have catechisms, we were slow into the vernacular, and we were slow to put scripture into the hands of the people. We don\u2019t want to make the same mistake with the new media.<\/p>\n

In some ways, haven\u2019t we already made that mistake? Often Evangelicals and Pentecostals are much more media-savvy about how to bring the Bible to life, aren\u2019t they?<\/i><\/p>\n

Yes, that\u2019s probably true. But there are good things happening \u2026 the Canadian \u201cSalt and Light\u201d network, EWTN in the United States. This world is developing. In Australia, we\u2019ve just set up an interactive web site called \u201cXt3,\u201d meaning \u201cChrist in the Third Millennium.\u201d It\u2019s got 30,000 members world-wide. Especially for young adults who are in parishes, where they might find themselves a bit isolated, they can get together with friends who have similar interests.<\/p>\n

Your point is that promotion of the Bible shouldn\u2019t come at the expense of creative new modes of evangelization?<\/i><\/p>\n

Exactly.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s more at the link, so check it out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Australia’s Cardinal George Pell took a moment from attending the Synod of Bishops in Rome to chat with John Allen about what’s been happening there — and, at one point, turned to the topic of preaching: There\u2019s been a lot of talk at the synod about the weakness of preaching. Do you think things are…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-art-of-preaching"],"yoast_head":"\nPell on preaching - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/10\/pell-on-preaching.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pell on preaching - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Australia’s Cardinal George Pell took a moment from attending the Synod of Bishops in Rome to chat with John Allen about what’s been happening there — and, at one point, turned to the topic of preaching: There\u2019s been a lot of talk at the synod about the weakness of preaching. 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Prior to that, Deacon Greg worked for 26 years as a writer and producer for CBS News, where he contributed to \"The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,\" \"60 Minutes II,\" \"48 Hours,\" (Emmy Award, Writers Guild of America Award) and \"Sunday Morning.\" He was co-writer for the acclaimed documentary \"9\/11,\" hosted by Robert DeNiro. (Emmy Award, Christopher Award, Peabody Award, Writers Guild of America Award.) His radio essays were featured in the bestselling book \"Deadlines and Datelines\" by Dan Rather. He's also a two-time winner of the Catholic Press Association Award. Other places you may find him: AMERICA, U.S. CATHOLIC, CATHOLIC DIGEST, REALITY (Redemptorist Communications) and THE BROOKLYN TABLET. He also contributes homiletic reflections to the parish resource CONNECT!, published by Liturgical Publications. In November 2009, he began serving a three-year term as a consultant to the Communications Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Deacon Greg grew up in Maryland (Go Terps!) but he and his wife today live in the beautiful borough of Queens, New York. You can contact Deacon Greg at dcngreg@gmail.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/gkandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2717\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}