Catholic Sunday Preaching:

1791-1975

With a Foreword

by

John Tracy Ellis

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 75-36695

All Rights Reserved

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition

Foreword — By John Tracy Ellis.........................................................5

Editor’s Preface...............................................................................................7

The State of the Question............................................................................................9

1. Colonial Preaching: the Tridentine Norms...................................10

2. Our First Laws on Preaching: the Synod of 1791.........................12

3. Preaching and the First Seven Councils of Baltimore (1829-1849)......................................................................................14

4. The First Plenary Council and its Sequel (1852-1866).................17

5. The Preachers’ Vademecum of Plenary Council 11(1866-1884)...19

6. Preaching After the Third Plenary Council (1884-1905)..............25

7. St. Pius X, Catechetical Pope: Acerbo Nimis, 1905.......................30

8. The 1918 Code of Canon Law and Sunday Preaching.................34

9. American Homiletic Trends, 1935-1963......................................38

10. Vatican II and Sunday Preaching: the New Dilemma................43

11. Toward a Pastoral Solution........................................................48

Notes...............................................................................................51

In recent years I have frequently asked lay friends and acquaintances the question: What is the greatest affliction you suffer from the clergy? The answer has invariably been: the pulpit. This negative note is not the happiest way to begin a comment on Father McNamara’s scholarly monograph, even if it does represent a widespread attitude among American Catholics; and it may be added not unfairly, I think, a justifiable attitude. In a National Opinion Research Center report published early in 1975, the investigating team’s conclusions contained this sentence: "On two important measures of professional performance, sermons and sympathy in dealing with people, the decline of the priestly image in the last twenty years has been very great." [The Critic (January-February, 1975), p. 20]. To be sure, there are conscientious bishops and priests in the United States who would not think of ascending the pulpit unprepared. It would be pleasant to believe that they constitute a majority, but the evidence to the contrary warrants a doubt that this is true. When I speak of ‘preparation,’ I mean precisely that and no more, for no sensible person expects every homily heard at Mass to bear the eloquence of a Bourdaloue or a Lacordaire.

The present work makes it clear that exhortations to careful preparation have been one of the most repeated and insistent themes treated in the vast amount of synodal and conciliar legislation examined and analyzed here. At the level of the Universal Church these date from the Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566) through Pius X’s encyclical, Acerbo Nimis (1905), the instruction of the Congregation of the Council (1935), and the directives of Vatican Council II. And on the American scene the data have been drawn from the Diocese of Baltimore’s first synod (1791) through numerous diocesan synods and councils to post-conciliar guidelines of the last decade. It is obvious, then, that the Catholic Church of the United States has not been lacking in legislation about how best to fulfill the people’s need for doctrinal and moral instruction in one form or another; in other words, theory there has been in abundance, but practice has been something else.

In that connection I am reminded of an incident that happened many years ago that brought home to me the proper and responsible attitude toward preaching in a telling and practical way. John M. McNamara (d. 1960), Auxiliary Bishop of Washington, was one of the most appealing and effective preachers of his day. I once asked him how he had acquired his marked skill. His answer was immediate and direct. "When I was a young priest at Saint Patrick’s Church here in Washington," he replied, "one of my duties was, of course, to preach. Sunday after Sunday I would go up to the pulpit and look down to the searching gaze of Thomas J. Walsh (d. 1933), United States Senator from Montana, and I would say to myself: ‘Now you can’t fool him!" It was a simple tale, but it taught a lesson that I never forgot. The 1970’s find the pews occupied by an enormously increased number of highly educated minds over the early years of the present century of which Bishop McNamara spoke, and of these it can also be said that they "can’t be fooled." If, then, the critically prone congregations of today are to find the satisfaction they deserve in homilies and sermons, preachers must be more than ordinarily alert and prepared if they are to escape the charge once levelled by John Lancaster Spalding, Bishop of Peoria:

One is ashamed to appear in rags; but tattered speech is more disgraceful, for it is a more certain indication of a mind made up of shreds and patches. (Aphorisms and Reflections, Chicago, 1901, p. 146).

Every effort to shed light on the history of homiletics among the American Catholics, and to show the periodic attempts to bestir the clergy to a more professional attitude in this respect, is to be applauded. For that reason this thorough and documented account is more than welcome, and in publishing it the Word of God Institute is serving well the purpose for which it was established. The reader will find here not only the canonical record concerning preaching, but also the varied response that this obligation called forth. For example, in more than one diocese there was insistence that the summer heat should not afford an excuse for the omission of instruction at Sunday Masses, even if the substitution should take the form of "the slow and clear reading of a list of the ‘rudiments... of faith," as used for years in the Diocese of Hartford. Noteworthy, too, is the author’s treatment of the distinction between the formal sermon and the simpler catechetical instruction; and the regulations that frequently warned against too many appeals for money from the pulpit are worthy of mention.

(Matthew, 13:23).

John Tracy Ellis

The Word of God Institute is indeed pleased and honored to be able to present Catholic Sunday Preaching: The American Guidelines, 1791-1975, to the bishops, priests and faithful of the Church today. Ever since the founding of the Institute after the National Congress on the Word of God, we have recognized that any lasting renewal in biblical preaching can come about only when it is based on the soundest intellectual foundation. Consequently, we have supported and are supporting a variety of scriptural, theological, sociological and communications endeavors which aim at bringing about a greater understanding of the relationship between preaching the Word of God and the generation of faith in Jesus Christ.

This book is the fruit of a historical research project commissioned by the Institute and which has been in the process of investigation for the past two years. All who read it cannot help but be impressed by the historical scholarship as well as the perceptive insights provided by Father McNamara. A graduate of Georgetown University (A.B.), Harvard Graduate School (M.A.), and the Gregorian University in Rome (S.T.L.), Fr. McNamara has served as an ordained priest in the Diocese of Rochester, N.Y., since 1936, and in the Church History department at St. Bernard’s Seminary in Rochester since 1938. The author of several historical books and a frequent contributor to Catholic encyclopedias and dictionaries, Fr. McNamara has also served as Advising Editor, Catholic Historical Review, and Vice-President of the Catholic Historical Association, and is Visiting Professor of Church History at the Toronto School of Theology.

This work of Fr. McNamara’s should prove of immense value to the bishops of the country as they come to grips with the increasingly difficult questions of evangelization, catechesis and liturgical celebration. Father McNamara gives a detailed and carefully researched background for understanding the present state of affairs in the American church as well as making valuable suggestions for current legislation. He pinpoints vividly the need for a greater correlation of doctrinal preaching and scriptural-liturgical-celebration. He draws upon the great catechetical history of the country to justify and explain his position.

While this is by no means an exhaustive study of the origins of the contemporary homiletics, Father McNamara does open the doors to future research and theological speculation. It is to be hoped that his work will become required reading in every seminary as part of a course in the theology of preaching. Liturgists and scripture scholars will also find Father McNamara’s observations of immense help to themselves in charting future directions in the life of worship in America.

The Word of God Institute is deeply grateful to Father McNamara for having so successfully undertaken this demanding task, to Monsignor Ellis for his generous endorsement, and to the financial contributors’ who made this research possible. It is our hope and intention that this will be the first in a series of projects which will assist all those in the Church who are charged by the Lord with "proclaiming the Good News to all creation."

John Burke, O.P.