Do Not Preach Like This….

February 7, 2013 By Kathy Schiffer 24 Comments

Priests and deacons:

Do not do this. Ever.

Do not ever embarrass or harrass your parishioners, making a jerk of yourself while you run some poor guy into the ground.

Hat tip to the fascinating website 22 Words, which brought this to my attention.

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I am glad the minister did that. Those auditoriums are designed for good acoustic performance, which means that the speaker can usually hear any whispering in the hall. Incredibly distracting and rude. What is the guy doing there if he does not want to listen?
- Ismael
  
  No what that preacher did was wrong.
  
  First of all if he’s protestant (who claim to know the bible so well) he should know this verse:
  ““If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’” (Matthew 18:15-16)
  
  Hence even if that guy did something wrong, the preacher’s response was not according to the Gospel.
  
  Second: A good speaker in general, preacher or otherwise, should know not to be bothered by people talking.
  I go to plenty of scientific conferences and there are always people talking in the audience. It’s normal.
  
  Third: Getting do angry and yelling makes people uncomfortable, even if they are not the target of the anger. It’s a good way to lose your audience.
  
  Last, but not least: He sounds like a hypocrite. First he yells angrily and then he says ‘ still love you’. Sorry but that sounds as a load of bull. Maybe he was sincere, but it does not matter, his actions contradict his words.
  That is why Christianity often loses credibility: people do not act as they should. Most people do not give a hoot about philosophical questions like Aquinas’ five ways, what they really care about and what sways them is the people behavior.
  
  I do not claim that being Christian is ‘always being nice and rosy’, but at the same time there are proper ways to correct someone who is in fault… and putting them to shame for something a trivial as talking during a (most probably) incredibly boring (and long) sermon is not one of them.
  - Jennifer Olson
    
    I totally second what you said.
  - Brother Rolf
    
    Right on, the preacher is an egocentric.
http://te-deum.blogspot.com Diane K

Oh my.
Fr. JFXP

The other guy was telling his friend who is considering becoming a Christian that his pastor is the best preacher in the world, that he is a man of profound compassion and gentleness, and he’s never heard him yell once at anyone.
- http://www.catholiccrossreference.com/ Jeffrey Pinyan
  
  A++
  
  Would read this comment again
Rick Smith

On face value, it looks as though the speaker is wrong. I agree, the words ‘love you’ are thrown around too casually these days, when someone starts a sentence, ‘I love you like a brother’, be prepared for the ‘but’ and an explanation why he doesn’t, in fact, love you.
I need to be less judgmental. Like the press does so well these days, the person who edited this wants to show us only what they want us to see. Who knows what the audience member is doing and how long he has been doing it? Perhaps the speaker just has had enough. He may have gone about it in a less than appropriate manner, but we don’t know the story here. Like people who come to mass early to either pray, meditate, offer prayers that were requested, to be in the Presence, etc. Others distract them with loud talking. I can only hope those who come early to talk are discussing the readings or gospel or, perhaps, commenting on someone they know and how saintly they are.
When we see a short clip like this, its purpose is to enrage or outrage. Like the unfortunate taking of a life last year that the media edited 911 tapes to make it look as it was a race-fueled hate crime.
Let us not jump onto the media bandwagon of dragging people through the mud and sewer before they have even had their day in court.
Let us pray both the speaker and the audience member learned from this experience and grew to become a better person.
Pattie, RN

That outburst would have me walking out on the spot (not that I would ever be listening to a “preacher” in the first place!)

Only once have I seen a priest “lose it” over someone in the pews. A two year old was having a screaming, kicking , wailing melt-down, and was not responding to soothing from Mama. He asked he (twice) to remove the child, and she did not move (she was Asian….she may not have understood or she may have been too confused or embarrased, I really don’t know).

The priest angrily said “I cannot compete with THAT” and sat down and started the Offertory. Evey eye in the place was on the young mother, who DID leave later, when the child was quiet or asleep. Very odd all around….
Daniel

The Catholic Church today needs a preacher like this one to put an end to those hacking, coughing obnoxiously, talking, and in other ways disturbing the Mass in God’s sacred house. Too many people lack reverence for the things of God, and they need to be reminded (as this preacher reminded the one talking) of their behaviors they may not be aware of.
- Fr. JFXP
  
  I understand your frustration as I am a priest who has to deal with all that. But let’s remember that coughing or hacking or sneezing or a crying baby is human function. Some people read bulletins during my homily or look at the missallettes or fall asleep. No matter what I do or say they do the same thing each week. I can’t let that get to me either. But I don’t hold people up to human functions. Laughing, texting, or fooling around is altogether different. But even then I would never intentionally embarrass someone unless they were intentionally trying to embarrass me. But so far that’s never happened to me. Although I have had people make sure I see them walking out when I speak on the pro-life issue.
Lank

Kathy must belong to the “Coddle Church” not the “Catholic Church”. Some advice: if you want it your way, go to Burger King.
Blake Helgoth

St. Louis de Montfort once was preaching and there was heckler in the back. He asked him to stop a few times and when he refused, St. Louis, no small man, beat the snot out of him, then return to the pulpit and continued his preaching!
Walter Webb

The preacher was telling the congregation about the recent serious abduction of his 12 y.o. granddaughter by a known felon. The guy in the audience had been continually laughing and commenting throughout the discourse. Thinking he was just a quiet whisper, turns out he was not.
This is theoretical, but as we don’t have the whole story here, it is wrong to lynch the speaker from the very short video. If the above was the case, I don’t think using the words, ‘Never, ever’ as the headline would be appropriate. ‘Judge not, lest…’
Well, you know the quote…
Deacon John M. Bresnahan

People whispering aren’t the biggest problem anyway–the problem is people who rudely do not silence their cell phone ringer.
Once, while I was preaching, someone’s ringer (Is that the proper word??) loudly played some tune and the person couldn’t find it to turn it off–so I just stopped talking and waited at the pulpit for the person to find it and turn the dang thing off.
Many churches ( and other places) have had to put up signs to remind the careless to turn their cell phone ringers off–but that doesn’t seem to work.
The funniest incident along those lines happened when I was assisting at a funeral Mass. A woman’s ringer loudly went off right after the consecration. A woman fumbled and stumbled through her purse having a very difficult time finding the phone and figuring out how to silence it. She finally silenced it and a few moments later again we were entertained by her phone. She again had trouble digging out the phone and then couldn’t turn it off this time.
Finally, one of the undertaker’s men marched down the aisle to the woman. Wrenched the phone from the woman’s hand. Then marched to the back of the church, opened the main door and threw her phone out into the traffic on the street . It was awfully hard to keep from breaking into loud laughter as the scene unfolded.
Deacon John M. Bresnahan

Blake–St. Louis is my kind of priest and saint (He reminds me of the two-fisted priests who sometimes show up in the movies (Like Ryan’s Daughter.) But you could imagine the scandal- instead of approval- it would cause in today’s church. I believe he’s the saint who also pounded out some barflys who were harrassing parishoner’s of his as they walked by a bar they had to pass by on the way to Mass. One can only wonder what he would have done to some of the bad priests who harmed children.
John

This is what you get, however, when your denomination has the preacher and the sermon as the sum and substance of worship.
James Patrick John

The Burden is on the Speaker to engage the Audience. If you bore them or have a message that does not resonate then you will lose them. Yelling doesn’t make you a better speaker.
JW

How quickly we judge one another. Even when we don’t know the whole story.
Jim D’Arcy

Good for the minister. The talker was rude. Public rudeness seems to be pandemic. You are in church to praise the Lord and listen to the sermon. Plenty of time to talk after the service. “Could you not keep watch with me one hour?”
Deacon Greg Kandra

I know one priest who stopped the Eucharistic Prayer cold because a baby was crying, and wouldn’t resume until it was quiet. I’m told that this same priest once stopped a lector because she was doing the wrong reading and told her to find the right one and start over. (Presumably, he was planning to preach on that…)
TeaPot562

If you as a homilist embarrass someone whose commitment to Catholicism is weak, your attack could conceivably drive him/her out of the Church – out of your parish, anyway.
A bit of tolerance, or waiting until the interruption ceases before continuing seems better.
BTW, our cantor, before each Sunday mass, asks all present to “Please silence your cellphones and pagers!”. Nevertheless, we do sometimes hear a ringtone.
TeaPot562
Dennis H

There are times that I wish my Priest would have the gumption to stop and tell parishioners to show some respect to their fellow Catholic or reverence for the Holy Sacrament. Though young couples with children are the Church of the future, allowing your infant to cry loudly for 20 minutes or your toddler run up and down the pew during the complete Liturgy of the Word seems to belie common sense. Seeing teens texting on their cell phones (no, they are not using an app with the Roman Missal) during Mass is maddening and disruptive. Maybe a loving chastisement may be exactly what a person needs to help them prioritize their spiritual life. It would at least be appreciated by others being disruptive by crass behavior.
Bob

You guys think that was bad, huh????? What you saw in that video DOESN’T HOLD A CANDLE TO THIS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMJkzW6jSRE

I can assure you that this is not a work. This REALLY DID HAPPEN!