LAY WOMEN (OR MEN) ARE NEVER TO BE ENTRUSTED WITH HOMILIES AT MASS

Anon says:

Dear Bishop Drennan,

The Instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum (2004)  seems pretty clear.  Are you exempt from it or are you just ignoring it?  Are there other factors that allow it to be over ruled?

 

Please explain.

 

If you are not being obedient to Rome, do we laity or the priests have to be obedient to you or any of the Church's teachings?

 

Whose Church is it, Jesus Christ's, or yours, or who ever gets to make the rules behind the scenes?

 

Just thought I would ask.

 

Kind Regards,

 

Anon.

On the First Sunday of Advent, at the Vigil Mass celebrated by Monsignor Brian Walsh at the Palmerston North Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, the homily was given by a woman.

The homily, termed 'a Reflection' was delivered by Lynette Roberts-King, a manager at the diocesan office. The cathedral newsletter explained that during Advent certain women would be giving 'Reflections' with insights from the Sunday Scripture and from 'the presenter's personal faith and life journey'.

For obvious reasons, I am not one of those women. However I'm more than happy to give my 'insights' from my personal faith and life journey on this blog, on the subject of women giving the homily at Holy Mass. 

It is expressly forbidden by the Church. The Instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum (2004) states:

(64) 'The Priest celebrant may entrust (the homily) to a concelebrating priest or occasionally according to circumstances to a Deacon, but never to a lay person. ... This practice is reprobated, so that it cannot be permitted to attain the force of custom.

'(67) Particular care is to be taken so that the homily is firmly based upon the mysteries of salvation', not on one's 'personal faith and life journey' 'expounding the mysteries of the Faith and the norms of Christian life from the biblical readings ... and providing commentary on the texts of the Ordinary or the Proper of the Mass.

'(24) The Sacred Liturgy is quite intimately connected with the principles of Doctrine, so that the use of unapproved ... rites necessarily leads either to an attenuation or the disappearance of that necessary link between the lex orandi and the lex credendi.' 

In other words, leads to the faithful no longer praying as they believe, and subsequently so no longer believing what they pray. Hence the gradual loss of belief in the Real Presence. 

'(9) Abuses are often based on ignorance, in that they involve a rejection of those elements whose deeper meanings are not understood and whose antiquity is not recognised.' 

Monsignor Brian Walsh is a nice man, and when pressure is applied to nice men to give 'greater recognition to women in the Church', they may lack the know-how to resist. 

'(11) The Mystery of the Eucharist “is too great for anyone to permit himself to treat it according to his own whim so that its sacredness and universal ordering would be obscured”. 

'(27) Anyone who acts thus by giving reign to his own inclinations, even if he is a Priest, injures the substantial unity of the Roman Rite, which ought to be vigorously preserved, (28) and becomes responsible for actions that are in no way consistent with the hunger and thirst for the living God that is experienced by people today.  

'Nor do such actions serve authentic pastoral care … are not conducive to true renewal ... they introduce elements of distortion and disharmony. The result is uncertainty in matters of doctrine, perplexity and scandal … and vigorous opposition ... all of which greatly confuse and sadden Christ’s faithful in an age when Christian life is particularly difficult on account of the inroads of ‘secularisation’.

As a woman, although not one likely to be invited to give a homily at Holy Mass, I vigorously oppose any such innovation, which can only be a not-so-subtle paving of the way for women in the priesthood. 

'(12) ... It is the Catholic community’s right that the celebration of the Most Holy Eucharist should be carried out for it in such a manner that it truly stands out as a sacrament of unity, to the exclusion of all blemishes and actions which might engender divisions and factions in the Church. 

‘(4) It is not possible to be silent about the abuses, even quite grave ones, against the nature of the Liturgy and the Sacraments as well as the tradition and authority of the Church which in our day not infrequently plague liturgical celebrations. ... In some places the perpetration of liturgical abuses has become habitual, a fact which obviously cannot be allowed and must cease.' 

As Edmund Burke memorably said, 'the only thing necessary to the triumph of evil is the silence of good men'. Or women.