Clearing the mines
Washburn, Sussane
From the archives Throughout 1999, Commonweal will be celebrating its 75th anniversary. Here from the August 5,1943 issue is "Short and Select" by the late J.F. Powers. TP suppose a...
...Who hasn't suffered the pedant trying to be a regular fellow...
...He knew that something different—I would say more—was necessary...
...And the regular fellow—with a real feeling for baseball, say—trying to be dark and tragic...
...at least they do to go over....The conclusion often drawn from this proposition only seam *0 be trtie, that is, mediocre congregations require mediocre sermons, although this might explain why so many whose talente must certainly He elsewhere see it their doty to become preachers, as if fulfilling a law of supply and demand...
...In America it JL;is a somewhat Protestant interest, perhaps...
...Powsrs I I...
...mere is no evidence that they are, from the sermons of Jesus...
...TP suppose a writer going to chord* has nuaetfian f an average interest in the sermon...
...And still there must exist many misapprehensions about me sermon in high places, keguiarly we w#he congregation are exposed to a series of sermons dealing with the sacraments, say, in which they are served up cold, defined, with little or no interpretation, as though definitions were elements in physics and if you got the right ones in you'd get the right result, that is, the truth comprehend* edL.X)ur Lord, however, did not teach by abstractions...
...But the worst is that so many excellent men talk down to congregations all their life, always with the hope of reaching great numbers at a level mat language, theirs at least just won't reach without perverting its purpose—assuming that souls are to be found there actually...
...Great sermons require great congregations...
...CerteinlyittcaAbeasourceofmuchwoe.Imysdfhave suffered all my adult life from something I can only describe as My Sunday Sickness, This is what comes from listening intently during the sermon- Sleepers and the indifferent Awake are never afflicted, and tot mey are dead or indifferent to the preacher is no test of their faith: It could be a testament to their wisdom, but very likely they are there, as they should be, for the Mass, and in mat circumstance is e^o/tr»e differences between Catholic and Protestant and also the reason our sermons on the whole arfe no better than they need to be...
Vol. 126 • July 1999 • No. 13
