im sitting in the front pew, listening to the priest. and he delivers his homily ala boy abunda. as in. complete with 'heller', with the 'look', and all the badingspeak. the congregation keeps laughing. i giggle everytime a gay reference comes up.
"a priest must be able to deliver his homily with style! or else you will feel shortchanged" he intones!
it got me thinking...
at first i felt it was wonderful that the church has relaxed a bit to allow priests to have more entertainment value. "that way, the parishioners become entertained and would want to attend church services again.." so goes the rationale.
but now, ive started to rethink my position on this. i feel sad that the church has to 'compete' with all other forms of entertainment in media to be considered worth going to. the clergy will resort to becoming more entertainers than preachers. what happened?
it is a different world now. i could imagine a time way back when people go to church because there is an intrinsic benefit to praying, to listening to the homily, to receiving the sacraments. the value for church-goers then was the experience of God inside the church, within the sacraments, within the service. that itself was enough for people to attend. but given that communities then were much smaller, there was also that sense of belonging that a parish community gave.
but not anymore. in this time of hyper-exposure to all sorts of media, messages, entertainment and information, the value of praying just diminished. prayer in itself, a beautiful source of tranquility, of strength and joy, was no longer a sustainable model (unless of course there is an urgent need of a miracle). prayer and the sacraments (like the Holy Eucharist) needed to have entertainment value to be listened to or attended. and if parishioners feel that the priest is not as 'effective' (or entertaining), they just attend mass in other parishes. (like forum shopping for lawyers)
that's how things are now, i guess. and unless the trend gets reversed, i am sure to see more of Fr Boy Abunda in next sunday's mass.
9 comments:
cc - I thought that there have always been priests who try to put a lot of entertainment value in their homilies.
my question is: are you seeing more priests of this type these days? Here in Bangkok, I dont see such types. Personally, I would prefer priests whose homilies do not have entertainment value but have deep doctrinal and spiritual basis. I go to church to pray, to ask God to give me the strength to fight my "battles" for the coming week and in my life in general, to ask forgiveness for what I have and have not done, and, most of all, to communicate with God - asking for the grace to see his plan for my life. My problem with priests these days is not the entertainment value but the doctrine and piety in their homily, which I think is not deep enough.
Since your blog started last year, I have been a regular visitor. Your blog is great! When it comes to discussing your faith, it comes steep in doctrine. And of course, the other things you write about - they are topics I can truly relate with. Keep it up!
This is my first comment and expect to hear more from me - if its ok with you...... Ingat!
hello pb! (sorry, shortcut na) thanks so much for sharing! id be honored to get comments from you. i didnt even touch on the doctrine and piety yet. but i know what you mean. i go to a parish regularly, still being 'run' by foreign missionaries of a religious order. i have to say that i find them exercising a more sincere practice of faith compared to some pinoy priests. and a lot less of the theatrics. i appreciate that.
A mass is meant to be a banquet. It is just appropriate to give it a makeover and make it party. As a matter of fact it is an open house party where everyone is welcome. I would like it evolve to a celebration where there is real dialogue between the priest and the congregation. That way the church becomes dynamic and real. I'm sure that is how Christ intended it to be. None of the pompous self-serving hypocrisy that we commonly see.
You debate over semantics and languages. If the message is a universal truth does it matter how and in which language it is delivered? Isn't getting the message across more important than tradition?
Wasn't there a time when the gospel needed to be read in Latin?
If you don't speak the listener's language, how effective of a speaker would you be?
It's not about being entertaining....it's about speaking to a person so he/she would understand what you want to say. It's about, simply, being a good communicator.
Now stop being an old-fashioned fart and understand that things do change and there is no use wishing for the past.
hello quent. id have to disagree. the mass is a sacrament, a ritual celebration. that celebration was meant to have form and order. a party is a party. a priest could engage the congregation in a myriad other ways aside from the mass. that is how dialogue and interaction could happen. but the mass serves a purpose different from this. the church may have failed to reach out because it has failed to use all the other ways to engage its congregation.
hello lobster. yes, the mass has evolved in recent times but only to make it understood better. think about broadcast news and entertainment. why such different ways of delivering messages? because they have different objectives. you dont see serious newscasters 'speaking the language' just to get a message across, do you? they dont have to 'entertain' just so people would watch them. because there is an intrinsic value in information.
are they more effective? i really do not know. was the priest able to get his message across? or was he remembered more for his flamboyant flair and style than for what he had to say? im still giggling at the way he was using "heller".
is it being an old fart to want the message be delivered appropriately? again an analogy in the real world. politicians who end up singing and dancing, do we not cringe? wouldnt we rather wish that they deliver their positions on economics, etc. straight-faced without having to croon and sway?
the church, the faith it represents, is my true north. an unwavering point on the compass. i need to see it unchanging. i need it to be bigger than me, than trends and fashion and politics. and that much i see in the mass and the sacraments. i may not always agree but i know they remain there, on that point on the compass of my life. and there is much humility and consolation in that knowledge.
I think it's okay to have priests like him. Maybe you just perceived his being "showbiz" from a different point of view. Maybe it's not competing with media. Maybe it's delivering the message the way it can be understood easily - the way people can easily open themselves to. Kasi you're right - it's a different world now. Or baka nakakita sya ng natutulog during the homily kaya ginawa nyang happy ang atmosphere. :D
Well, as long as he doesn't go bastos or "green" and he still talks about the Gospel, I think it's fine. :)
>Paolo<
Hmmm..... I see your point how they should maintain a certain level of respectability in how they deliver their message. I'm guessing though he won't be using that style of delivery often... Depends on the message I would guess. At any rate he was effective in the sense that he and, in a sense, the gospel had a lasting impression on at least some of the listeners.
hello anonymous one. i guess it's a fine line between being a good communicator and straying away from the message of the gospel.
hello again, lobster. yes, respectability! impression he made that is for sure.
i agree with you, cc.
i cringe too, at the thought of messages delivered in a sensationalistic approach. i must admit that i listen to them at times just to get giggles on a bad day.
i prefer a more solemn approach to a ritual which promotes stronger faith - regardless of the religion.
the church has been trying hard to get back its lost sheep the past few years, even resorting to holding a mass at a beach, just because there were more people there than at the church.
i think the 'hip' oral stylistics of priests are just few of the symptoms of the slowly-crumbling respectability of the church in the public's eyes.
would one listen to an organization preaching godliness in a holier-than-thou voice, when it has been plagued with myriad of unresolved scandals over the years?
dirty politics, sexual misconducts, and paid cover-ups.
not just the government!
:-)
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