Teach the Truth from the Pulpit, Pastorally

John L. Allen, Jr., Vatican reporter extraordinaire from the National Catholic Reporter, interviewed Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, soon after the Cardinal arrived in Rome yesterday.  Cardinal Wuerl makes some great points about the issues facing the Church today and the qualifications the new Pope will need to address them.  I commend the interview to your reading list.

By and large, I agree with the Cardinal, but one comment in particular caught my eye.  In response to a question about engaging Catholics who have views that differ from the Church’s views, the Cardinal said, “We have to work with people.  In the pulpit we’re supposed to present the teaching with all of its unvarnished clarity, but when you step out of the pulpit you have to meet people where they are and try to walk with them."  This comment jumped out at me because a friend recently shared that he wished that we would take a harder line on Church teachings in our homilies. 

Now, I’ll be the first to agree that there are definitive moral truths, and that it is the duty of the clergy to embrace the truth, teach it and do our level best to live by it.  But these moral truths do not stand alone and apart from pastoral considerations.  Not all people are in the same place on their faith and moral journeys.  Now multiply that fact by several hundred parishioners in a church on any given Sunday morning.  A straight, unvarnished presentation of Church teaching will be understood and appreciated by some, will be lost on others, and will drive others away.  In my humble opinion, that’s not effective evangelization.

The purpose of a homily is to make Scripture relevant to the listener today – to present Scripture as the invitation to a conversion of heart that it is.  The challenge for the preacher then becomes one of presenting the truth while meeting the people where they are and trying to walk with them.  Preaching has to be truthful and pastoral at the same time.  It has to be faithful to the truth while acknowledging that living up to what the truth demands is not always easy.  It has to present the truth as a wonderful gift from God, while admitting that we’re not always ready to accept it.  Cardinal Wuerl seems to recognize this when he says earlier in the interview that accepting the truth may require that we change our lives, “but you can accept the message and then work at changing your life.”