Cut the cackle, Fathers

Your editorial “Better Preaching” (November 19-25) got me thinking of all the sermons I’ve listened to in 45 years in our parish. It looks as if the Church may at last take steps to improve the quality of the Sunday homily.

Our parish is fortunate in having a priest who says: “If you can’t get the message across in ten minutes, you’ve lost your listeners!” Some years ago we had a priest who used three words when one would have done and took 20 minutes before ending.  He would then summarise everything for another 15 minutes.

No-one quite knew what he was driving with the endless verbiage.  It’s at times like this that I feel priests should be married so they would have a wife to criticise their efforts at Sunday lunch! Perhaps the diocese could run refresher courses in preaching — perhaps in the priests’ annual retreats?

In my younger days the priest delivered a sermon but now it is called a homily. I have consulted two different dictionaries and both define a homily as a “tedious discourse.” Lets change that!

Terry Spengler, Cape Town