Fr. Z's Blog

From a reader:

We have a new pastor, and I am trying desperately to acclimatize myself to his liturgical style.  I’m wondering which things I should be concerned about and which I should just deal with.

1. When he give his homily, he comes out of the sanctuary and wanders back and forth across the front pews and down the main aisle, dramatically delivering his homily.  My wife is hard of hearing (she wears two hearing
aids) and she relies on being able to read lips on the one portion of the Mass which is not printed in the missalette.  She cannot hear him or read his lips for the approximately half time his back is turned toward her.  I also notice the Deacon has begun this practice (I’d imagine at the direction of the pastor).

I am not aware that there is any legislation which specifically forbids a bishop, priest or deacon to remain in the sanctuary to preach.  In fact, sometimes it is necessary to exit the sanctuary in order to reach the pulpit.  In the ancient basilicas the ambo was outside the sanctuary.  Before microphones and sound systems, pulpits and ambos were often situated in the nave in help people the better to hear.  I have preached in churches where I had to leave the sanctuary to get to the pulpit. 

In fact, the GIRM says, I believe:

136. Sacerdos, stans ad sedem vel in ipso ambone, vel, pro opportunitate, in alio loco idoneo, profert homiliam; qua finita, spatium silentii servari potest. … The priest, standing at the chair or at the ambo, or, when appropriate, in another suitable place, gives the homily; when the homily is completed, a period of silence as the occasion allows may be observed.

Sacerdos, stans… The priest, standing.  Not Erraticus circumvagans… suas profert nugas.

That said, it is clearly not part of the Catholic experience from the earliest centuries that a preacher should walk around. 

In the ancient Church the preacher, usually the bishop, would sit.  A while back I posted a PODCAzT about a sermon of St. Augustine who describes a serious disturbance in the cathedral of Carthage where he was supposed to preach and he went down out of the sanctuary/apse to an unaccustomed place in the nave.

For centuries in the pre-Conciliar form of the Roman Rite the preacher is accompanied to the pulpit by the master of ceremonies who stands nearby.  The celebrant and preacher are not to be left alone. I am summoning to my imagination’s inward eye what a roving preacher and shadowing m.c. would look like.  Stupid, I’m thinking.

I suppose the roving preacher in the Catholic Church comes from the imposition of the man’s own personal quirk on the people of God.  This may be in imitation of Protestants, who almost by the very nature of much Protestant preaching need to impose their own personality on the sermon. 

In  my opinion and experience, the Catholic preacher who does this is a narcissist.  He is drawing attention to himself.  He imposes himself, overlays himself, for his own needs, on the rite, the Word of God, and the people.  His needs first… every else? Forget it.

Are there exceptions?  Of course.  But not many.

Perhaps we can learn something about the idea of preaching outside the sanctuary, and strutting about like a peacock, from the Church’s rubrics for the sign of peace.  This is another occasion in which priests will jack-in-the-box out of the sanctuary where they belong and, sometimes, go to absurd lengths to see and be seen, to demonstrate how caring, warm and matey they are.

The General Instruction of the Roman Missal states that funerals are one of the rare occasions when the priest is permitted to leave the sanctuary for the sign of peace.

Sometimes there are exceptions, such as processions with the Eucharist.  There is also the beginning and end of the funeral.  If there is a person of note present, the celebrant can leave the sanctuary to give the sign of peace. These are exceptions to the general rule that the priest belongs in the sanctuary.  Period.

The sanctuary is the place of the priest, symbolically and liturgically the head of the Body the Church gathered in the sacred space of the church.  The head of the assembly has his place.  The Body, assembled in the nave, have their particular place.  The priest moves into the sanctuary, as into the holy of holies, the even more sacred space within the sacred space, as if into the bridal chamber.  He should stay there for the whole sacred action.

In the older form of Mass, the priest would remove his maniple before preaching.  This was a symbolic gesture to show that he was, as it were, stepping out of Mass for the sake of the sermon.  He began and ended with the sign of the Cross.  Returning to the altar, he replaced the maniple.   After the Council great effort has been made to connect preaching to the liturgical action itself.   The sermon is generally preached from the place the Gospel is proclaimed.  The sermon is supposed to be part of the liturgical action, connected to the proclamation of the Word of God.  

Darting about with a microphone is at striking variance with the post-Conciliar vision of the homily.

So, there are some liturgical directives that suggest something about this.  There are some theological and liturgical points that suggest something about this.  There is common sense, which clinches the deal.