My friend, Stephen Adubato, in his unfailingly provocative and entertaining Substack "Cracks in Postmodernity," finds that religious order priests give better homilies than the diocesan clergy.
Correct. But.....
Obvi, men drawn to religious orders are moving away from mundane, no-frills, bread-and-butter parish Catholicism. They want to be extreme, deep, rad, alternative: missionaries, vowed friars/monks/hermits, scholars, artists, mavericks and mystics. Every order, like every lay renewal movement, is a specific counterculture, an alternate to the mainstream, creative and original in accord with the charism of the founder(s). So, we can safely expect something different, novel, creative, offbeat, inspiring-or-annoying from religious order priests.
My wife and I are church-hoppers. We regularly attend perhaps a dozen churches in Jersey City and near our home in Bradley Beach at the Jersey shore. If you add in vacations and visits to our children we are in at least 25 parishes and hear from maybe 60 priests a year. We recognize other church-hoppers but we never speak to each other in accord with the unwritten code intuitively obvious to all us OCD, introverted eccentrics. (Recall the Ed Norton character in the early part of Fight Club?) I am no number-obsessed sociologist, thank God, but I know what I am talking about!
Religious order priests are more often progressive: perhaps 25% militantly so. No more than 10% are conservative, and probably not as assertive. In recent years, anecdotally (this stuff is immune to measurement), progressive, gay cultures seem to thrive more in religious orders and seminaries like the Jesuits, Oblates, Franciscans. Usually, the white-robed Dominicans are more old school, Thomistic, scholastic. Maryknollers (whom I know well), close to the poor around the world, lean liberal politically but abstain from the culture war. If a parish is hanging out rainbow banners, BLM proclamations, and obnoxious "all are welcome" signs, it is probably run by a religious order.
Secular priests are unexceptional. Actually, they are... amazingly, reliably, predictably... moderate, calm, thoughtful, balanced, moralistic, non-controversial, informed, short-winded, punctual, prudent. As the mass is the same everywhere you go, so secular priests are the same wherever you go. Some are more amusing, musical, informative, prayerful, erudite, emotional, playful, serious, narcissistic, comedic, eccentric, cranky and so forth. You almost never hear heresy. You won't hear much politics, from the right or the left. You will not stand up and storm out in protest. You will not be moved to tears of contrition or surges of joy.
It is a credit to our seminaries. They vet, generally well (ok, we know of many exceptions. This is a difficult art, not a science!). Priests are generally intelligent, mature, emotionally balanced, pious in a lowkey, wholesome way. The years of theology(4 or so) are well spent as their preaching is reliably within the boundaries of our deposit of faith. They are like our Church itself and its institutions (buildings, schools, sacramentals, magisterium, episcopacy, sacraments): rocklike, stable, plain, ordinary, unpretentious, durable, permanent. They are phenomenal, miraculous in the fluidity, volatility and chaos of (post)modernity.
My own favorite priest at the moment is about my age, pushing 80, well past retirement, but offers mass about 3 days a week and hears my confession about twice a month. His homilies are painfully boring, simplistic, moralistic, mundane. Mercifully, he often refrains from giving one and when he does they average 2-3 minutes each. He is a humble, sweet, loving, good, holy man. I dearly love him. Going to confession to him is like going to a gelato shop in Rome. Short and sweet.
When I am bored by a priest's homily, I give thanks that this ordinary man has done the extraordinary: given his life, surrendered romance/sex/wife/kids/legacy/homestead/affluence/willfulness, to bring us the Eucharist every day, absolution when we have sinned, healing when we are sick, prayer-guidance-support-correction when we need it, burial when we are dead.
The ordinary, mundane, normie parish priest is iconic of Jesus in his Eucharist demeanor in the tabernacle: quiet, small, plain, unpretentious, humble, and quietly surging with holiness, charity and mercy.
May our Lord continue to call many ordinary men to the priesthood, and fill them quietly with extraordinary holiness!
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