Not defending the use of AI, but plenty of people who grew up going to Mass on Sunday know that priests often recycle old homilies, deliver lazily written homilies or homilies that were clearly pulled from the internet, or just skip them if they couldn't think of anything that week or are running late for something.
Absolute worst was when an intelligent priest put in incredible effort, only for it to go over the heads of the yokels in their parish who want a simpler homily.
If it actually went over their heads, then the effort was wasted. I've heard the goal of preaching described thus: "Address the mind to move the heart to change the will." If you haven't addressed the minds of the people you're speaking to, your preaching was a failure.
NB if the people in the parish don't want to change their will, and so close up their minds, that's a different issue.
> If it actually went over their heads, then the effort was wasted. I've heard the goal of preaching described thus: "Address the mind to move the heart to change the will." If you haven't addressed the minds of the people you're speaking to, your preaching was a failure.
Reminds me of Pauls retort about speaking in tongues with no translator. ;)
The idea being, that if it serves nobody but the person themselves, they should keep it to themselves, if you're going to "share" with the whole congregation, then it should edify the congregation.
1 Corinthians 14:27-28 (KJV)
"27 If any man speak in an unknown tongue, let it be by two, or at the most by three, and that by course; and let one interpret.
28 But if there be no interpreter, let him keep silence in the church; and let him speak to himself, and to God."
Indeed. As one priest in graduate school said to me (and with which I agree), one should generally keep homilies short, simple, clear, and to the point. In most cases, it isn’t the proper place for an extended theological meditation.
Of course, people ought to realize that the purpose of the mass is not the homily, but the sacrifice of the eucharist, which is the “source and summit of the Christian life”.
Yeah I think that happened to me yesterday. We had a new priest (actually retired and visiting) and the homily was 10x more engaging than the normal ones. I fear that the rest of the congregation didn't like that he wasn't using cheap techniques like constant repetition and that the content was more elevated about what was really meant by the authors of part of Genesis.
Why do you fear this? Did you consider discussing this with some of the congregation to know for sure?
I don't mean to pick on you personally, but your comment and the parent comment (among others here) both project feelings across wide groups of people in a hasty generalization. Their feelings could be easily confirmed with human connection. I think the article makes it clear the Pope charges priests with knowing their community. This is good advice for all of us though! So, not just you, but you, the parent poster, anyone else, if you have these fears, if you don't like your priest's homily, please, talk to the proper people about them instead of (or at least in addition to) complaining online to others! This is way outside our sphere of influence.
I'm an outsider (not Catholic, raised Methodist) who just happens to be attending church this year; I'm not a member. The church is interesting because it's an immigrant church which is truly global (in Berlin with English speaking people from all over the place).
'Fear' is a strong word but I mean it in the same way as I do when talking about reading comments in the Wall Street Journal- I'm afraid by the realization of who I'm surrounded by in the world. With that said I really, really appreciate the social justice statements I hear from the pulpit and from the congregants.
The Catholic church is universal, so you are not seen that way :). Setting that aside, my comments weren't really about a particular religion, but about not making hasty generalizations.
That said, you don't have to be a member of the same church to discuss things with the people in your community. Again, a large part of what the pope is saying is to be present in your community, which requires maintaining that human to human interaction.
How are bad human-written homilies worse than AI written ones?
But if you like the idea: you don't need a priest for that at all! A QR code with a prompt will do just fine in this case.
There is no person in the world that is capable of weekly delivery of meaningful insight into your life. Or any topic, to be honest. AI won't solve that, it just "recycles old homilies".
Again, not defending the use of AI. My comment was more as a general response to people who maybe don't have a real life experience of listening to Catholic homilies and have unrealistic ideas of how much effort priests would normally put into them pre-ChatGPT.
In retrospect, I probably should have replied to a specific comment.
> people who grew up going to Mass on Sunday know that priests often recycle old homilies
That doesn't seem bad? You'd think a lot of the topics would be evergreen, and not everyone would be there for every service. So after an appropriately long time, why not recycle one that worked well?
The keyword is "often". As in, it's repeated throughout the year. The homily is supposed to be, but isn't always, an explanation of the Gospel story that was told just before it. So there really shouldn't be homily repeats within the liturgical calendar.
You are supposed to attend Mass every Sunday, so I don't think the priest is intentionally accomodating infrequent churchgoers at the expense of the regulars. And it's usually not a sermon that worked well, just a long meandering story, typically about a pilgrimage or retreat the priest went on 10 years ago, that doesn't really have a point to it.
Absolute worst was when an intelligent priest put in incredible effort, only for it to go over the heads of the yokels in their parish who want a simpler homily.