Dishonesty in Homilies

Two people came into Church to pray, one was a Roman Catholic Cardinal in Charge of Church doctrine who prayed "I give you thanks oh God that I am not like others - greedy dishonest or like those living in Africa where AIDS is killing everyone even there we can never allow condoms to be used."

The other was an African widow dying of AIDS who stood off to the side and prayed "Oh God, be merciful to me for not refusing the advances of my husband without a condom, soon I will follow him to the grave and leave our six children orphans.

Jesus concluded – the last person went home more worthy in God's sight than the first.

The Curt Jester tells us that this was a real-life example from a homily given by a parish priest who was scoring points for a topic close to his heart. As he points out this is dishonest to the congregation and is an extremely simplistic sort of rhetoric that is all to easy to flip the other way. Sheez. Give the congregation some credit. Go read it all.

I haven't been following the story that this all illustrates but I am highlighting the homily because I absolutely despise people who put words into Jesus' mouth.

Isn't there enough in three readings, plus the psalm of the day, to craft a homily? I submit that there is. To sink as low as the example above is to show a horrendous lack of imagination, study, and scholarship. Not to mention displaying oneself as a tower of pride and disobedience.

It is true that sticking to what Jesus said might not give you the building blocks for the message that that the homilist wants to deliver. However, that probably is for a very good reason and there just might be another message there that both the homilist and congregation need to hear even more.