The Churches

Tuesday, September 02, 2003

HEAVENLY LITERATURE . . . Let us consider again Sunday sermons in RC churches. I have a modest proposal which has either been tried by the worthies who run seminaries and found wanting or has not been found at all, namely a course of Literature for Sermons. It would call on the body of literature out there in which the future preachers of America might immerse themselves on their way to the pulpit.

I do not mean merely literate and classic sermons, such as by Jonathan Edwards or Lacordaire or even Fulton Sheen, though wide reading in oratory is a good idea, but also a selective presentation of stuff that a preacher might use, from Stoics of old to essayists of today, such as William Hazlitt, contemporary of Wordsworth and Coleridge and in our day Joseph Epstein, author of recent books on snobbery, envy, and ambition, or Robert Vivian, whose Cold Snap as Yearning is near-pastoral in its keen observation of people and their reactions.

Near but not pastoral, however, nor are the others. These essayists did not write for the pulpit, which is just fine. There should be less from the pulpit that's conventionally though for it. The two contemporaries I name would be perhaps shocked and amazed to find themselves as helping successors of today's versions of Jonathan Edwards. But preachers need lots of literature and not just for quoting but to change their own lives. (How widely read are they, beyond newspapers? But that's another whole story.) This course I suggest would provide some spoon-feeding of what is written in a literate and more philosophical vein that if delivered right might leave pew-sitters with something that pops into their heads mid-week or years later, preventing the shameful act and enabling the noble.

INTERRUPTIONS . . . These are some of the great thoughts I have while worshiping at the church of my choice, when I am not recalling days as a mass server at that very church's altar. I seem often to recall various catastrophes that befell -- leakages and excretions, for instance: throwing up during an early week day mass or sneezing messily without access to handkerchief which my mother had not strongly enough reminded me to take along.

The catastrophic sneezing was spotted (during a sermon) across the sanctuary by one of many priests on hand, this being in the days of very solemn high mass, when choir poured forth its premeditated strains from the loft and incense burned and bells rang and all heaven broke loose.

In my case it was more than that, as nasal passages poured forth unpremeditated material. A hand went up and came back requiring immediate attention. There was the cassock sleeve, to be sure, but that was hardly a good option. Besides, there was more on hand (in it, actually) than your average cassock sleeve could be expected to accommodate.

Well. A blessed inability to remember descends. All that remains beside the largely suppressed memory of what had come forth is the priest across the sanctuary, who knew and felt my pain but could not help finding the whole damn thing funny, which it was.