OCR Text |
Show BETTER PREACHING NEEDED. Father Phelan Talks Plainly on the Matter of Sermons. From San' Francisco comes the report re-port that only 3 per cent of the population popula-tion go to church on Sunday, says Father Phelan of St. Louis, in the Western Watchman. St. Louis does better than that, and she is credited with 5 per cent. The figures for this city are too low. There are 60,000 Catholic Cath-olic families in S. Louis, and that should give us 150,000 church-goers. Now there is r.ot an old priest in the city who would place the average 'Catholic Church attendance at more than 75.000. We feel that this is above rather than below the true figures. If half of the Catholics of St. Louis absent ab-sent themselves from church on Sunday Sun-day in this city, what shall we say of the Protestants? We shall say nothing: noth-ing: in the first place, because we don't know; in the second place, because it is none of our business. But what shall we say of this startling- showing of Catholic negligence? A good number of Catholics- must work on Sunday. Servant girls, street car employees, railroad hands and ca terers of one kind or another, are not free to go to mass every Sunday. But all told these do not number 10.000. Illness Ill-ness might account for the absence of. say 5.000. This- leaves. 60,000 absences unaccounted for. Of these we might say that 20,000 go to bed on Saturday night very sleepy and with a heavy head. An empty bed at midnight generally gen-erally means an, empty pew in the morning. We might put down 20,000 more, because they are careless, about their religious duties. This givesi us 20.000 that are "just naturally no good." Now this is the situation that confronts us priests. What -shall we do about it? In the first place we mig-ht as well be plain-spoken we must preach better. bet-ter. Bad preaching is worse than no preaching. By better preaching we mean kind, fatherly, earnest and con-Htant con-Htant admonition in the confessional and out of it. The Holy Father in his address to the parish priests of Rome at the beginning of Lent, told them "to preach; to preach earnestly; to preach constantly." We imagine the same adj-vice adj-vice might be given to parish priests everywhere. It is a matter we cannot leave to assistants. People' do not pay much attention to assistants when, they assume to direct the congregation. The parish priests should know their people and their circumstances, that they may not be unreasonable or accuse them when they are not guilty. An unjust accusation launched against a people does great harm, in that it disgusts them with church discipline. As a rule, the people of a parish are anxious to save their souls. Those whom we have put down as "careless" should be first reached. More earnest appeals to their faith and greater attention to their temptations will generally result in their reclamation. When they resume re-sume their place among the "regulars" the "natural good-for-nothings" will take their place. In that way there will be a circulation of grace throughout through-out the entire body parochial, and there will be hope as long asi there is life. The work of the parish priest will be best shown in the attendance at Mass on Sunday. This is the portion of the care of the flock that falls specially to him. He must above all know- his people, if he. would exercise over them any authority or influence. He must mix with them if lie would I exercise his authority and influence profitably. A standard of observance, must be st up in the parish and a, healthy public opinion created, that will condemn mass-missing as disgraceful. dis-graceful. A Catholic who will stay in bed on Sunday morning when Mass is going on Jin his parish church should be ashamed to look a priest, or even a fellow fel-low Catholic, in the face until he should have gone to confession and by a public communion repaired the scandal. scan-dal. But something must be said in extenuation ex-tenuation of this lamentable' neglect. Many of our parishes are too large. It may be too late to divide thm now, but there was a time in the past when they oould and should have been. ii-vldd. ii-vldd. and thousand of souls would have been saved thereby. Then something some-thing might have been done in some churches to seat the people. We should either do away with pews altogether, as they do in Europe, or we? should see that they are occupied. The best way to fill thfiri is to rent them: if we can't rent them we should see that they be made adjuncts of religion by affording comfort and convenience to the people. In many of the churches of this city strenuous efforts have been j put forward to reduce to a minimum this pw nuisance, and we are glad to learn that in some instances they have been productive of good. We look to the parish priests of this city to correct cor-rect this terrible evil of Mass-missing in this city, and to bring back our good people to the spleniid observance thst characterized them forty years ago. |