The Crisis of Bad Preaching: Redeeming the Heart and Way of the Catholic Preacher

by Joshua J. Whitfield

Publisher:

Ave Maria Press

, 2019

Overview

The Crisis of Bad Preaching is an audacious response to a long-simmering pastoral crisis: poorly prepared, often stale, and largely irrelevant homilies that are fueling the mass exodus of people from the Church.

Echoing Popes Benedict and Francis, Rev. Joshua Whitfield confronts what is perhaps the most common complaint of Catholics around the world: hollow, vacuous preaching. A parish priest in Dallas, Whitfield encourages fellow preachers to profound renewal, reminding them that preaching is not just something they do, it is essential to who they are.

Catholic preaching today often achieves the opposite of what it should, which is connecting the People of God with the Gospel of Christ in a compelling and motivating way. With an insider’s candor, biting honesty, and persuasive conviction, Whitfield stresses that preachers need to return to this ideal because the wellbeing of the Church depends on it.

More than just another how-to book, The Crisis of Bad Preaching is at once deeply challenging and uplifting and full of practical advice for a reversal of the status quo.

In Part I, Whitfield explores the essential role of the preacher as a public intellectual and member of the communion of preachers that spans the history of the Church. Whitfield offers advice about which great preachers—from Origen, Augustine , and Aquinas to Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bishop Robert Barron—to study and what to learn from them. Whitfield also explains why preachers must submit in humility to the fullness of the Church—its teachings, authority, practices, and structures.

In Part II, Whitfield explores the important habits of prayer, preparation, cultivating rhetorical skill, and learning to take full advantage of both positive and negative criticism. He explains how the way of the preacher must be the way of the Holy Spirit and argues that without the preacher opening his heart to the fire of evangelical proclamation, he will lack the capacity to preach the transforming grace of the Gospel, his mandate.

In a brief epilogue, Whitfield encourages ten habits for listening. Addressed to both laity and the ordained, he asserts that fixing preaching will take the concerted effort of all members of the Church.

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Key Features

• Challenges readers to find new approaches to rhetoric, preparation, and delivery
• Provides tips for how clergy and lay people can work together to face the crisis of bad preaching
• Offers simple steps to begin to eradicate this long-simmering pastoral crisis and reconnect Catholics to the Church

Contents

Part I: Redeeming the Heart of the Preacher

• The Preacher as Public Intellectual
• The Communion of Preachers
• The Preacher and the Fullness of the Church

Part II: Redeeming the Way of the Preacher

• The Preacher at Prayer
• The Way of Preparation
• The Way of Speaking
• The Way of Criticism
• The Pentecost of Preaching

• Epilogue: The Way of the Listener

Endorsements

Priests and deacons, add this book to your library! Fr. Whitfield has given us a vital and important work for our time. He reminds all of us who preach how we can fulfill this calling with passion and power—and help renew not only our preaching, but also our Church.

Greg Kandra, The Deacon’s Bench

Rev. Joshua Whitfield believes that the cure for the crisis of preaching in the Catholic Church is not for the preacher to learn a few practical skills. Good preaching flows from the being of the preacher and so it is impossible without a deep life of prayer and study. He pulls no punches. This book offers just the challenge that we need to hear. It is beautifully written and filled with wisdom.

Timothy Radcliffe, O.P., Former Master of the Order of Preachers

How can we ever hope to reach the lost if we continue to deliver homilies that don’t engage and inspire? Joshua Whitfield urgently calls on preachers, and all those who work with them and hear them, to reexamine the importance we place on our Catholic preaching. His historical perspective is illuminating and his insight into taking control of one’s message will resonate with anyone who has ever felt a homily wasn’t working as it should. He reminds us of the privilege we have in preaching the Gospel, and that when done well, it will prepare our people to receive Jesus. This book will convince you that the New Evangelization starts in your pulpit.

Michael White and Tom Corcoran, Authors of Rebuilt

Product Details

• Title: The Crisis of Bad Preaching: Redeeming the Heart and Way of the Catholic Preacher
• Author: Joshua J. Whitfield
• Publisher: Ave Maria Press
• Print Publication Date: 2019
• Logos Release Date: 2022
• Pages: 164
• Era: era:contemporary
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
• Subjects: Catholic Church › Sermons; Catholic preaching › Methodology
• ISBNs: 9781594718359, 9781594718366, 1594718350, 1594718369
• Resource ID: LLS:CRSSBDCTHLPRCHR
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2024-03-25T19:30:57Z