In my Catholic days, the worship service was (IMO) beautiful, Scriptural.... and was always well planned, well thought-out, and simply very well done. After I left the RCC and explored Protestantism, I passionately missed the excellent worship of Catholicism. But.... the sermons in my Catholic church..... they were not only short (a blessing) but usually empty. Don't get me wrong, I LOVED our pastor. And respected him enormously. THIS meant that I forgave the short, void, obviously not prepared for sermon. It was the time to read the announcements, etc. To make matters still worse, the "sermon" was mostly just advertisments for the RC Denomination.... Catholic this, Catholic that.... one long RCC commercial....
The best thing the new pope could do is mandate that all Catholic priests take 4 courses in preaching at any Protestant seminary. Church attendance would go way, way up. Catholics would begin to learn stuff and grow.
As I experienced Protestantism, THAT is what stunned me: the quality of the sermon. That church may have given little thought to the worship service, but this man actually PREPARED the sermon - and wrote an excellent one at that! And people were actually listening to it!!!!!!!
Of course, eventually I found the Lutherans...... they do BOTH very well :lol:
A blessed Easter to you and yours....
- Josiah
