Irving, Texas
2021
To survey clergy and congregants regarding the state of homiletics in the Catholic church in order to support Catholic preachers in improving their homilies and leverage liturgical preaching to reconnect with disengaged congregants.
Researcher(s): Ted Whapham and Carla Pezzia
Academic Discipline: Theology (Whapham); Sociology (Pezzia)
Project Summary
Our core question for this project is “How can we improve the state of homiletics in the Catholic Church today and outreach to disengaged Catholics?” Our purpose in asking this question for the proposed project is to specifically address how we might leverage liturgical preaching to reconnect with disengaged Catholics. Through this study, we expect to develop a better understanding of parishioner grievances about preaching and the Catholic Church in general as well as ways in which we can support Catholic preachers in improving their homilies and outreach to disengaged Catholics.
What questions have you asked about worship in the past year?
We have continued to reflect on our two guiding research questions:
GQ1: How do less engaged Catholics perceive the state of the homily in the Catholic Church and in their parish?
GQ2: How can we support clergy in their efforts to improve outreach to the disaffiliated through their preaching?
In considering these questions, other questions that touch on worship have certainly come up and guided many of our interpretive discussions regarding the data we have collected, thus far. The continued pursuit of these questions has raised a number of other avenues for research, especially around the idea of religious experience and worship.
In what ways has or will your project strengthen the worship life of congregations?
The data we collected in our survey has provided a more in-depth understanding of the relationship between disaffiliation and worship, and the next stage will help to capture more information about the specific role preaching plays in that process of disaffiliation. Our presumption is that pastoral leaders can use the information that is garnered and our initial findings to improve pastoral practices, outreach, and patterns of worship. Two elements of our survey are particularly useful in this regard: 1) we collected data mid-pandemic, a time where there were major changes happening in worship habits, and we asked specifically about the relationship to the pandemic and worship practices, and 2) our representative sample captures the full spectrum of self-identified Catholics in ways not typically seen in survey data.
What have been your greatest challenges (or challenging opportunities)?
Our greatest challenge was adjusting to a change in leadership among a partner group that then closed off access to processes in the Diocese that were critical to our being able to recruit participants for interviews. However, we view this challenge as an opportunity to ask more interesting questions and collect potentially more useful information from disaffiliated/disaffiliating Catholics themselves. Of course, the pandemic also shaped some of our questions in ways we hadn’t considered initially when writing the initial grant. Finally, one of the researchers (Whapham) relocated mid-project, but we have been able to continue to move forward steadily.
What advice would you like to share with other Teacher-Scholars?
We would like to share that more often than not you can be led to a better path when the research plan does not go as initially envisioned. Our adjustment to our own challenges has led us to have more engaging conversations and allowed us to connect with our research participants in ways that would not have occurred from our initial research design. The challenges might be frustrating in the moment and force us to take extra time to work through them, but they are very likely blessings in disguise. Similarly, following questions in an overly proscriptive research plan can sometimes prevent you from following the data.
What products will emerge from your project?
We expect to generate multiple scholarly (both professional and academic) articles from our data that may be useful for other scholars and pastoral leaders. We will also produce a general presentation and summarizing report to pass along to the recently developed homiletics institute affiliated with our host insitution, with the hopes that they can use the information to guide preaching considerations and outreach to disaffiliated/disaffiliating Catholics. Finally, we expect that we will incorporate our findings into rich discussions with our students in the classroom during relevant courses.