My Commentary on Eric Sammons’ Podcast Only 13% of Catholics are Practicing.¹

https://www.youtube.com/live/WDu17QIFU6s?si=R_if_Itpts_NSaF8

It needs to be BOTH. You need to preach “be kind to one another” and “repent of not really being kind to one another amongst other sins” at the same time. There also needs to be a real committed seriousness to the spiritual welfare of the parish on a one-to-one level by the pastor rather than just on a superficial collective level. Fr Wade Menezes is an excellent example of a pastor that knows how to preach on the authentic goodness of whole-hearted repentance in relationship to the prime importance of developing a robust spiritual life so that our relationship with God is made the central focal point of who we are, who we are becoming, and everything we do. Moreover, there is a commandment that God gives which is to love your neighbour as yourself – and so that’s not just a flimsy platitude – that’s a commandment – it is a divine mandate that we be genuinely nice to one another, we love as Jesus would have us love. That mandate means that this call to be righteous & merciful is not a fickle thing to be entertained only to make ourselves appear as though we are holy when we are preaching this to others for example, from the pulpit but then somehow excuse ourselves from being personally accountable in this same area if we encounter somebody who begs us to help them but “we are not interested” because we think we have ‘more important things’ to do with our time than to help a weak and insecure someone get over their grievances by way of benefiting from our moral support –  if we happen to be pastors that is. So here is where the rubber hits the road – and such a commitment to authentic faith witness demands a consistency that knows no double standards and errects no barriers to loving interpersonal dialogue and reconciliation using such double standards either.

It must also be said that Sammons is completely and utterly right about the post-Conciliar decline in the robustness of spiritual devotion and ferver. He’s absolutely spot-on when he remarks on how a great too-many parishes have diluted the teaching of the faith, have compromised with the world on many things to the point where they no longer take seriously the importance of the impartation of spiritual counsels to the faithful and how necessary it is to make such teaching freely available, unsullied by profiteering motives that charge or impose worldly-style fees on seminar or retreat attendance or reception of one-to-one spiritual helps. He’s absolutely right on the mark when he says that way too many parishes are spiritually starved and their pastors are lacking the zeal necessary to be the Good Shepherds they are meant to be. If every parish in America, in Australia, in Europe, and in Asia and Africa had pastors of the same verve and calibre of both Fr Wade Menezes and Archbishop Fulton Sheen², you would have a Church that is, at its most local level, vibrant, pulsating with the verve and delight of the Gospel, and ready to make a genuine & lasting difference in the lives of all whom encounter, of every single person who encounters such a Church – a Church that is truly and undeniably ALIVE in the Spirit of Truth and the authentic witness of God’s pure & undying love for a hurting and broken world, so that the hurting and broken in this world can be substantially healed and transformed by a concrete, tangible, and unshakable encounter with the Person of Jesus Christ, the Eternal Word made Flesh, AMEN?….. AMEN!!! 🙏

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Endnotes

¹ This podcast was originally published on the website of Crisis magazine, on 24th June, 2025. The URL cited in my post here is a link to the YouTube version of that same podcast.

² See Fulton J Sheen’s most uncompromisingly enlightening sermon on these topics and many other related issues here:

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