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The Vatican’s Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments is the dicastery that recently reaffirmed that lay people may not deliver the homily during Mass. In response, one of our more outspoken CCRI members, Charlie Gibson, has just sent this message to its prefect, Cardinal Arthur Roche. As we know according to Can. 212 §2&3,
§2. The Christian faithful are free to make known to the pastors of the Church their needs, especially spiritual ones, and their desires.
§3. According to the knowledge, competence, and prestige which they possess, they have the right and even at times the duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church and to make their opinion known to the rest of the Christian faithful, without prejudice to the integrity of faith and morals, with reverence toward their pastors, and attentive to common advantage and the dignity of persons.
If you agree with this following message, we encourage you to write to the dicastery, https://www.
Regarding the Denial of Lay Persons Preaching the Homily
On June 17, 2026, the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments denied permission for qualified lay persons to preach the homily during Mass. I believe this decision represents a striking example of the social sin of clericalism—on steroids.
My assessment is based on the following considerations.
1. The decision appears inconsistent with the spirit of synodality
The October 2024 Final Document of the Synod on Synodality emphasized the need to bring the Church's liturgical life into greater harmony with synodality. Yet the Dicastery's decision gives little evidence of a genuinely synodal process. Rather than engaging those advocating for qualified lay preaching in a process of dialogue, discernment and mutual listening, the Dicastery appears to have unilaterally settled the matter.
This is particularly significant because the Instrumentum Laboris for the final session of the Synod explicitly acknowledged widespread interest in the participation of qualified lay people in preaching:
“There is also a calling for adequately trained lay men and women to contribute to preaching the Word of God, including during the celebration of the Eucharist.”
— Instrumentum Laboris, §18
For reasons that are not clear, this concern did not find its way into the Final Document. Nevertheless, Pope Leo XIV subsequently established a study group to consider questions concerning the liturgy and its relationship to a synodal Church.
That study process makes the Dicastery's June decision particularly troubling. If the Church is serious about synodality, questions that directly affect the participation of the baptized should be approached through listening, dialogue and discernment, rather than unilateral decision-making.
2. The liturgy belongs to the entire People of God
The Eucharistic liturgy is not something performed by the ordained for the benefit of the laity. The entire assembly celebrates the liturgy, while the ordained priest serves as its sacramental presider.
This distinction matters. Baptism incorporates every Christian into the People of God and gives each person a vocation and responsibility within the Church. The ordained ministry has a distinctive sacramental role, but that does not mean that everything connected with the liturgy must be restricted to the ordained.
History also reminds us that the Church's understanding of who may exercise particular liturgical functions has developed over time. In 1215, during the pontificate of Pope Innocent III, at the Fourth Lateran Conference Council decreed that only a “priest who has been rightly ordained” could preside at the Eucharist.. Earlier Christian practice was considerably more diverse.
Whatever conclusions one draws from that history, one point is clear: the Church's present disciplinary arrangements are not necessarily identical to those of the earliest Christian communities. Therefore, appeals to current practice cannot by themselves settle the question of whether that practice should develop.
3. Canon law should serve the Church's mission, not prevent legitimate development
The Dicastery's response points to Canon 767 §1, which states that the homily is reserved to a priest or deacon. The Dicastery therefore presents its decision as simply following existing canon law.
But this raises a deeper question: Should a canon that was formulated under an earlier understanding of ordained and lay roles be regarded as permanently incapable of development?
Canon law is not Scripture. It is a human legal structure created to serve the life and mission of the Church. As the Church's understanding of synodality develops, canon law may also need to develop.
This applies not only to Canon 767 §1 but to other provisions governing the exercise of authority. For example, Canon 129 restricts decision-making authority only to the ordained. Synodality extends participation in decision-making authority also to the non-ordained.
The Synod on Synodality has called the Church to reconsider how authority is exercised and how the baptized participate in the Church's life and mission. If synodality is to become more than a slogan, some canonical structures will inevitably need to be reconsidered.
It is also worth considering the broader purpose of canon law. Canon lawyer Dr. Thomas Doyle, drawing on his experience dealing with clerical sexual abuse and ecclesial cover-up, has argued that changing individual bishops is insufficient if the underlying structure of centralized and monarchical authority remains unchanged. His argument is essentially that meaningful reform requires attention not only to who exercises authority but to how authority itself is structured and shared.
The question of lay preaching is therefore about more than one liturgical regulation. It raises the larger question of whether the Church is genuinely willing to share responsibility and authority with the baptized.
4. The decision fails to recognize the charisms of the People of God
The New Testament teaches that the Holy Spirit distributes different gifts and charisms among the members of the Body of Christ. Some people possess an extraordinary gift for teaching, proclaiming the Gospel and preaching.
Why should the Church prevent a baptized person who is theologically educated, spiritually mature and demonstrably gifted at proclaiming the Word from exercising that charism within the Eucharistic assembly?
Consider women such as Joan Chittister and Edwina Gateley, both highly gifted Catholic women whose preaching and spiritual teaching have influenced countless people. They have been welcomed as speakers and preachers in Christian settings, yet Catholic discipline prevents them from preaching the homily at Mass. Also consider the beautiful work done by Catholic Women Preach and all the Small Christian Communities who use their messages every Sunday.
This raises a troubling contradiction. The Church recognizes the gifts of these women enough to listen to them in other contexts but refuses to permit those gifts to be exercised in the Eucharistic liturgy.
The loss is not simply theirs. The entire People of God are deprived of gifts that the Spirit may have given for the building up of the Church.
And the impact falls particularly heavily on women. Because women cannot be ordained priests or deacons in the Catholic Church, a prohibition against lay preaching means that even highly qualified women are excluded from this significant form of liturgical ministry.
This inevitably raises questions about clericalism, patriarchy and the continuing inequality experienced by women in the Church.
5. The deeper issue may be authority and power
Perhaps the most important question is not really about preaching at all.
Allowing qualified lay people to preach would mean recognizing that the proclamation of God's Word is not exclusively the possession of the ordained. It would share an important form of ecclesial authority with baptized members of the Church.
That inevitably challenges clericalism.
Synodality calls the Church to move from a model in which authority is concentrated primarily in the ordained toward a model in which the gifts, experience and wisdom of the entire People of God are heard and incorporated into the Church's discernment and mission.
Resistance to synodality can arise whenever people perceive that sharing responsibility means losing power. The issue, then, is not simply who gets to preach. It is who is trusted to exercise the gifts given by the Holy Spirit.
The denial of lay preaching can therefore be understood as protecting a clerical monopoly over an important form of proclamation.
6. Could the decision also be a response to pressure from the German Church?
One experienced priest who has dealt with Church bureaucracy for decades offered me another possible interpretation: that the decision may have been intended, at least in part, as a way of disciplining or discouraging the German Church, which has strongly advocated greater opportunities for competent lay people to preach.
I cannot establish that this was the motivation behind the Dicastery's decision. But if such considerations played a role, they would raise an even more serious concern: Church discipline should not be used as a weapon against legitimate theological discussion and pastoral experimentation.
The synodal Church Pope Francis envisioned should be capable of disagreement without punishment, dialogue without fear, and experimentation without automatically interpreting it as disobedience.
A plea for genuine synodality
I acknowledge that this has been a blunt assessment. Many Catholics have been deeply disappointed by the Dicastery's decision; some are outraged.
My purpose, however, is not simply to criticize. It is to appeal to the Church to take seriously the path of synodality that it itself has chosen in the synodal gatherings.
If synodality means that clergy and laity walk together, then the baptized must be more than listeners to decisions already made. They must be participants in discerning how the Church carries out its mission.
The question of lay preaching should therefore remain open to prayerful dialogue, theological reflection, and genuine discernment. The Church should ask not simply, “What does the current law permit?” but also, “What is the Holy Spirit asking of the Church at this moment?”
My prayer is that the Dicastery, and the Church as a whole, will embrace synodality not merely as a process but as a way of being Church—one in which the gifts of all the baptized are welcomed, authority is exercised in service, and the People of God truly walk together.
May the Spirit guide us, challenge us, and bless us all.
Charles Gibson, PhD
Auburn, California, USA
September 15,2026
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