Homiletics vs. the Gospel

CWN points us to this drooling babble from Greeley:

The story of the Transfiguration of Jesus in today's gospel in one of the stranger stories in any of the Gospels. Evidently Jesus had a powerful "religious experience" at some point in his public life, an experience which had a profound effect on him and on the apostles who were with him. As the story of this experience was related among the early Christians it took on a heavy overlay of theological symbolism. In the context of St. Matthew's Gospel it becomes a turning point in Jesus' life, an experience in which he saw that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer and die while he was there. Since Jesus was human he was fated to die just as all of us are fated to die. In his death, however, there would be something more. Since God was present in Jesus in a special way, God would also go down into the valley of death to show us how great was his love for us, to assure us that He would be with us at the time of our own deaths, and how all of us should face death. The manner of Jesus' death was not fated. He could have declined to go to Jerusalem without sin. Yet he came to see that he had to go there and so he did.

And goes on to make a point that (sadly) I've had to make to my children:

There was a time when Catholics could come to the Eucharist with the understanding that what took place was intended to deepen their Christian faith. Of course, fewer than a third of Catholics regularly attend Sunday Mass these days, yet those that do show up have to coach themselves and their loved ones not to pay attention to the twink in the pulpit, precisely because he's out to take something important away from them.

It's interesting to speculate that one reason only 1/3rd of Catholics bother to show up for Mass may be precisely because of Greeley-isms, no?

Why bother if what you get is this crap? What's the point of dropping dollars into THAT pot?

Only yesterday, I listened as a local priest 'ran off the tracks' in his homily, making comparisons which were egregiously inane while covering his silliness by quoting a prominent theologian who was quite orthodox.