TEAM HERALD
bureau@herald-goa.com
PANJIM: A recent award-winning study by a Goan Pilar Priest has revealed that priests who perceived their parishioners to be responsive during homilies, reported being more satisfied, motivated, as well as experienced lower levels of burnout (depersonalization and reduced personal accomplishment).
Conversely, priests who perceived their parishioners as less responsive during homilies reported less job satisfaction, motivation and higher levels of burnout.
Responsiveness, satisfaction and motivation were all found to be significant predictors of reduced personal accomplishment, whereas motivation was the only significant predictor of depersonalization.
This study, conducted by Dr Sean Horan and former editor of the Goan weekly ‘Vavraddeancho Ixtt’ Fr Peter Raposo, examined priests’ perceptions of parishioners’ nonverbal responsiveness during homilies, received the top paper award in the Nonverbal Communication Division at the recent Eastern Communication Conference, Providence, Rhode Island, in the United States. The study was presented by Fr Raposo.
In consistent with previous studies, the findings of the study reinforced that priest-parishioner interactions contain both content and relational dimensions, and that communication in priest-parishioner interactions is mutually influential.
The study pointed out that perceptions of responsiveness are based on assessment of how one appears and have large nonverbal components.
Accordingly, the study recommended that priests wishing to modify parishioner behaviour should attend to their own communication skills, nonverbal messages, in this case during homilies.
Inferentially, priests delivering poor homilies, with ineffective communication skills are likely to receive less parishioner responsiveness in turn negatively affect their vocational qualities.
In noting that priests’ training does not focus largely on communication expertise, instead devote time to content expertise, the study suggested that it is imperative for priests to receive communication as the majority of their career entails human interaction.
This study conducted by the two researchers is the third in the programme of inquiry examining communication in the Catholic Church, particularly examining priest as teacher in the instructional setting of the Church.
The participants of the current study included 137 Catholic priests from one of the largest US dioceses in the Midwest. The rationale for the study was founded on extant research that has consistently demonstrated the importance of nonverbal responsiveness in interactions and how it is indicative of immediacy, job satisfaction, motivation, and burnout.
The study has been duly accepted and in press to be published in the peer-reviewed Communication Quarterly Journal.
Fr Raposo (MA, DePaul University and MA, Sikkim Manipal University) is currently pursuing a doctoral programme of Communication Studies at Ohio University, Athens, Ohio and teaches at the same University. He is the former editor of Catholic Weekly, Vavraddeancho Ixtt and secretary & media spokesperson of the Archbishop of Ranchi. The researcher Sean M Horan (PhD, West Virginia University) is an Assistant Professor in the College of Communication at DePaul University and studies communication in romantic relationships as well as communication in instructional settings.
Accordingly, the study recommended that priests wishing to modify parishioner behaviour should attend to their own communication skills, nonverbal messages, in this case during homilies
