Sunday, December 02, 2007

Washington Post: Young Catholics leading TLM resurgence

A reader recently sent me the following link with the remark: "Yes, from the Post .... No, I swear it is!"

Jacqueline L. Salmon, "Latin Makes a Comeback: Young Catholics Are Leading a Resurgence of the Traditional Mass" (Washington Post, November 24, 2007).

Comment on 'active participation' at Mass

Just one comment. Near the end of the article, Salmon relates an observation from a traditional Mass she attended in Alexandria, Virginia. She writes: "At St. Rita's Church, more than 150 worshipers listened and watched in silence . . . There was no . . . English and no lay participation." This seems to implicitly assume that the only kind of meaningful participation is external and physical, that if one is listening and watching in silence one cannot be participating. I mention this only because it is such a pervasive assumption. Have people forgotten the meaning of the verb 'assisting' at Mass? The most important kind of participation at Mass, the kind of active participation for which St. Pope Pius X called in his Motu Proprio, Tra le Sollecitudini (1903), is internal and spiritual, not primarily external and physical; and certainly not trying to emulate the roles of clergy. Even Pope John Paul II in his Ad Limina Address to the Bishops of the United States in 1998 "On Active Participation in the Liturgy" says:
Active participation certainly means that, in gesture, word, song and service, all the members of the community take part in an act of worship, which is anything but inert or passive. Yet active participation does not preclude the active passivity of silence, stillness and listening: indeed, it demands it. Worshippers are not passive, for instance, when listening to the readings or the homily, or following the prayers of the celebrant, and the chants and music of the liturgy. These are experiences of silence and stillness, but they are in their own way profoundly active. In a culture which neither favors nor fosters meditative quiet, the art of interior listening is learned only with difficulty. Here we see how the liturgy, though it must always be properly inculturated, must also be counter-cultural.
[Hat tip to J.M.]

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