Theater in the Liturgy
I've been meaning to forward this post along from DarwinCatholic for quite some time now. It really hits at the heart of what a good liturgical celebration usually entails: "Theater without the Theatrics" or "Drama without the Dramatics."
I must say I've always been a bit turned-off when I hear of a parish acting out some of the readings during the Easter Vigil. I actually saw a video once in which an "actor" was about to sacrifice his son Isaac on the actual altar in the sanctuary. It's not only the blatant disregard for the instructions handed down to us to follow by the powers-that-be that gets my goat, but the thought on the part of some liturgist who said to everyone at the liturgy committee, "Hey, let's spruce up this long boring service by making the Liturgy of the Word into a show!"
By the way, this was also the service in which singers with tambourines walked through the crowd while everyone sang a silly, pseudo-Jewish setting of the Song of Moses. Yeah, extremely high cheese factor going on there . . .
posted by Praying Twice @ 10:26 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
PrayingTwice, in my opinion, this sort of thing is de facto protestantism and probably should be defined as such by the local bishop. Left unremarked and unchecked, it will gain tacit approval.
It would be helpful to find out where the pastor went to seminary.
That said, I'd like to draw your and Cantor's attention to a proposal I made over at TNLM:
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/stribe/115437410003548863/#110326
It's a response to a suggestion by Cantor, and I'd like to know what you all think of it, if you get a chance.
That drama reminded me of the misimpression I was given when I was told a couple of years ago that both my kids were going to be in a Christmas pageant (note: this is the parish in my home neighborhood, not the parish where I am proudly employed 25 miles away). First, my impression was this was going to take place either before the 7 PM Christmas Eve Mass, or, at worst, as part of the Homily.
Wrong on both counts - this was the Gospel! OUCH! To boot, the music was downright awful. The Psalm wasn't even a Psalm. It was "The People that walk in Darkness", that nasty St. Louis Jesuits ditty from the old Glory and Puke volumes. After Communion - you guessed it...
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU,
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU,
HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR JESUS,
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!
Puke, gag, choke, barf. I'm going to go watch Big Brother now before I start getting PO'd.
BMP
I think what gets me is that all of these inventions are so terribly done. It's obvious that the "artists" that are planning these "extra-liturgical" delights are the same people in high school that called themselves artists only because they weren't good at anything else. They write clumsy "call and response" prayers, they invent cockamamie pseudo-rituals that have no significance for anyone who wasn't in their short-lived group of friends in adolescence, and they only manage to continue doing these things-not because they force us to calm up-but because no one has the heart to tell them how sorry they are.
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