re quality of catholic liturgy in article apr athos rutgers edu jemurray magnus acs ohio state edu john e murray writes example last sunday palm sunday we went to the local church usually on palm sunday the congregation participates in reading the passion taking the role of the mob the theology behind this seems profound when we say crucify him we mean it we did it and if he came back today we d do it again it always gives me chills but last week we were invited to sit during the gospel passion and listen besides the orwellian invitation on palm sunday at our parish we were invited to take the role of jesus in the passion i declined to participate last year at the liturgy meeting i pointed out how we crucify christ by our sins so therefore it is appropriate that we retain the role of the crowd but to no avail musicians readers and so on new things are introduced in the course of the liturgy and since no one knows what s happening the new things have to be explained and pretty soon instead of doing a lot of the mass we re just sitting there listening or spacing out in my case to how the mass is about to be done in my mind i lay the blame on liturgy committees made up of lay experts but that may not be just i do think that a liturgy committee has a bias toward doing something rather than nothing that s just a fact of bureaucratic life even though a simpler liturgy may in fact make it easier for people to be aware of the lord s presence as a member of a liturgy committee i can tell you that the problem is certain people dominating who want to try out all kinds of innovations the priests don t seem even to want to make any decisions of their own in many cases i guess it s easier to try something new than it is to refuse to allow it at our parish on holy thursday instead of the priests washing feet who wants to get around people s feet according to one of our priests the congregation was invited to come up and help wash one another s hands the symbolism of this action distressed me and again i refused to participate i thought that if we were to have to come up with rubrics for this liturgical action i e body of christ amen for receiving communion that they could be i am not responsible for the blood of this man also for part of the eucharistic prayer blessed are you god of all creation was substituted some text read by a lay couple the priest certainly should not have given this part of the mass over to others and i was so disturbed that i declined to receive communion that night we aren t required to anyway i instead offered up prayers for our priests and parish so we ve been wondering are we the oddballs or is the quality of the mass going down i don t mean that facetiously we go to mass every thursday or friday and are reminded of the power of a very simple liturgy to make us aware of god s presence but as far as the obligatory sunday masses maybe i should just offer it up has anyone else noticed declining congregational participation in catholic masses lately the quality of the mass has not changed again if it were to be celebrated according to the rubrics set down by the church it would still be liturgically beautiful the problem comes about from people trying to be creative who are not i think the answer to your question on participation could be that given by father peter stravinskas in answer to the question posed by the title of thomas day s why catholics can t sing they don t want to because of all this nonsense by the way for any non catholics reading this the problem does not reflect bad liturgy by the catholic church but by those who are disobedient to the church in changing it on their own authority steve creps indiana university creps lateran ucs indiana edu
