Not according to any church documents I’ve read, including many informative peices posted by members of this forum. Could you provide your source for the above statement?
Pope Benedict’s Book “The Spirit of the Liturgy”
I disagree with you. We are expected to open our mouths at the appropriate places in the mass, (unless you are physically unable.)
Yes, we are expected to make certain responses, but one should not confuse that with Active Participation. The Church requires actions under the Rubrics, but it never says that performing the rubrical actions is how the faithful make their Participation.
If you disagree, I would like to see your citations.
That mentality of sitting rigid and silent in your pew contributes to the lack of participation.
Why would you stand silently and not recite the profession of faith if others around you are doing it unless you are phyically unable??
The responsiorial psalm is just that… a psalm in which the crowd is expected to respond.
The ‘dialogue’ between the priest and crowd during the mass wouldn’t be written as such if we weren’t expected to respond out loud.
Yes, those are a type of particpation, but they are not True and Active Particpation.
If that were true, a Mute person could not give equal participation to a person who could speak.
But the Vatican documents apply to each of us equally. We are all called to pariticpate equally.
Here is an address by Pope John Paul II to the US Bishops during an Ad Lima Visit.
But full participation does not mean that everyone does everything, since this would lead to a clericalizing of the laity and a laicizing of the priesthood; and this was not what the Council had in mind. The liturgy, like the Church, is intended to be hierarchical and polyphonic, respecting the different roles assigned by Christ and allowing all the different voices to blend in one great hymn of praise.
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.
Conscious participation calls for the entire community to be properly instructed in the mysteries of the liturgy, lest the experience of worship degenerate into a form of ritualism. But it does not mean a constant attempt within the liturgy itself to make the implicit explicit, since this often leads to a verbosity and informality which are alien to the Roman Rite and end by trivializing the act of worship. Nor does it mean the suppression of all subconscious experience, which is vital in a liturgy which thrives on symbols that speak to the subconscious just as they speak to the conscious.
A lot of what I am reading here is what John Paul warned about, that Paricipation is defined by what we do and say, and how the rubrics are perfomed. It’s not, it’s deeper than that. It’s about our interior participation.
In our Baptism, we became members of the Common Priesthood of Believers. As priests, we offer Sacrifice at Mass. The Minsterial Priesthood offers Christ Himself in the Eucharist. We cannot do that, but we can, and should, offer our hearts in conjunction with the Minsterial Sacrifice of the Altar.
It’s all fine and dandy to say “
We lift our hearts up to the Lord”, but saying the words isn’t doing actually making the Sacrifice of our Hearts.
When the priest holds up the Host or the Chalice, that is when we, in silence, need to perform OUR action, to perform OUR Sacrifice, but most don’t. Most think that they have already ‘actively particpated’ when the said the words.
And that is how the mute person Active Particpates equally. He\She can’t say the words, but they may do the interior action. THAT is where we are called to participate. And all may do it equally, the healty, the mute, the deaf, the quadrapeligic. We can all participate equally, doing the exact same thing, because we all have an active interior life.
As I mentioned above, Pope Benedict devoted a full chapter to what is, and what isn’t Active Participation in his book “The Spirit of the Liturgy”, the whole book is a great read.
I have problem breathing most of the time, but I love to sing.
You can see folks crossing themselves frequently during Mass, something I haven’t seen in other parishes.
I also think that some of us just don’t understand that the responses sung are truly prayers themselves. (Double the strength in prayer 