Sunday, November 29, 2009
The People Not in the Pews
Those involved with Catholic liturgy focus heavily on what the people in the pews want, how they are responding to the music and homily, how they regard the various ceremonies, and whether and to what extent are they involved. The mantra at nearly every conference and teaching session on liturgy is that we must maintain a single minded focus on encouraging "full, active, conscious participation" – of the people who happen to be there at the time.
The focus is disproportionate to the extent that it draws attention away from the whole purpose of liturgy—to glorify God and celebrate sacred mysteries—and toward the well-being of the community, and, further, it invites a kind of hubris that we are manufacturing liturgy rather than receiving it as a gift that we have the responsibility to treasure and hand on to the next generation.
But here I would like to focus on a more mundane problem associated with an exclusive focus on the people in the pews. It forgets that sizeable number of Catholics who are not in the pews. It keeps us thinking only about the visible and the seen people who warm the pews rather than the invisible and unseen people who do not attend at all. In fact, as compared with those who attend faithfully, there might be a larger number of Catholics who are not in the pews in our parishes but who should be.
What are we doing for them? How can they be drawn back?...
Click here for the rest of the article: New Liturgical Movement
