Over the five years now that I've been a Catholic, I've seen many examples of liturgical dance at Mass posted on YouTube and other sites. (I've been lucky so far in not having been to any live Masses with dancing, although I've attended a couple of Vespers services in which a dance troupe performed.) Examples range from the sublime...
...through the ridiculous...
...to the outrageous (sorry I couldn't imbed this; it was posted directly to Facebook, which doesn't support imbedding):
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=394275649000
Now, the folks involved in all three of these cases were, I'm sure, well-intentioned when the planned and performed these dances. However, there's a small problem with what they're doing: It is not permitted in liturgical celebrations in the US.
The now-Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments first took note of liturgical dancing in 1975 when it published an essay on the subject in Notitiae, its offical journal (Notitiae 11 [1975], 202–205). The essay was later translated into English as "The Religious Dance, an Expression of Spiritual Joy" and published in the Canon Law Digest (Volume VIII, pages 78–82).
To quote the essay:
[In Western culture] dancing is tied with love, with diversion, with profaneness, with unbridling of the senses: such dancing, in general, is not pure.The entire essay, along with some preliminary comments, can be found at the bottom of this page. The Bishops' Committee on the Liturgy (now the Bishops' Committee on Divine Worship) of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops reprinted the article in 1982 and issued directives specifically prohibiting liturgical dance (along with ballet and clown Masses).
For that reason it cannot be introduced into liturgical celebrations of any kind whatever: that would be to inject into the liturgy one of the most desacralized and desacralizing elements; and so it would be equivalent to creating an atmosphere of profaneness which would easily recall to those present and to the participants in the celebration worldly places and situations.
Given this clear statement from both the Holy See and the US bishops, one question remains for the proponents of liturgical dance: What part of "no" don't you get?
Not being a Roman Catholic, I am not bound by rules which forbid or allow; such an argument does not persuade me and seems rather hidebound. But the whole notion of getting jiggy during prayer goes against me.
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