Once upon a time in the US, post-Vatican II Catholics weren’t really sure what the rules were. Everything seemed to have changed, and there was no easy way to get definite information about what was okay and what wasn’t. Like mushrooms, we lived in dark places and were fed off scraps and dead leaves and stuff that just had collected.
So back in the Eighties, I would have expected people not to have known better. But back then, my home parish didn’t have theatrical Way of the Cross performances up next to the altar on Good Friday.
Instead, they had one this Holy Week, and they even invited the local newspaper photographer to document what they were doing wrong. (Which at least shows that they were ignorant.)
Nowadays, we live in the light. The Church provides us with plenty of websites full of educational resources. For most matters, there are definite rules for us to follow. One of those sets of rules deals with what kind of performances are allowed in our churches. People who put on performances in church but ignore the existence of guidelines are either not looking, or purposely closing their eyes against the light. If the performance is supposed to be educational or devotional, they are “blind guides.” (Mt. 15:14) If adults are running minors around in these things, they are particularly blind.
So let’s take a look at the church furniture GIRM over on the USCCB website, since that’s the easiest thing to find.
First off, the ambo is a “blessed” object, specially dedicated to a few sacred purposes. “From the ambo, only the readings, the Responsorial Psalm, and the Easter Proclamation (Exsultet) are to be proclaimed; likewise it may be used for giving the Homily and for announcing the intentions of the Universal Prayer. The dignity of the ambo requires that only a minister of the word should stand at it.” (The prescribed Liturgy of the Hours readings are okay, the same as Mass readings.)
(But yes, that means that using the ambo for announcements, hymns, the Gloria, and even devotional stuff like the Way of the Cross is not allowed. And yes, practically every parish getting it wrong doesn’t make it right.)
But the main thing is that you’re not supposed to be in the sanctuary area directly around the altar unless you’re there for a sacred purpose. A devotional drama can be performed in church, but doing it in the sanctuary is forbidden.
(Given that women are only allowed in the sanctuary area at all by kindly and recent permission, it takes a lot of chutzpah to put on an all-female play where nobody’s play is supposed to be. It’s like your parents giving you a convertible for your sixteenth birthday, and you deciding this means you should invite all your friends to run a stock car race on your parents’ flowerbeds.)
I admit that it’s a bit more difficult to find the Vatican instruction on “Concerts in Churches” from back in 1987, at least in English. The relevant provisions are common sense, however.
“The regulation of the use of churches is stipulated by canon 1210 of the Code of Canon Law: “In a sacred place only those things are to be permitted which serve to exercise or promote worship, piety and religion. Anything out of harmony with the holiness the place is forbidden. The Ordinary may, however, for individual cases, permit other uses, provided they are not contrary to the sacred character of the place.”
“The principle that the use of the church must not offend the sacredness of the place determines the criteria by which the doors of a church may be opened….
“e. The [performers] should not be placed in the sanctuary. The greatest respect is to be shown to the altar, the president’s chair and the ambo.”
(But if you don’t like the lack of “performance space” in a church with the sanctuary excluded, there’s nothing stopping you from having your theatrical Way of the Cross in the parochial school gym or another suitable space. For example, in this particular parish, the presumably deconsecrated chair storage spaces which have taken up most of the nave of the old St. Luke’s.)
Finally, as the caption for Picture 21 notes, this was the final performance ever of the Catholic group putting on this Way of the Cross, after years of putting on similar devotional performances. So obviously they put a lot of time and effort into this, and yet nobody had told them the rules in all that time.
This is the tragedy of bad education/formation and bad Church governance. We can do better. We don’t have to choke off creativity; the the 17th century Jesuits and Oratorians were great pioneers of religious theater. We just have to present these things reverently and legitimately, with the mind of the Church.
9 April 2012 at 1:47 pm
Nowadays, we live in the light. The Church provides us with plenty of websites full of educational
Exactly and this is difficult to overstate. Whereas the printing press may have given every Tom, Dick, and Harry a voice for all manner of error and heresy, teh internetz has been an overwhelming net gain for orthodoxy. Anti-Catholic fundamentalist tried to use the internet, but when they merely posted their hoary whoppers and never offered anything new…well…there is a probably a reason that every fundie site I’ve been directed to looked like HTML from 1996. The same thing is similar with dissenting Catholics–prior to the new, liturgical moonbats, petty chancery tyrants, and RICA directors who deliberately kept a wall between the candidates and the priest (“Oh, Father’s busy. Don’t bother him with that.”) more or less controlled the narrative and the information and only laity with a special set of research skills and access could pierce the fog. Now they have to compete in the marketplace of ideas and it doesn’t take long for the average layman to weigh them in the balance and find them wanting.
9 April 2012 at 4:12 pm
You can’t help but look at those linked pictures and think this performance was all about the performers; promoting “worship, piety, and religion” aren’t part of the program.
9 April 2012 at 4:50 pm
I’m shocked, shocked to find that theater is going on in here!
9 April 2012 at 6:53 pm
And FWIW, pictures of a “living stations” performance in and around the sanctuary of a parish in my home diocese of Rochester are proudly displayed in the local Catholic newspaper:
http://www.catholiccourier.com/photo-video/audio-slideshows/livingstations/
10 April 2012 at 2:30 am
Sigh. You can see them making good use of the space between the sanctuary and the pews, but then they had to go up in the sanctuary. Sigh. Tasteful use of medieval underwear on Jesus, though.
I don’t know why parishes that want this just don’t go whole hog and have Passion Plays. That would make more sense. Do they think it’s too Protestant, or have they never heard of the Catholic version?
Or why cling to this sort of Way of the Cross drama, instead of making the parish walk to living Stations or having the living Stations walk to them? If you’ve got to do it, why not use all the aisles for your Stations where the ones on the wall are, instead of the sanctuary where they aren’t?
10 April 2012 at 2:18 am
The sad thing is that, if you just moved the performance a few feet, or you had it outside or in the gym, it could have been done much more effectively.
Speaking as somebody who’s sung on risers, nobody really likes performing on steps or narrow platforms. Nice flat wide ground-level floor is soooo much safer and better.
Still I can see why design/production people want the energy of performing in the sanctuary – but it only has that because it’s sacred, and you’re not supposed to traipse around up there unless it’s something vital.
I love theater and I love having a picture in my head or my eyes for devotion — but the Mass is real holiness, not a picture of it. The altar is a real link to heaven and a real throne of God, so putting a pretend up there next to it is just not fitting. You take away the human dignity of theater by trying to jam it up on top of the supernatural dignity of God’s House, and you make it look like you don’t want to acknowledge the supernatural dignity at all. A little more separation allows both things to be themselves and receive their proper honors.
11 April 2012 at 3:29 pm
Passion Plays, what’s wrong with Passion Plays? Old old Catholic medieval custom, just out in the plaza, not in the sanctuary, yes?
13 April 2012 at 8:14 pm
I believe “mystery plays” were commonly held in the sanctuary in the Middle Ages. In the case of cathedrals, the Blessed Sacrament was reserved in a separate place. Such venues had the advantage of superior acoustics (unlike an outdoor plaza, yes?). And while St Luke’s rendition of “the Way of the Cross” is not my cup of tea either, so long as the Eucharist was not reserved there (a safe bet in newer churches of the Archdiocese), I fail to see any *great* harm being done. This is a devotion, not part of the official prayer of the Church. All that said, I noted that this was their final performance, which may or may not be a commentary on any enduring quality such artistry may or may not have.
14 April 2012 at 9:55 am
Medieval church altar areas were mostly still designed so that you didn’t see things in it clearly. Roodscreens and other stuff put the altar off in its own “room”, as in the East. (A lot of this stuff was torn out, post-Trent or post-Henry, which gives us the wrong picture of medieval churches. But a lot of devotional books assume that you can’t see much of even the priest’s back, unless you can go to Mass clustered around a side altar.) That’s why ambos were usually elevated and sometimes brought forward into the body of the church. You might get somewhere with standing on the steps up to the altar area, when it came to acoustics, but that’s about it. Of course, if you could get all the men up front or to the side to sit down on the floor instead of standing like normal, there were better sightlines to the back.
So certainly there were inside-church semi-play thingies (the Mary Magdalene at the tomb and shepherd things were very common, as well as some other pageantish things). But they were usually taking place in the aisle in front of the altar area, not in it. (And whenever something got elaborate and iffy, like the “Victimae Paschali Laudes” dance with kickball by the French junior clergy, it usually moved somewhere even farther down and away from the sanctuary. In that case, to a specific floor area that had a handy circular tile pattern for dancing/kicking the ball/singing the sequence.) With “Quem Quaeritis”, all the acoustics were provided by the double choirs, and the shepherd and angel guys just were down front in the aisle mouthing to each other. Mary Magdalene ones often used the “tomb” or “coffin” that had been set up down front or to the side.
As soon as stuff got really elaborate, you have plays moving to after Mass on the church porch, or to “pageant wagons” rolling from audience site to audience site so that every audience got a chance to hear and see.
14 April 2012 at 9:57 am
Oh, here we go. There was an intermediary elaborateness stage where they built platforms at different places in church for different scenes.
http://www.schatzonline.com/Background/Drama.htm
14 April 2012 at 10:06 am
Probably explains one use of choir sections. Hey, thanks for the link. I’ve actually been looking for something like this.