[GOP_Party_Animal]

Great. The liturgical council in my church will see this as an opportunity for more goofy crap during mass: hand-holding, liturgical dancing, and lay processions up and down the aisles.

I would have liked to see a headline that announced the Pope reasserting his magisterial responsibility, bringing Catholic higher education back in line.

Disappointing. Again.

[Campion]

Instead of blaming the Holy Father for teaching what is in fact correct doctrine, please resolve to help your "liturgical council" (AFAIK, there is no provision for anything called a "liturgical council" in canon law or the rubrics) learn to read and understand!

"He further encouraged that laypeople draw close to sacred Scripture, through means such as lectio divina, and carry out missionary activity, in first place through living out charity."

The task of the Christian laity is to evangelize the world, not to take over the operation of the parish, and still less to meddle with the Mass in ways that (a) encroach on the responsibilities of the ordained; or (b) don't correspond to the way the Church says Mass should be celebrated.

That's a lot tougher and less popular than telling people to hold hands or recruiting 50 EMHC's, which is why people don't do it. Tell your priest to disband the "liturgical council" and send them over to the local abortion mill to pray on the sidewalk. Or, turn them into an "evangelization team," tasked with bringing fallen-away Catholics back to the practice of their faith.

Another aspect of this problem ... our whole culture has this attitude, fostered by 60 years of TV I think, that everything is either work or entertainment, and work ought to go away. That's infected the church in the US, of course, such that many Christians (Catholics sadly included) think that church services ought to be entertainment, and somehow the task of the institutional church is to make that happen.

Nope. Sorry. The premise is wrong: everything is not either work or entertainment. In fact, a Catholic ought to approach things with the idea that everything is worship, which means that Mass is simply the purest and most obvious form of worship. IOW, we shouldn't be turning the Mass into entertainment, we should be turning our entertainment and especially our work into acts of worship.

[GonzoII]

"The liturgical council in my church will see this as an opportunity for more goofy crap during mass: hand-holding, liturgical dancing, and lay processions up and down the aisles."

My sympathies. But the more thinking members of the Church in other parishes still need to here this IMO. Hang in there.

[SumProVita]

“The liturgical council in my church will see this as an opportunity for more goofy crap during mass: hand-holding, liturgical dancing, and lay processions up and down the aisles.”

Volunteer for the Council and offer input based on the Teaching Magisterium.

One person, with God’s help, can accomplish wonders! ;-))