The silly season is still in full swing!

Sent to me by a reader.

No, this isn’t… weird.  Not at all.  Nope.

Caption:

French Provincial Minister Michel Laloux expressed himself in dance during our morning Mass for the Annunciation.

I’m not making this up.

Watch and try not to laugh or roll your eyes. Face palms are acceptable.

This was posted, seemingly with admiration and approval, by the ENGLISH SPEAKING CONFERENCE – Order of Friars Minor.

French Provincial Minister Michel Laloux expressed himself in dance during our morning Mass for the Annunciation.

Posted by ENGLISH SPEAKING CONFERENCE – Order of Friars Minor on Wednesday, March 25, 2015

[Within minutes of my posting this, someone pulled the video.  But it is also on YouTube!]

I wonder if he practiced that.

And then there is the fellow who gave the guys an “instrumental reflection” during the morning’s liturgy.  Instrument? Clarinet.

Not really my thing.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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49 Comments

  1. For some reason this line from C.S. Lewis’ “Priestesses in the Church?” immediately leapt to my mind, “We men may often make very bad priests. That is because we are insufficiently masculine.”

  2. disco says:

    Listen guys we might sneer at this guy but just imagine how many vocations he’s encouraging!

    …..

    Did you imagine?

    It’s zero. Zero is the answer.

  3. Kathleen10 says:

    Somebody accidentally checked off “theology” when they were trying to register for “theatre”.
    From the perspective of this being a Holy Mass, this can only be called an abomination.
    From the perspective of observing a man supposedly leading a roomful of men, in something, this can only be called effeminate and frankly, weird.
    There’s a word for this. Camp.

  4. Atra Dicenda, Rubra Agenda says:

    1 minute in I was flabbergasted how there could possibly be another 2 minutes so I fast forwarded and sure enough, still dancing. /sigh/

  5. Tantum Ergo says:

    Could have been worse. It could have been the Hokey-Pokey.

  6. iamlucky13 says:

    The Hokey-Pokey is miles ahead of whatever that was, liturgically speaking. I’m referring, of course, to the “communal sense” of the Hokey-Pokey simultaneous movements shared by all participants, and the processional nature of actions like putting “your right hand in.”

  7. Grateful to be Catholic says:

    This is why Card. Ratzinger said there is no place for dance in Western liturgy. None.

  8. Gabriel Syme says:

    Kill it with fire!

  9. pelerin says:

    He must be practising for April Fools Day. Not quite sure what a Provincial Minister is but why is he dressed as a monk? And why are all the congregation male? Very strange.

  10. pelerin says:

    Have looked the dancer up and see that he is a Belgian Franciscan Priest so of course entitled to the habit. However as to the dancing I have never heard of a dancing order. It brought to mind a wonderful sketch on BBC tv many years ago featuring Peter Cook and Dudley Moore dressed as nuns in the ‘Order of leaping Nuns’.

  11. CatherineTherese says:

    Most exasperating to me is the 11 (per my count) other men who sit there, unruffled. Perfectly normal. One presumes they like it.

  12. pelerin says:

    No I think they are stupefied.

  13. aquinas138 says:

    pelerin, I would like to think that is true, but sadly, I imagine they are largely willing spectators…

  14. Michael_Thoma says:

    That’s what happens when you lose your pick in the bracket.. You make a bet, you gotta be man enough to twirl around in front of the entire Province in your dress browns for at least 2 minutes..

  15. benedetta says:

    My apologies to the friar in the video but the moment he began his interpretive dance routine all I could think about, to the point of being unable to focus on this video, was that scene in The Big Lebowski…

  16. Back pew sitter says:

    This sort of thing normally makes my blood boil, but it is just so ridiculous I couldn’t help laughing. May God forgive this tomfoolery anywhere, but especially in a Church.

  17. This is rather different to the Mass I attended for the Annunciation. Packed to the brim of young people of every culture and language all taking an active part (by singing) It was of course the regular Mass in the Extraordinary Form in Hong Kong.

  18. Woody79 says:

    And the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate are to be punished for what?

    Fr. Z's Gold Star Award

  19. acardnal says:

    I can’t believe there’s no clay pottery or large glass pitchers of wine on the altar.

  20. Adrienne Regina says:

    Peter Cook and Dudley Moore: The Order of St. Beryl … whole video worth a laugh or two. If you just want to see them leaping … cue to 3:46
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GV_A7YeOhfs

  21. iPadre says:

    Brother sun and Sister moon…

  22. Venerator Sti Lot says:

    Contrast the dancing procession of Echternach: French Provincial Minister Michel Laloux’s self-expression in dance seems so precious and false compared with the seemliness of that (however curious).

    Here is a documentary, “Le Ville des Saints dasants”:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzrdqT0MMH8

    I don’t speak French and can’t tell how much Letzeburgesch (or even Cardinal Maradiaga’s German) I could puzzle out because of the French voice-over, but I skimmed through this and the bits I found worth watching were the first minute, from seven minutes for a while, from 16:50 for a while, from 27:30 for a while, and from 45:35 to the end.

  23. JuliaB says:

    This is funny for about two seconds before it just becomes mind-numbing.

    [But then it gets funny again.]

  24. John F. Kennedy says:

    Two things;

    The music being played on the record or CD should have been Carl Douglas’s “Kung fu fighting” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhUkGIsKvn0

    Second,
    71. The use of automatic instruments and machines, such as the automatic organ, phonograph, radio, tape or wire recorders, and other similar machines, is absolutely forbidden in liturgical functions and private devotions, whether they are held inside or outside the church, even if these machines be used only to transmit sermons or sacred music, or to substitute for the singing of the choir or faithful, or even just to support it.
    — Musica Sacra: Instruction on Sacred Music and Sacred Liturgy, Sacred Congregation for Rites, 3 September 1958

  25. mysticalrose says:

    He forgot the giant bowl of fire for the focal point . . . and the nuns with ribbons. Amateur.

  26. John V says:

    Maybe he studied under Stephen Colbert.

  27. Cody says:

    Look at all those bald heads…

  28. TawdryPenitent says:

    This is a joke……………. Right???

  29. I think I’ll bury my head in a capa magna and cry…..

  30. RomualdMonk says:

    This sort of thing is what would cause St. Francis to face-palm and then eat right through his hands. Modernist stigmata be gone!

  31. JTH says:

    Really couldn’t tell who the women in the video is but her dancing skills are quite poor.

  32. Rachel Pineda says:

    I think if my eyes are working properly after that display, those are other Franciscan habits sitting in the pews. You know, this is very painful to watch. Forgive me but why does it have to be a Franciscan! We need MEN to be priests not whirling and prancing pansies. Sigh,…..more penance. Why do they do this? What does it have to do with the Liturgy? What does it have do do with the Franciscan rule. What does it have to do with true and abiding joy? All I see is a very sad display. Why? But they are priests, and their worth is far beyond all of the stars in the universe. Lord have mercy on us all.

  33. Gratias says:

    This may give Franciscans a bad name. [Oh hardly! I don’t think anyone should be surprised at this. Agere sequitur esse.] Fortunately even in my very liberal Local parish we have been spared Liturgical Dancing (except once when the Archbishop sent in the Chrism oils). [HA! What could go wrong with that?] Makes you wish the Latin Mass were more widely available in the Catholic Church.

  34. UncleBlobb says:

    St. Lawrence Of Brindisi pray for us.

  35. Spooky says:

    Needs more puppets. Preferably the giant, papier-mache kind.

  36. Stephen Matthew says:

    Let it be cast out, banished until the coming of the Lord.

  37. govmatt says:

    As I’ve seen posted here before: the only one dancing at the foot of the cross was the Devil.

  38. Sonshine135 says:

    Well, David danced naked before the Ark, so I guess we should be happy that the French Provincial Minister didn’t disrobe in his liturgical ecstasy.

  39. dans0622 says:

    Now THAT is a penitential rite.

  40. bsjy says:

    After you’ve pulled the altar from the wall, why not dance around it?
    Thus, the freestanding altar can become the near occasion of dance.

  41. pelerin says:

    Many thanks to Adrienne Regina for giving the link to the Peter Cook sketch. It never occurred to me that it would be on You Tube. I shall really enjoy watching it again.

    And Sonshine – I agree I suppose we should be grateful that the Provincial Minister kept all his clothes on! And to think I once enjoyed singing ‘Lord of the Dance’ at Mass with great gusto! Mea culpa!

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  43. Henry Belton says:

    The paradox here is that it’s not only abusive. It’s really, really bad art. All this dance, folk music, etc. is always cringe worthy and embarrassingly poorly done. It’s Sunday morning kitsch. It’s the liturgical version of lawn jockeys and velvet Elvis’ and bulldogs playing poker.

  44. benedetta says:

    What this act and clarinet and whatever else was shared would ordinarily be called, in the workaday world of people who have jobs to pay bills to support families and lack for altars open and accessible for their personal expressive use, without elite education in some esoteric yet pastoral topic, is “a Talent Show”. I attended one recently as a matter of fact, offered by school kids, sans altar of course, and, well, habit, and well also both genders participated, happily…and, it was altogether much better, aesthetically, and meaningful, for the participants and we in the audience, than any of this stuff!

    There is talent, and then there is the earnest flattering of selves, when one ought to be busy, in times such as they are, doing triage in the Field Hospital, if one indeed has a vocation. The casualties are, at this moment, great, even overwhelming, by any criteria one wants to use, secular, liberal, or other.

  45. Suburbanbanshee says:

    There is nothing wrong with religious dance – outside church, and outside Mass and other liturgies. Why don’t these folks hold prayer processions or saint’s day processions outside instead? They could dance that way at will, and obediently.

  46. Rachel K says:

    Errrm …… Riiiight……..ok, send for the men in white coats!

    This actually reminds me of a visit to the Catholic Church on Lindisfarne many years ago (cradle of Christianity in Northern England, Bede, Aidan and Cuthbert lived there).
    At that time, the church was like a glorified hut with no appropriate furnishings and at the back (where you entered) we found some plastic chairs in a circle (that’s a clue for you!) and in the middle a plastic washing up bowl ( I kid you not!) filled with water and floating in the water were various pieces of pre-sliced budget supermarket bread!
    Without a written explanation, my husband and I surmised that ther had been one of those “prayer meetings” and they must have been doing some creative ritual with the verse in the scripture about casting bread on the water- I am sure someone can enlighten me about which verse it is.
    Well, we just laughed a lot, and continued to laugh at it for many years!
    Do these people realise how ridiculous they are??
    No, you can see in the video they all take it very seriously.
    My solution? Plant a few small children in the pews and they will bring them down a peg or two with their natural hysteria at such a spectacle!

  47. pelerin says:

    I understand that the monk is a specialist in Israeli dancing which he has taught for some years. But surely this does not warrant doing it at Mass as he did on the Feast of the Annunciation in Lithuania or anywhere else for that matter. Perhaps just as well he was not a specialist in rock climbing or paragliding!

    Interestingly a comment I read on ‘Riposte Catholique’ which also showed this video states that in the Basque country (an area which straddles both France and Spain) local tradition allows a dance before the altar during Mass but no further explanation is given.

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  49. mariadevotee says:

    I only made it to 1 minute and 40 sec. then had to stop. I had just eaten.

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