Dance the night away with Jesuits

Dance the night away with Jesuits

I had to check twice to make sure that this wasn’t The Onion, because it sounds like satire. The headline of the Toronto Star opinion column by Michael Higgins, president of St. Thomas University in Moncton, New Brunswick, starts you off: “Sacred dance ideal for today’s Catholic worship”. It goes downhill from there. Here are some choice selections.

Jesuits are very fond of dancing as well, and presumably it is all to a good end. ... So proficient were the Jesuit dancers and choreographers that one Parisian wag mused that no one could pirouette as well as a Jesuit.

And here’s a nice shot at a “theologically handicapped and artistically illiterate pastor” who had the gall to tell this layman that he wasn’t going to allow some young girls to gyrate in front of the altar at a funeral Mass.

Quite some time ago when one of my parents died, my two youngest daughters, both of whom are classically trained in dance, designed a particular dance to be performed before the altar on the occasion of the funeral mass for their grandmother.

Previously, they had done this quite successfully and reverently on the occasion of their grandfather’s death and were surprised, if not in fact dismayed, that the pastor was unwilling to have such a dance performed on “his” altar. The egregious stupidity of this theologically handicapped and artistically illiterate pastor continues to dumbfound me these many, many months later.

The Philistine! Doesn’t he know that Thinking Catholics(tm) have moved beyond all those old forms of worship and need to express themselves in new and daring ways and besides little Janie’s dance recital is in a week and she needs the practice?

Except when it’s forbidden

Our guide through the Land of Thinking Catholics Who know Better than us Peons wraps up with this profound statement:

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