Douglas McManaman on "Reading the Word Sotto Voce"

Deacon Douglas McManaman is a Religion and Philosophy teacher at Father Michael McGivney Catholic Academy in Markham, Ontario, Canada. He is currently the President of the Canadian Fellowship of Catholic Scholars. He maintains the following web site for his students: A Catholic Philosophy and Theology Resource Page, in support of his students.

His latest article, short but powerful, "Reading the Word Sotto Voce" appeared in the Catholic Education Resource Center this week.

Subtitled "Reading the word of God in the context of a Mass is radically different from public speaking," allow me to whet your appetite for the full article:

Seminarians of a previous era were often instructed to say Mass sotto voce (Italian: 'under voice'), that is, in low voice (not low in volume, but 'low in profile'), because there was a real appreciation for the opus operatum of the entire liturgy, and a corresponding appreciation for the minister's duty to become less and less ostentatious, after the manner of John the Baptist's "He must increase; I must decrease" (Jn 3, 30). To stress engaging eye contact, intonation, inflection, and to seek to move and emote are all rooted in a basic theological error that regards the written word of God as a dead letter that stands in need of a grandiloquent orator to bring it life. But it is the word that brings life to man, not vice versa: "Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God" (Mt 4, 3).

I doubt that Deacon Doug had the ancient liturgy in mind when he wrote this article and I'm really not sure whether he has "traditionalist" sympathies. I suspect so. In any case I see in his brief instruction an extremely strong case for the power of the Latin Mass.

I'll leave it to someone else much more qualified than myself to explore this article along those lines. Perhaps Fr. John Zuhlsdorf might be interested in doing just that. But suffice it to say that Mass in the Extraordinary Form does not easily accommodate dramatization, ostentation, or a "stealing of the show."

I think, without intending to do so, Deacon Doug strikes to the heart of why the Latin Mass is not given over easily to such things:

Finally, when readers look up periodically, they must address the congregation as a single entity, not making eye contact with individuals within the congregation; for eye contact only makes the reader unfittingly self-conscious, and causes a degree of self-consciousness unbecoming of the faithful, who do not need to be engaged as if they were unmotivated adolescents passively waiting to be animated. They engage themselves through an active readiness to lose themselves in the proclamation of the word.

Isn't that exactly the case? I have found that devotees of the Mass in the EF predominantly "engage themselves through an active readiness to lose themselves in the proclamation of the word," indeed in the entire liturgy.

And think about the following statement for a moment in light of the variety of outrageous displays one often finds in the ordinary form of the Mass.

The more a reader puts himself and his own personality into the word he proclaims -- that is, the more he increases -- , the more he stifles the Holy Spirit of God (cf. 1 Thess 5, 19) by distracting the listener, turning him from a prayerful attention to God's word towards the talent and idiosyncrasies of the reader.

But the reader must forget himself. He must read sotto voce, albeit slowly, clearly, and with sufficient volume. Indeed, poor reading in its turn can distract the listener, making it difficult for him to concentrate, but poor reading does much less harm than even a slightly theatrical reading; the former merely hampers concentration, the latter "steals the show", which is what the liturgy often becomes for those with a flare for the dramatic.

Thanks for this, Deacon Doug!