Starbucks rituals

There’s an intersting conversation going on over at dotCommonweal about rituals, which was sparked by a post over at Theolog.

I’d recommend reading Rita Ferrone’s comment on the three levels of ritual and how we often confuse them within our religious ceremonies. (There’s no permalink for her comment, but it was posted on 10/22/2010 at 12:03 am.)

Rita’s comment clarifies the tension I see happening among some who coordinate the liturgy. The dialogue goes something like this: “The liturgy is boring.” “Let’s do something different! That will make it more engaging.” Then the result looks something like this.

(I love this cartoonist! He was the resident cartoonist for the 2008 Lambeth Conference and is the cartoonist for the General Synods. Maybe the USCCB needs an official cartoonist. Then we’d know what really goes on at Bishops’ meetings.)

We certainly need to focus on the primary symbols and the “rubrics” of the public ritual. Where we go wrong is when we put our main energy behind the secondary symbols and the private rituals while the primary symbols and public ritual lag behind (I think some weddings and children’s/teen Masses are good examples of this.) But there’s also a tendency to ignore the private rituals Rita mentions, believing that the public ritual can stand alone without attention to the private rituals. Some middle ground, I think, is needed.