Prolixity: Tending to Speak or Write at Excessive Length

I attended a college commencement ceremony recently. The event involved approximately 2000 graduate and undergraduate students and it was held at a football stadium. The event featured a mistress of ceremony (MC). Besides providing a general sense of what was to happen, the MC spoke during / over the music accompanying the opening procession. She informed those of us who had assembled that the faculty marshal studied endocrinology. She described the symbols of the presidential office that were in the procession. She talked about the university seal and its motto. She briefly described some of the accomplishments of the commencement speaker. She identified by office each of the different deans and vice presidents in the procession.

Perhaps she was given a text from which to read or maybe she was speaking extemporaneously. In either case, the drone of words undercut the elegance and dignity of the procession which, of course, speaks without words in a language all its own. Nor was the MC the only one who over-spoke. During the ceremony, persons who were called up on to perform functions (e.g., to present the students for the conferral of degrees) departed from their function to talk to the students about what their education can or should mean for their future.

A basic dictum of ritual theory holds that there is a time for speaking and a time for silence—or at least a time that should pass without spoken words. Though there are unfortunate exceptions, generally speaking the Catholic liturgies I attend observe the dictum. Still, I would hope to have more silence between “Let us pray” and the beginning of a prayer, more silence between the first reading and the psalm, between the psalm and the second reading, and between the second reading and the gospel. And more silence after communion to ponder what Katharine Harmon has described as the “long moment of consecration,” a “metaphor for our long pilgrimage toward the Christ-life” to which we commit ourselves again and again when we say our “Amen” to the Body of Christ.

Timothy Brunk

Dr. Timothy Brunk is Associate Professor of Liturgical and Sacramental Theology in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University.  He holds a doctorate from Marquette University, a Master of Arts degree in pastoral studies from Seattle University, a Master of Arts in theology from Boston College, and a Bachelor’s degree from Amherst College.  He is the author of fifteen journal articles and two books, including The Sacraments and Consumer Culture (Liturgical Press, 2020), which the Catholic Media Association recognized at its annual meeting as the first-place winner in the category of books on the sacraments.

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7 responses to “Prolixity: Tending to Speak or Write at Excessive Length”

  1. Scott Pluff

    There are presiders who take every opportunity to insert comments, stories, jokes and such into the Mass. There are designated moments for commentary (in these or similar words) and of course the homily. But when you can’t even count the additions on two hands it gets tedious. I liken it to watching a movie with someone who hits “pause” every few minutes to get a drink, get a snack, get a blanket, let out the dog…

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  2. Allen F. Corrigan

    Wasn’t is the late Lucien Deiss whose dictum was, “Never a paragraph when a sentence will do. Never a sentence when a word will do. Never a word when a gesture will do?”

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    1. Alan Hommerding

      @Allen F. Corrigan:
      Yes, Lucien was very very fond of that saying.
      Turns out, it wasn’t his & he never claimed it was, as far I know; Paul Inwood (I believe) knows the original source of the quote.

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      1. Paul Inwood

        @Alan Hommerding:

        It was Fr David Julien, the grand old man of French cantoring, who died only a year and a half ago at the age of 99. I was privileged to see him in action in the early 1970s. It was an object lesson in efficiently eliciting a response from the congregation without getting in the way.

        His Creed for Cantors, quoted by Lucien Deiss in at least three books from the 1970s onwards, ran as follows:

        When a sentence will do, don’t make a speech.
        When a word will do, don’t use a sentence.
        When a gesture will do, don’t say a word.
        When a look will do, don’t make a gesture.

      2. Allen F. Corrigan

        @Paul Inwood:

        Interesting. Thanks!

  3. RP Burke

    Wouldn’t have been original. The famous Boston ward boss Martin Lomasney was fond of saying, “Never write if you can speak; never speak if you can nod; never nod if you can wink.”

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  4. Clarey McInerny

    One priest I know uses every pause to insert small additions to the homily he already gave. He even uses the transition between the Eucharistic Prayer and the Lord’s Prayer! I have jokingly taken to calling them “homilitos.”

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