Rita Ferrone in a recent thread said this:
the signing of the book, which cannot be done very easily in a large diocesan liturgy with hundreds of elect
I found myself wondering if that statement is actually true. In the same way that it is OK for the Veneration of the Cross at the Good Friday liturgy of the Lord’s Passion to take as long as half an hour or more, because in the absence of a Eucharistic Prayer that veneration is the principal symbolic action we are there to do (and yes, I know that some people object to it taking so long), it seems to me that it doesn’t matter if the signing takes a similar amount of time. In fact, in those dioceses where the elect are then led to meet the bishop, it is that encounter which takes up a greater amount of time than the signing itself would require.
Nevertheless I have encountered different ways in different dioceses of dealing with the signing “time-problem” in large celebrations.
(1) Subdivide into a number of different celebrations, each with its own Book of the Elect.
This happens routinely in places where the cathedral is not large enough to hold all those who attend, or where the cathedral is being renovated (or a new one is being built) and other churches have to be used, but I have seen it happen even in places where there might have been room for everyone. (Of course, the numbers in some dioceses necessitate multiple Rites as a matter of course, even if they have a large cathedral. These will sometimes all take place in the cathedral on different days, or they may be spread out among several churches.)
(2) Several books being signed at different “signing stations” in the same celebration.
I am not sure how I feel about the symbol of the Book being visually “divided” in this way, in the same way as having a multiplicity of crosses to venerate on Good Friday is not only undesirable but no longer permitted by the rubrics in the post-conciliar period (Roman Missal 2010, Good Friday, para 19).
The only advantage of this method is that the gesture of signing is visible to all.
(3) Some dioceses have the pages signed in advance.
These pages are on stiff paper or card and will eventually be placed in a kind of solemn looseleaf binder — not one of those which takes hole-punched pages, but a spring-back binder that can be held open for the insertion of the pages. The pages are brought up solemnly in procession and placed in the binder, and the bishop signs the last page.
(Talking of which, I see some Rites of Election where the bishop signs every page of the Book — I do not believe it is necessary for him to do this, and it can risk looking almost as ridiculous as those deacons who solemnly “plop” a drop of water into, say, all 20+ chalices at a large celebration, instead of just into the principal chalice. There is no rubric requiring every chalice to have water added to it, and the symbolic action does not demand it. In some places the drop of water is added to a decanter or flagon of wine before that is poured into the chalices, a practice recommended in the Bishops of England and Wales’s 2005 document Celebrating the Mass, para 182.)
In such circumstances, it is not necessary for all the signers even to be present, merely a representative body of them. Each pastoral area will have had its own sub-rite locally — in this case a rite of sending the pages rather than of sending the catechumens! — during which the signing will have taken place.
I feel uncomfortable with not seeing the actual signing by the elect taking place at the Rite of Election, since it eliminates the primary symbolic action of the rite. I also wonder about the necessity of having a Rite of Election at all if the catechumens have already been called and have “laid their lives on the line” in the presence of the Church’s delegated witnesses (auxiliary bishops, vicars episcopal, etc). The signed pages could simply be delivered to the chancery.
(4) I have also seen other minor variations or combinations of the above.
It would be interesting to know if there is a consensus about the value of the visual symbol of signing as well as the time taken to do it and the way in which it is done.
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