Gnostics and Narcissists at Dance

If you haven't gotten your tickets yet for World Youth Day, don't delay. Here's an article from The Tidings. The liturgical dance ensemble (ensemble mind you) from Marymount Catholic School in the diocese of Los Angeles is preparing a dance number to be performed after Communion of course. Their accompaniment will be to a song by Destiny's Child, "Stand Up for Love" (an obvious choice if I may say so). And their reasons for dancing are thus:

"I like it because it is a way to express yourself other than in using words or writing," says Kristen Partipilo, student captain of the ensemble, who danced at Youth Day 2005 and before last year had danced off and on since kindergarten. "You can become in touch with yourself and who you are and just find inner tranquility."

and another student

"It wasn't like performing in any other setting. All those people really respected who you were."

Pope Benedict's views on dance (written when he was Cardinal Ratzinger):

Dancing is not a form of expression for the Christian liturgy. In about the third century, there was an attempt in certain Gnostic-Docetic circles to introduce it into the liturgy. For these people, the Crucifixion was only an appearance. . . . Dancing could take the place of the liturgy of the Cross, because, after all, the Cross was only an appearance. The cultic dances of the different religions have different purposes - incantation, imitative magic, mystical ecstasy - none of which is compatible with the essential purpose of the liturgy as the "reasonable sacrifice". It is totally absurd to try to make the liturgy "attractive" by introducing dancing pantomimes (wherever possible performed by professional dance troupes), which frequently (and rightly, from the professionals' point of view) end with applause. Wherever applause breaks out in the liturgy because of some human achievement, it is a sure sign that the essence of liturgy has totally disappeared and been replaced by a kind of religious entertainment. Such attraction fades quickly - it cannot compete in the market of leisure pursuits, incorporating as it increasingly does various forms of religious titillation.

Do you think the placement of the performance and the choice of the song has ANY BEARING on the current dispute about kneeling after Communion. That's the problem with Traditionalists- we see conspiracies everywhere. Probably just a very strange coincidence.