Voting and the Liturgy

But voting is also a fundamentally Catholic and even liturgical thing to do.

The liturgical movement that culminated in the mid-1960s with the reforms of the Second Vatican Council began in Europe in the 1800s as a way of reclaiming Catholicism, and especially the liturgy, from the nationalisms that had pushed it to the margins of many societies. While its origins may have been marked by ultramontanism, voices like Dom Lambert Beauduin, Dom Virgil Michel, even Dorothy Day pushed the movement well beyond these somewhat triumphalist origins, beyond even the archeological rediscoveries of the long-neglected origins of Christian worship, though these were important to the spirit of the reforms that would result. Beauduin, Michel and others helped center the movement’s enduring emphasis on full, conscious and active participation of the faithful in liturgy as the “indispensable source of the true Christian spirit” (Pius X’s motu proprio of 1903), and helped to articulate the important implications of this principle for life in society for as well.

Namely, these scholars of the liturgical movement recognized one important way in which liturgy is like democracy: it requires everyone’s strenuous participation all the time in order to achieve its fullest expression and effects. Singing, praying, processing, gesturing, responding, acclaiming, bowing, sharing, receiving: these are the outward actions of the gathered assembly. Mark Searle, in his brilliant posthumous book Called to Participate, says these sense-level actions are important not simply for their own sake, but because they point to greater realities: 1. our participation in the Body of Christ, who invites humanity to encounter God, and 2. our participation in the divine life offered to us by God through Jesus Christ, both on earth and in heaven. These three levels of participation – the sense- or surface-level, the Body-of-Christ level, and the divine-life level – are graduated levels, says Searle. Beginning with our sense-level participation, one level leads to the next. And if one level is missing or sorely lacking, there is no path to the next level. (Think about that next time you find it difficult to make time for attending Mass.)

In the sense that the sacraments are material signs of divine realities, Searle’s notion of our liturgical participation as pointing to our participation in the divine life of God-in-Christ arises from a sacramental understanding. But this sacramental notion of liturgical participation serves as a model for life in democratic society as well. Just as liturgy cannot do its work if we don’t join in, or join in with obtuse attitudes that impede participation, democracy cannot do its work if we stay home from the polls, or if we vote out of ignorance, spite, or out of a desire to be entertained by those in power rather than represented fairly and led effectively. And it is a principle of Catholic Social Teaching that lack of participation by any of us is an impediment to justice for all of us. 

Some social-justice minded Catholics find it challenging to learn that the Church, in the flagship liturgy document of the Second Vatican Council, Sacrosanctum Concilium, privileges the liturgy as the “source and summit” of the Christian life. That’s right: the Church teaches that the liturgy is the source of our power to live the Christian life and at the same time the most important of all our actions as Christians. Some Catholics expect direct service to the poor to be held above all; after all, Jesus spent much of his time healing and serving. 

But Jesus also taught us to pray, and, with urgency on the night before he died, he taught us to “do [the Eucharist] in memory of me”. It’s not that we hold singing and praying as more important than direct service to those in need. It’s just that the service we give the world is only truly done in Christ’s name and in Christ’s spirit if we serve as the Body of Christ. And as Mark Searle avers, there is only one path to becoming the Body of Christ: our full, conscious and active participation in the liturgy. Why? Because liturgy is a discipline. It trains us to not to be one among a sea of “I”s but rather to become a “We”. The discipline of charity we learn through our cooperative efforts in the liturgy makes our identity as the Body of Christ and our participation in the divine life possible. (Think about that next time you’re at Mass and a misbehaving child in a nearby pew is annoying you, or you don’t like the kind of music being sung. Then offer a prayer of thanksgiving to God for the opportunity to show those you pray with a friendship that transcends death, let alone rude children and divergent tastes in music.)

In a similar way, we transcend ourselves, becoming something greater, when we vote. We become an essential organ of democracy, snaking our way, vote by vote, toward a government that functions on behalf of its people – all its people, rather than a privileged few. In that sense, voting, like the liturgy, is the source of our power as Americans, and the pinnacle activity toward which our life of activism leads. 

Have you voted yet? Post about your experience in the comments. And if you haven’t, what are you waiting for?