So far as I am aware, all the SSPX schools in the USA and Canada (and possibly worldwide?) use the dialogue Mass.

As to whether children are “forced” to say it, I am guessing the instance discussed in the other thread was a rather isolated occurrence, since most SSPXers no longer object to the dialogue Mass (ie., one must object and resist before anyone could attempt to enforce making the responses).

I am of the opinion that there are several reasons those in the English-speaking countries have swallowed this modernist novelty:

1) It was permitted before Vatican II, therefore it must be traditional;

2) Archbishop Lefebvre allowed it, therefore it must be traditional;

3) the slow but steady and incremental changes in the postures of the faithful over the last 15+ years have trended in this direction at the sung Masses, such that the delta between congregational responses at the sung mass, and the audible responses of the faithful at the low Mass, is not objectionable: the principle is the same.

4) The faithful are ignorant of the liturgical reform, and consequently do not understand that some of the principles cited in favor of the dialogue Mass (eg., using the Mass as a training ground, or as a catechism, or to further active participation, etc. are modernist innovations which were not concerns -and were unheard of except in Protestant circles- just 110 years ago;

5) That all these ideas were condemned and suppressed until the reign of Benedict XV, and that these subversive liturgical innovators met in secret in places like Assisi, Maria Lach, etc, and held conferences sponsored by liberal modernist bishops, who took us their projects and gave them safety, promoting their poisonous efforts.

6) That Rome initially objected, but the liberal bishops multiplying, and Benedict XV and Pius XI not having the same metal as St. Pius X, Rome gave in to keep the appearance of being in control.

THAT IT IS AN OUTRAGE TO ATTRIBUTE THE IMPETUS TO ST PIUS X, WHO HIJACKED HIS LEGITIMATE REFORMS, AND WHO ABSOLUTELY NEVER ENCOURAGES “ACTIVE PARTICIPATION” (THE WORD FOR WHICH DOES NOT APPEAR IN THE OFFICIAL VERSION OF HIS ENCYCLICAL, AND WHO NEVER ENCOURAGED CONGREGATIONAL SINGING)

Anyone who supports the dialogue Mass, by that very fact, has become a useful idiot for the liturgical revolutionaries. 

Ps: The translation of the Mass into the vernacular was also condemned by the Church, but that did not stop Dom Lambert Beauduin from doing it anyway, and inventing hand missals.

100 years ago, they did not exist (because it would be conceding the Protestant argument so many Catholic martyrs died resisting).

Do I have you thinking yet?

There is much more!

I'm skeptical here, if only because the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom has responses through, and it (or at least the longer liturgy of St James off which it was based) is at least 1600 years old.

One struggle I have in the attempt to be Traditional is its often hard for me to know for sure what was actually taught "always, everywhere, by everyone", vs what was widely but not universally held in the Second Millennium prior to the 20th century.

I also question the sheer prudential value of ignoring catechetical value of the mass, regardless of who may have pushed it, in our current situation.

You are confused here precisely for the reason given which you are questioning:
"4) The faithful are ignorant of the liturgical reform, and consequently do not understand that some of the principles cited in favor of the dialogue Mass (eg., using the Mass as a training ground, or as a catechism, or to further active participation, etc. are modernist innovations which were not concerns -and were unheard of except in Protestant circles- just 110 years ago"
A good beginning would be this book by Fr. Diddier Bonneterre (SSPX): 

https://www.traditioninaction.org/HotTopics/f081_Dialogue_9.htm


The beginning of the end of papal protection for liturgical tradition 

With his support for congregational singing and responses in Divini Cultus, Pope Pius XI produced a landmark mandate for change, which corresponded neither with the lex orandi of the Roman rite nor with the requirements, interests or desires of the Catholic faithful who had been worshipping in silence for centuries. 


Pius XI is reported to have publicly celebrated the Dialogue Mass himself in 1922 and 1925 and to have encouraged individuals and groups who were consciously advancing the liturgical revolution. (3) 

It is not surprising, therefore, that by the late 1920s, liturgical experimentation was already well under way in Europe, especially in some Benedictine Abbeys , (4) in the German-speaking lands (5) as well as in parts of America. (6) This involved “Dialogue Mass,” Mass facing the people, vernacular responses, congregational singing, Offertory procession, handshaking etc., all of which went into the melting pot to emerge as a ready-made template for a “democratized” liturgy. 

So, by the time Pius XI issued Divini Cultus in 1928, the vague expression “active participation” had a circuмscribed meaning among the reformers, but was unknown among the mass of ordinary Catholics who had never asked for it. This suggests that the spirit, which hovered over Pius XI when he recommended “active participation,” was akin to the spirit of Beauduin, which eventually gave rise to a new perception of the Church and the priesthood. 

From the book:
"Efforts to make the dialogue Mass obligatory.

Our reader will remember that the dialogue Mass had been from the start one of the pet subjects of the Liturgical Movement. In 1922, Pope Pius XI gave his authorization for it, provided it had the permission of the local Ordinary. In 1923, Dom Gaspar Lefebvre published an apologia for the dialogue Mass in the learned review La vie spirituelle. In itself the dialogue Mass is not a bad thing; it is one way of helping the faithful to participate in the sacred action. But it is only a means, and it must not be imposed as a universal norm. Monsignor Grober* wrote:

I have not the slightest objection to dialogue Masses as such, so long as their frequency is limited…They may be tried, but one must not hope for too much. Even so, I will always consider the dialogue Mass of marginal importance, and as something of momentary interest that soon the laws of change and of reaction will moderate and will cause to go out of fashion.

This wise bishop was most worried by the discovery “that the neo-liturgists saw in the dialogue Mass the expression of their ideas about the common priesthood. They also saw a method for insisting on the rights of lay people to cooperate in the Sacrifice of the Mass.” This “activist” participation upheld by the idea of the general priesthood was what so worried the Archbishop of Freibourg. Here again Pius XII echoed this worry in Mediator Dei, condemning the new theology of the priesthood and imposing limits on the dialogue Mass.” (p. 41, The Liturgical Movement: from Dom Gueranger to Annibale Bugnini, Rev. Fr. Didier Bonneterre ; originally published as Le Mouvement Liturgique, 1980 Editions Fideliter)



* …Msgr. Grober, Archbishop of Freibourg-im-Breisgau. In fact, in the middle of January 1943, this prelate addressed to his colleagues in Germany (in the “Greater Germany” that followed the Anschluss) a long letter written in a grave tone, that set out in seventeen points the principal causes of anxiety which he had about the youth movements. Certain of these grievances bore upon general theology or ecclesiology.” (p. 40, The Liturgical Movement: from Dom Gueranger to Annibale Bugnini, Rev. Fr. Didier Bonneterre)

Do you see the CON?
If the dialogue Mass was not "bad in itself," then why the need to limit it?? (Grober)
If it is not evil in itself, then why not impose it?? (G. Lefebvre)
These liturgical modernist, wrongly hailed as a traditionalist, is trying to downplay the significance of the dialogue Mass in order to let it spread!
Soon the Holy Week would fall, and a decade later, the true Mass would follow it into oblivion....but for Lefebvre!

The year 1909 marks the decisive moment when the worm of decay entered the liturgical scene and slowly began to devour the traditional rites from the inside. This was the year in which Dom Lambert Beauduin presented his ideas for more “active” lay participation in the liturgy at the National Congress of Catholic Action in Malines on the invitation of Cardinal Désiré Joseph Mercier. 

His address was entitled ‘The True Prayer of the Church’ (La Vraie Prière de l’Église), and was published as part of Beauduin's book The Piety of the Church (La Piété de l’Église) in 1914. (1)   In it, he proposed a “pastoral” plan for what he claimed were Pope Pius X’s directives for “active participation.” 

He mentioned in his lecture, among other things, his plan to familiarize the laity with the text of the Mass and Divine Office through the widespread use of bi-lingual hand-missals. 

The idea behind the proposal was, so he averred, to fulfill Pope Pius X’s aim to help lay people achieve a greater degree of participation in the liturgy as the “primary and indispensable source of the Christian spirit.” 

All shall have Missals 

But there was a great deal more behind the innocuous-sounding strategy. Already a major revolution had been gathering momentum in his mind and the 1909 Congress in Malines was only the first platform for views he had been elaborating for some time. 

At the top of his agenda at the Congress was a proposal to publish and disseminate thousands of missals with vernacular translations, not in order for the faithful to read silently as an option, but so as to make the Dialogue Mass the norm for all. “Let us change the routine and monotonous assistance at acts of worship into an active and intelligent participation; let us teach the faithful to pray and confess these truths in a body,” Beauduin announced. (2)


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This strategy was based on nothing other than his own highly subjective notions of lay participation. It indicated a fatuous optimism about fostering a “community spirit” by having every member of the congregation barking like trained seals, with the priest as the ringmaster. 

He even admitted to wanting to deprive Catholics of their traditional method of participation by eliminating all forms of private prayers, which they recited silently during the Mass. (3) These would include the Rosary, devotional exercises or even meditations. 

In other words, Beauduin wanted collective verbal responses to be the medium of lay participation. Strictly “liturgical prayer” would be de rigueur for the faithful. (4)   But his plan did not stop there. In his programme of action formulated at the Malines Congress, he expressed the wish that even outside the liturgy the faithful should give up their devotional exercises and model their prayers on the priest’s Breviary: e.g. Compline should take the place of private evening prayers. 

It was basically an assault on their freedom to pray as individuals in their own way – a freedom later vindicated by Pope Pius XII in 1947 (Mediator Dei § 108). The same Pope censured those “who are deceived under the pretext of restoring the liturgy or who idly claim that only liturgical rites are of any real value and dignity” (ibid. §176), and he also rejected as “wrong and dangerous” any attempt on the part of the reformers to reduce exercises of popular piety to the methods and norms of liturgical rites (ibid. § 184). 

Silent participation forbidden


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It is important not to underestimate the seriousness of the proposal to make the Dialogue Mass the outcome of participation for all the faithful.  A centuries-old custom of silent prayer that flowed from the faith and practice of generations of Catholics was about to be abolished, sacrificed on the altar of a destructive egalitarianism in which everyone’s “active participation” – whether clerical or lay – is treated as of equal status. 

It was also a totalitarian measure in which the individual is sacrificed to the collective. The faithful, exhorted to join in the collective vocal responses, would no longer be free to choose whichever method of silent participation works best for them. Experience shows that, for those wishing to join their minds and hearts to the Holy Sacrifice being re-enacted on the altar, interior recollection can be distracted by the intrusive voices of others in the pews. 

Henceforth, wherever the Dialogue Mass took root, the atmosphere of Catholic worship in the Roman rite would be forever changed as spoken responses drowned silent participation. What is more, silent participation has become a sort of lightning rod for the hatred of liturgical reformers. Indeed, it is now held to be an affront to democratic values in the “age of the laity” inaugurated by Vatican II. 

This explains why Novus Ordo priests have been known to react with a mixture of horror and outrage at the sight of any Catholic in the pews fingering a Rosary or reading from a prayer book in the traditional style, and why they expose them to the general derision of the congregation. 

The tip of an iceberg 

Proponents of the Dialogue Mass and congregational singing contend that these forms of “active participation” were what Pope Pius X intended in his 1903 motu proprio. But that is simply an unwarranted assumption, which sprang from the fevered brain of Dom Lambert Beauduin, who wanted to start a liturgical revolution to “democratize” the liturgy. (5) 

Significantly, there was no popular demand from the laity for “active participation” or desire on their part to be invested with clerical roles. The Dialogue Mass, which aids such an inversion of roles, was just the visible tip of an iceberg of “active participation,” the enormity of which was hidden under the waves in Pope Pius X’s time. 

As the following articles will show, the landmark date of 1909 when Beauduin launched the Liturgical Movement stands as a monument to the state of degeneracy into which the liturgy fell after Vatican II. 

Continued 


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