"Religious Dance"

To most Protestants (and many Roman Catholics), the Mass is a formal, mysterious ritual which typifies a formal, mysterious church. Last week Monsignor Ronald A. Knox, famed British scholar and detective-story writer, published a cheerful, witty, informal book called The Mass in Slow Motion (Sheed & Ward; $2.50). Designed to explain the mysterious Latin mumble-jumble of the Mass, the book combines reverence with readability.

Monsignor Knox, a longtime Roman Catholic chaplain at Oxford University, has lately been practicing what he calls "a highly specialized art form, that of sermons to schoolgirls." His detailed close-up of Catholicism's chief ceremony is a set of these sermons, starting with the assurance: "The Mass is really a kind of religious dance." Sample Knoxisms:

THE WORD OREMUS (LET Us PRAY) : "A useful sort of alarm clock ... to wake us up at various points . . . when our attention was in danger of going to sleep."

THE OFFERTORY: "In theory, the whole congregation surging up into the sanctuary and presenting you, the priest, with the bread and wine, their contribution to the mysteries. Actually, in their name, a small boy emerges from the background, probably with hiccoughs; at first sight you are tempted to regard him as an unwelcome distraction, then you remember that he stands there in the name of the congregation . . ."

THE COLLECTS: "SOS messages expressing, in as brief terms as possible, the needs of the church ... A collect, like a telegram, ought to say what it wants to say in a very few words, and at the same time be intelligible."

THE CEREMONIAL KISSING OF THE ALTAR: "A keyhole, through which you look right back to the catacombs; Mass over the tombs of the martyrs ... All altars must have relics ... to remind us that we belong to the martyrs of the first century, and they to us . . . The Mass is all one, in A.D. 48 or in A.D. 1948."

THE INTENTIONS: "When you see me standing up there, mumbling to myself ... all dressed up in silk like a great pin cushion, you mustn't think of me as something quite apart, at a distance from you, uninterested in your feelings and your concerns. On the contrary, I am standing there like a great pin cushion for you to stick pins into me--all the things you want ... for yourself ... are part of the prayer that I am saying, and I couldn't prevent them being part of my intentions in saying the Mass, even if I wanted to."

THE CONSECRATION : "You simply stand there and record a piece of history. In recording that piece of history, it becomes necessary to recite some words our Lord used; and so ... you do what you came there to do; or rather, you don't do it, you suddenly pull yourself together and realize that our Lord's words, even relaid on such lips as yours, have done it."

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