(Taken from "The Modern Catholic Dictionary" by Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.
DANCING, LITURGICAL. Moving rhythmically to music as part of a religious
ceremony. Certain forms of dancing have at various times been introduced into
Catholic worship, but the Church has set down two conditions. First, to the extent to
which the body is a reflection of the soul, dancing has to express sentiments of faith and
adoration in order to become a prayer. And second, dancing must be under the
discipline of competent Church authority. "Concretely there are cultures in which this is
possible in so far as dancing is still reflective of religious values and becomes a clear
manifestation of them. Such is the case among the Ethiopians. In their cultures, even
today, there is the religious ritualized dance, clearly distinct from the martial dance and
from the amorous dance." The same is found among Christians in the Syriac and
Byzantine traditions. "However, the same criterion and judgment cannot be applied in
the Western culture. Here dancing is tied in with love, with diversion, with
profaneness, with unbridling of the senses; such dancing, in general, is not pure. For
that reason it cannot be introduced into liturgical celebrations of any kind whatever."
What about dancing outside the liturgy? This is permissible, but only under certain
conditions. Thus "if the proposal for a religious dance in the West is to be acceptable,
care must be taken that this occurs outside of the Rturgy, in assembly areas that are not
strictly liturgical. Moreover, priests must always be excluded from the dance" (Sacred
Congregation for the Sacraments and Divine Worship, Notitiae, 1975, 11, pp. 202-5).
When a group of Samoans came to Rome for a missionary festival in 1971, they assisted
at Mass in St. Peter's and then carried out their dance in St. Peter's Square, outside the
church.
