Catholicism has silence built into it. Silence in Catholicism is everywhere. Walk into any medieval church in Europe and the silence is almost audible. It’s as if the walls and icons of the churches produce their own silence, a counterbalance to everything going on outside its walls.
The traditional Tridentine Mass has moments of silence, and that silence even made it into the Novo Ordo Mass: the priest holds the consecrated host up and is silent; he lifts the chalice of consecrated wine and is silent.
A chapel dedicated to the adoration of the Sacrament is silent.
Monks and nuns take vows of silence.
The Catholic Encyclopedia writes of three spiritual principles behind silence:
- As an aid to the practice of good, for we keep silence with man, in order the better to speak with God, because an unguarded tongue dissipates the soul, rendering the mind almost, if not quite, incapable of prayer. The mere abstaining from speech, without this purpose, would be that “idle silence” which St. Ambrose so strongly condemns.
- As a preventative of evil. Senica, quoted by Thomas a Kempis complains that “As often as I have been amongst men, I have returned less a man” (Imitation, Book I, c. 20).
- The practice of silence involves much self-denial and restraint, and is therefore a wholesome penance, and as such is needed by all.
Silence is indeed “needed by all,” particularly in today’s techno-world. It’s one of the great mysteries to me why so many people like the dazzle of multi-media mega-churches: these churches incorporate technology as liturgical baggage; it seems the church is to be a place of worship and contemplation that shuts out the world.
