“I have no problem with the congregation making the responses that properly belong to the people: those that are sung at High Mass. These include the Ordinary and the short responses. The old rubrics, including the Dominican Rite, instructed the priest at Low Mass to say these “voce clara et intelligibili,” that is loud enough to be heard by the people and understood by them.

I do have a problem with having the congregation join in the ministerial responses: the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar, the Orate fratres, etc. These are properly in origin ministerial prayers, not congregational. And practice reflects that. At High Mass they are covered by music. At low Mass, the rubrics said they were to be recited “voce mediocri,” that is only loud enough to be heard by those near the altar. They are prayers that belong a distinct group within the Body of Christ, those who minister at the altar.

One of the regrettable effects of the usual form of Dialogue Mass was to confuse two different liturgical roles: that of the ministers at the altar and that of the congregation. The result was to increase the verbal patter at Mass with sorry results in the Novus Ordo. Combine this with hymn singing at the Offertory and Communion (and before and after Mass) as many parishes did already in the 1950s, and you have the “Four Hymn Sandwich Mass” so regularly condemned on these blogs.

When I have celebrated public Low Mass I have never found any one who could not understand that the ministerial responses and the congregational ones belong to different participants. Likewise, that the prayers said “secreto” belong to the priest alone. Whether a certain pope encouraged making the ministerial responses into congregational ones does not mean that we need to turn this option into a rule. Indeed, it does not exclude never doing it at all. It was an option, and I am not convinced that it was a good one.”
Comment by Fr. Augustine Thompson O.P.