In reference to a post below from April 7th, on the Palm Sunday Gospel and my parish's weird way of reading the Gospel, a reader writes:

"I came late to the discussion on the reading of the Passion (your Apr. 7 post). Perhaps I can shed a little more light on the changes.

I am a musician at my parish. Beginning about 10 years ago I began hearing and reading about a minor movement to take away the people's parts in the reading of the Passion where they are the voice of the crowd, including the chant, "Crucify Him!" The thinking, obviously by liberals or progressives or whatever one wants to call them, was that it was somehow not appropriate for us to be the ones calling for the death of Christ. It looks like some of the "worship aid" publishers bought into this. Our missalettes* always used to have the crowd parts in bold type, indicated as "All." About four years ago the company removed the bold type and began indicating the crowd parts as "Chorus," not in bold type, hinting that the people should not be saying these parts. I read comments by various liturgy "experts" encouraging the use of short acclamations throughout the Passion in order to give the people a part in it. We actually did this at our parish for a couple of years, using the sung Lenten gospel acclamations "Glory and praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ" or "Praise and honor to you...." Of course the people had to be instructed in the new procedure, and I never liked it since it seemed too forced. This year we went back to having the people do the crowd parts. After the many accusations of anti-Semitism in "TPOTC" by the media, it was made abundantly clear that WE are truly the ones who caused the death of Jesus, so why should we not act the part in the reading of the Passion? (Sometimes I reflect that if I had lived in Jesus' time, I might have been one of those failing to see Him as Messiah and calling for Him to be crucified!)

(*Be aware that "missalette" is a trademark of the J. S. Paluch Company, and they get testy when people use the word to describe "worship aids" published by other companies. I use it here because Paluch is our music supplier.)"

Thanks for the email! The strange thing is that the missalette (or whatever) at our parish still prints the Gospel with the parts, and we all say the crowd parts out loud anyway. Also, I wonder if part of this thing is an attempt to stop the priest from reading the part of Christ exclusively.