It happens all the time. I cannot understand the need and the continuation of clapping during or even after Mass. I cannot understand clapping for people in the pew, the organist, the choir, the newly baptized adult, or mothers on Mother's Day. It just happened again almost weekly this summer in a Church I was visiting in the south of England and in a Church in Ireland. Even if it is rare, it should not happen at all. We should not be drawing attention to ourselves at Mass.
Please, no clapping...And, the clapping at weddings is just too much...when did this start?
"Wherever applause
breaks out in the liturgy because of some human achievement, it is a
sure sign that the essence of liturgy has totally disappeared and
been replaced by a kind of religious entertainment. Such
attractiveness fades quickly — it cannot compete in the market of
leisure pursuits, incorporating as it increasingly does various forms
of religious titillation." (Cardinal Ratzinger, The Spirit of
the Liturgy, pp 147)
