Friday at lunch I was talking with my friends (two of them electrical engineers) about our parish sound system. I asked “If we believe that God is present in Word and Sacrament (bread and wine), why is it acceptable to have a sound system that doesn’t work properly?” We would consider it outrageous if a priest kept the Body and Blood out of reach of someone who wanted it. It is so important to us that we will walk over to a parishioner who is disabled in order to give communion. Yet we don't care if people miss the presence of God because they cant hear.
We insist that parishioners treat the Eucharist with respect, and then demonstrate our lack of respect for the Word.
Here are some requests for our pastors and liturgical ministers:
• Choose half a dozen people with normal hearing. Ask them to sit in various positions in the church and tell you if they can hear the words as they are read or sung. Keep working on the sound system until they all can hear.
• Train your cantors to sing the psalms using clear articulation so that people can hear the words.
• Convince your instrumentalists to play softly enough so that the congregation can hear the cantors.
• Lector training should include more than procedures. Lectors should meditate on their reading until it means something to them. Remember that “We read the scripture in its fullness _when it reads us and finds emptiness.” Verbal practice should follow meditation.
In the military we would call poor delivery of the word of God “mission failure.” In all to many parishes it is “business as usual.”
I try not to use this blog to rant and rave, but this one provokes me
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