Being Driven Crazy at Mass

  • Thread starter Thread starter noryar2025
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Can you tell me why it is more disciplined to pray while looking at a pamphlet than to pray while looking at a phone?

They’re just mediums of communication. Nothing inherently moral or immoral about them.
 
Last edited:
Really, what comes next, immoral to not use the missal that is in the pew? Bad Catholic for not having all prayers memorized?
 
Lara said:
In general, cell phone users lack discipline. I don’t own one.

Think for a minute how they appear to me. You give somebody directions to your house on the phone. They forget them. They phone you just as the food is needing attention. Suddenly google map didn’t work for them. They need directions. Never mind that they’ve lived in your city for years. They never bothered to study a map. You have to nurse them through the directions again. Then they have to call you again to say they’ve arrived. If you’ve ever been on a bus, you will hear the most inane conversations possible on their cell phones. I do not have fond associations with cell phones.
Click to expand...
With all due respect, I think you just have a weird hangup with cell phones and you need to get over it. You’re kind of being irrational.
 
I once heard a quote that church is an emergency room for sinners, not a museum for saints. Church is a place to praise and seek forgiveness.

Jesus wouldn’t mind one bit if a loving follower was wearing a T-shirt, flip flops, and shorts.
 
Am I the only one that sees the irony in going on an internet message board to call someone who uses a handheld communication device “undisciplined”…🤷‍♂️
 
Clutter in my house, the need to carry books around, font size (as one gets older we often need larger typeface) are a few that come to mind.
 
Care to quote the part you think answers the question? I skimmed through and saw nothing. Maybe I am just not that smart, but I don’t get anything about phones from reading any of the link. or I missed it.
 
It’s under the silence section:

“Perhaps it is very practical and convenient to pray the breviary with my own mobile phone or tablet or another electronic device, but it is not worthy: it desacralizes prayer. These apparatuses are not instruments consecrated and reserved to God, but we use them for God and also for profane things! Electronic devices must be turned off, or better still they can be left behind at home when we come to worship God. I have spoken previously of the unacceptability of taking photographs at the Sacred Liturgy, and of the particular scandal that this gives when it is done by clergy vested for liturgical service. We cannot focus on God if we are busy with something else. We cannot hear God speaking to us if we are already occupied communicating with someone else, or behaving as a photographer.”

Apparently, he’d also have problems with wedding photographers during a ceremony. However, even though he is a cardinal, this is still just one man’s opinion – it does not carry the force of law.
 
Well, I think he is failing to take into account that some devices let some people be involved because they can read better off their Ipads. I have seen a few elderly in my church use them to do the readings. As you said, it is his opinion.
 
I’m only in my 30s and I thank God for the accessibility settings on my phone/tablet some days. I have a chronic illness that affects my sight.
 
JulianN said:
However, even though he is a cardinal, this is still just one man’s opinion – it does not carry the force of law.
Click to expand...
Thank goodness! I find praying the LOH on my tablet much LESS distracting – no turning pages, or going to another section. Just the smooth flow of prayer.
How that “desacralizes” prayer is a puzzlement.
 
angel12 said:
How that “desacralizes” prayer is a puzzlement.
Click to expand...
I’ll take a stab at why he may have said that.

My breviary book has only one purpose: praying the LOTH. In are the psalms, rubrics, and prayers needed to do so. That book has been set aside solely for that purpose. My phone, on the other hand, has a number of purposes and functions: emails, texts, games, YouTube, etc. We set aside churches as buildings set apart solely for liturgical worship of God, and that is considered desirable, even necessary. Why would we not want to do for the Liturgy of the Hours?
 
I get it. I have the 4 volume LOTH, and at home, I use it.
But when I am out of my home, it’s either use my phone or don’t pray the Hours.
Sorry, my phone & prayer win every time.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top