Cellphones at Mass

  • Thread starter Thread starter Saul_to_Paul_1
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
4-5 is bad. Answering it in Mass is awful. It sounds like your priest needs to address this.

I will say I used to have my phone on vibrate and do not disturb. I thought that was good enough. But one day I woke up early and went to the early Mass. I have a wake up alarm set. Well, vibrate and do not disturb to not cause alarms not to sound, which is sensible for alarms. I didn’t think about this. So, during the consecration I started to hear my alarm. It was faint and pleasant since I don’t like being awoken to something too ‘alarming’.

When it went off I frantically tried to silence it. I did so by hitting the silence button. This worked and I didn’t want to pull my phone out. But I forgot that was just the snooze feature. So it went off again ten minutes later.

I am not technologically challenged and I did what I thought would be sufficient to silence my phone. I now turn it off for Mass. But I am a lot more understanding of mistakes. Most all of us rely on these devices and they are now a part of our culture.
 
Mintaka said:
Nobody minds emergency workers keeping their cellphones on.
Click to expand...
Don’t be so sure. I got shredded on CAF once for saying I have to leave my phone on silent, and if it buzzes, I just glance in my bag, flip it over to see if it needs attention, and then don’t answer if it doesn’t. I think once or twice I’ve answered via silenced text because I won’t ignore the Air Force. I can’t.

Taking 30 seconds to answer an accountability call silently in the pew is, to me, far less disturbing than getting up, leaving, opening the doors, and then coming back. Apparently some folks would rather you do all that than just take the silent route.

Really can’t say anyone has noticed any of it, and if they have, it’s none of their business in my opinion. God and I know what I need to do.
 
Last edited:
Oh gosh, if I ever got a phone that would be me. I’d solve it by leaving it at home and then my relatives would get mad at me. Already they have nagged several times for me to get one. 😊
 
Some people are rude and some are thoughtless others forgetful.

An announcement before Mass reminding people to turn off their cell phone ringers would help remind the the forgetful. The rude and thoughtless, well, perhaps some good manners will rub off on them 🙂
 
I accidently left my phone on during daily mass once or twice I think. I shut if off really quickly. It truly just slipped my mind.

Thankfully, my parish doesn’t have a problem with this. But I’ve seen some that have notes posted in the narthex that phones should be silenced before entering.
 
Saul_to_Paul_1 said:
because it makes me mad, which is not why I’m going to Mass in the first place.
Click to expand...
Of course that’s not why you’re going to Mass. After hearing so many Biblical readings and homilies maybe you’ve heard of not judging the intentions of others. I don’t throw the ‘judging’ word around lightly because I think it’s used too often but the folks around you may not mean disrespect, they may just a be little forgetful. You may want to pray for greater reverence to be shown during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass - theirs and yours (in your self-admitted anger).

There are many saints who have shown us the way to detach ourselves from the annoyances of life. I’m thinking of St. Therese of Lisieux. She was greatly annoyed with the clicking of the rosary beads of one of her sister nuns. She also had to deal with a nun who seemed to greatly dislike her. Therese learned to offer up these inconveniences and to embrace the challenge of doing so. I’m also reminded by your post of St. Paul who teaches us in his writings to offer up our sufferings.

I’ve had problems, and still do, with anger in inappropriate places. It almost always manifests itself within, without exterior manifestation. Through the practice of frequent Confession I’m breaking the habit of anger - getting ticked off when others don’t do things the way I think they should do them (such as turning off cellphones at Mass and leaving Mass early).

You may chose not to go to Daily Mass remember that the choice is yours, totally yours. Though there is a factor which may have initiated that choice, no one else is making you stop.
 
Not in this case. It’s not the elderly who are the culprits
 
Saul_to_Paul_1 said:
somebody answered their phone and was having a conversation during the readings
Click to expand...
This has happened in my parish as well. It’s been a while since I heard a conversation, but pretty much everyday somebody’s phone rings during some part of the Mass.

An equally irritating distraction was one occasion when a woman came in late and went up to light some candles right behind the priest during the gospel reading. I could figure out her offering, too, by the tone of the clanking coins in the box. lol
 
My watch buzzes when I get a call or text. I leave my phone in vibrate all the time and only have to glance at my watch to see if I need to deal with something.
 
Are you on call 24/7/365? Or do you have days off when you can turn it off and go to mass?
 
You can’t feel or hear it if it vibrates? I’m required to be available 24/7; I just put it on vibrate. It doesn’t have to be audible for you to know it’s gone off.

Trust me - a military recall or medical recall for me is no less urgent.
 
That’s why I like the watch. I might not notice if the buzzer goes off in my pocket but my watch is pretty hard to ignore.
 
I do recall a recent thread that began by asking the question who uses an app on their phone to read scripture and follow the Mass. I watched it deteriorate and finally saw it deleted.😉
 
Pup7 said:
And furthermore, why on earth would they care? If the phone is silent, it’s not bothering them.
Click to expand...
Not necessarily. A bright white light emanating from a cell phone in a relatively dark church is quite distracting. I don’t mind if others use technological aids during Mass/Divine Liturgy but it makes a world of difference if they utilize the “invert colors” feature a lot of smart phones have thereby switching what they’re reading to white text on a black screen.

Furthermore, I understand the reluctance one may have in using their phone to follow along with a liturgy when there’s a really good chance that someone else’s phone is almost guaranteed to go off. 😉

Anyway, while we’re all sharing anecdotes I’ve got a most audacious one that happened just a couple weeks ago. I’m up in San Francisco visiting a very large, very popular, very beautiful Catholic priory on a weekday evening just a couple minutes before the friars were to begin chanting Vespers. As I’m staring upward admiring the awesome Neo-Gothic arches I start to hear a dial tone. It’s pretty loud. I’m actually surprised I can hear it since this church is huge, my ears are old, and it’s a weekday with very few people inside at the time. Then I start hearing dialing. Then ringing. Then an even louder, chipper, female voice… “Good evening! Thank you for calling St. *******'s Catholic Church! How may I help you?” One of the friars sitting in choir leaves his stall, steps out to the nave and demand’s that whoever’s phone that is should be turned off immediately.

Unfazed by this the man brazen enough to call the parish office of the church he was currently inside of, from the nave, on speaker phone continues his call with the secretary:

Clueless man: “Yeah, I have an appointment with Fr. ******* for confession, but none of the confessional lights are on out here.”

Secretary: “Wait, you’re calling from the nave of the church?”

CM: “Uh huh!”

Secretary: “Sir, I’ll be right there to help you out. Please hang up your phone.”

At this point the same friar steps up to the ambo:

Friar: “For every second that phone stays on I’ll see to it that Fr. ******* adds another decade to your penance! TURN IT OFF!”

So, yeah. Sometimes the polite reminders to check one’s phone before the liturgy begins fall on deaf ears because those individuals are important and the rules clearly don’t apply to them.
 
More often than not, though, I think it’s just an unfortunate, and quite embarrassing accident and if we figure there to be a certain number of these accidents per unit number of people inside the church at any given time then we should expect there to be at least one phone that goes off as the number of people attending increases.

I’m not above making this mistake, by the way! 😖 Like you I check, re-check, and re-check again before entering a church (or a theater, or any other place common decency would tell me it isn’t appropriate for a cell phone to audibly ring). There was one time however, in which I triple checked my ringer… but forgot I had set an alarm. Like most phones switching my ringer to vibrate won’t silence alarms. I was extremely lucky in that Mass had ended some 30 seconds before my alarm went off so I technically didn’t interrupt the liturgy, just the chit-chat that begins almost immediately after Father exits (something Father had been trying to nip in the bud anyway). As fortune would have it my alarm just so happened to be a recording I made of the Sankt Josef Bell, Sankt Peter Bell, and Speciosa Bell from Cologne Cathedral pealing in tandem. I rushed to my bag to turn it off but it was too late. Everyone had stopped talking. It was nearly silent in there. I could feel the judgment beaming from their eyes and digging into the back of my head. Mea Culpa!!! As I was leaving myself I overheard a parishioner give Father kudos for playing a recording of bells after Mass to get everyone to hush up. 😏
 
I understand people that have to be reached (medical, military etc.)
but I just leave my phone in the car. Its just one hour. I am not that important that I need to be reached immediately. Obviously the people that have to scramble to shut off their phones that are ringing in the middle of mass aren’t either, because they usually don’t leave. I don’t understand what is so difficult about remembering where you are, and shutting the phone off.
 
Brandon_Cal said:
Furthermore, I understand the reluctance one may have in using their phone to follow along with a liturgy when there’s a really good chance that someone else’s phone is almost guaranteed to go off. 😉
Click to expand...
You quoted me as saying, “And furthermore, why on earth would they care? if the phone is on silent, it’s not bothering them.” That has nothing to do with reluctance on someone’s part to use a phone. My point was there are an awful lot of people (and I’ve read their comments on this very subject) who seem to be overly worried with what someone two pews over is doing. It’s truly not their issue.
Brandon_Cal said:
Not necessarily. A bright white light emanating from a cell phone in a relatively dark church is quite distracting. I don’t mind if others use technological aids during Mass/Divine Liturgy but it makes a world of difference if they utilize the “invert colors” feature a lot of smart phones have thereby switching what they’re reading to white text on a black screen.
Click to expand...
I also haven’t been in a dark church except at Easter Vigil. I can’t say I can see a screen as well in broad daylight if it’s inverted. (In broad daylight, I don’t see how anyone could see a “bright white screen” across the room anyway - and as I said - why would they look in the first place?)

It’s impossible to account for every single scenario that could/might/may possibly happen in sixty minutes. If someone is more comfortable using a tablet or phone during Mass to follow the readings, it’s a personal decision. No one advocated being openly rude about it, but it’s pretty rude to be sitting in church judging someone for an electronic device.
 
Last edited:
I’m with the poster who commented there should be an app that silences your phone automatically when you hit certain GPS coordinates. If your location services are on, it knows where you are - you could just set it as an addy or a waypoint.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top