Does the same reasoning, then, apply to parents who have to bring very young children to Mass? After all, they have to pay attention to them, try to keep them quiet, and even be prepared to get up and walk out if the child’s needs require it.
I think it’s reasonable to assume that this rule also extends to the use of giant television or computer monitors, even if they are not technically projection screens. But if we accept that, the question becomes what qualifies as a projector for the purposes of paragraph 73?
That’s ridiculous. My husband is the IT guy for our local, SMALL hospital. He is on call every other weekend. Sometimes he gets 20 calls in a weekend, sometimes he gets none. You’re telling me that he should miss his Sunday obligation because someone MIGHT call him?! His obligation to attend is only dispensed if he is actually called in, not on the potential.Anyone who “must” have his or her cell phone on/available, even on silent, even to check, is not available for Mass, i.m.o. Decide when you’re available to God: at the 5 pm Vigil Mass? at the 7:30 am Sunday Mass if there is one? Or maybe you can find a parish with a late Sunday afternoon Mass. In my area there are two very late-night Masses on Sunday. Who are “you” that you are so essential to the world that the world cannot survive without keeping you On Notice at all times, apparently including when you are using the bathroom.
If you are an EMT, or a physician On Call for the entire weekend among your group of physicians, then you are most likely not available for Mass that weekend. In that case, you are excused from your Sunday obligation on that particular weekend. It would be helpful to you to try to get to Mass during the weekday, but not required for you.
We are in a small church, if you want to sit near an exit you would have to fight A LOT of people. But, I don’t think he’s ever distracted anyone when leaving. He tries to do it when people are getting up. Singing during the offeratory, right before Communion as people are standing, etc.
“Sunday Mass is a big deal”?! Seriously. It is THE deal. It is the source and summit of our worship. That you would want to deny that to someone because they are on call is sad. Where is your sense of “the Eucharist and the Community”?
I’m freaked that you have a pediatrician that would wait until dessert is served to call someone who might have a dying child back, but don’t think that really correlates to the importance of the Mass to an individual or to someone who takes their “On call” status a bit more seriously.
I would have to agree. When I read that, it made me wonder about the work ethic of the pediatrician, although I don’t know the ped and we’re only hearing one side of the story with that. My father is an internist and when he is on call, he doesn’t ignore it until he eats his food or gets his dessert or anything else. I know that if he heard something like this of one of his colleagues for his own patients, he’d be really upset. He and other doctors I know could never knowingly ignore a call which could be potentially life-threatening. Sometimes, calls are nothing more than a cold or something not that life-threatening. But there were many times when the calls have been people who were in life-threatening situations, some of which where the family and patient were too much in shock or denial to have figured out that they should get to the ER immediately. He has had to call 911 for some of these patients and talk them through until the ambulance arrived because of that. So if he decided to finish his dinner before calling back the patient to see what the trouble was, that patient could have potentially died or been severely hurt.
To do what you suggest would be reading into the text as the proper definition of “projector” does not include smart phones or any kind of handheld digital devices.
No one is “an expert” because it is not a topic that requires expertise. However, people that have been on call do know more about the effort of attention it takes than those that do not.
Maybe you cannot be. Perhaps for you this is a rule that should apply.
People that have done this, get it. One must make do. The mere act of going the extra mile to attend Mass is a spiritual sacrificy when can make to God. We can be totally attentive to God through the mundane tasks of life.
We are called to pray unceasingly, this can not be done if you follow Elizabeth’s logic.
This. My husband is the doctor of the computers
some people might think it’s not important enough to have your phone on during Mass (on silent/vibrate of course). But, you wouldn’t say that if it was your kid that had a broken bone in the ER in our rural hospital and the server went down and they couldn’t send the x-rays to the hospital that’s 200 miles away to be read. Granted, he has gotten the “I can’t print” phone calls, that usually result in putting paper in the printer to fix, but those usually happen at 2AM for some reason. 
Sometimes I wonder if the others at adoration (primarily elderly women) think that I’m doing something impropper, but then I realise that it doesn’t ocour to me to wonder if perhaps they’re there saying prayers to their favorite professional wrestler instead of our Lord and I trust that they extend the same courtesy to me.Also, in Church terms, “scandal” doesn’t mean “it’ll make folks talk” or “people will be shocked.” For some reason people always misuse the concept of scandal to criticize things they think would shock them – “You can’t do that, you’ll scandalize people!” In reality, “scandal” has a very specific and quite different meaning.
Comment on my post:
I know very well what scandal means by definition in the secular realm and the spiritual realm. I used quotation marks to show that I was NOT using the word in the strict meaning, but I was responding to a remark in an earlier post that suggested the possibility of giving scandal by using the hand held device. I did not mention this because it wasn’t necessary to draw attention to that person’s idea in a specific way. Mine was a general comment.
Let’s put it the way your article does:
Wild exaggerations and speculation are of little use. The Mass I attend is the current Mass and I have never seen a cell phone carried. Maybe about once every three or four months one will go off. We have no signs or announcements and commons sense tends to prevail. There is no evidence that phone are not more prevalent and the current Mass than the older form. If you have any evidence to back up your accusations, I await your response.
I make no accusation here. I am reporting my first hand observation of the presence and use of handheld electronic devices, in Catholic Masses, offered in two diocese, within the last 60 days.
On this, I agree. I think you would agree with me too that the best defense is a good offense. When a local priest celebrates the Mass with deliberate holiness, when the people are well catechized as to the substance behind the sign and when proper reverence is observed at all times in the Sanctuary, the problem of distracting device is solved without comment.
Following this logic then one can not go on a date because many people will “know” that the date will end in sex.
