But how can you participate in the liturgy of the word if you can’t hear or read the word? And join with the priest in asking forgiveness for our sins, praising God in the Gloria, attend attentively to the consecration, pray for the living and the dead, etc. if you don’t even know when he is doing those things? Finding a priest who speaks fairly loudly and sitting up front would be my best suggestions. There must be missals in braille.
Of course, you can attend mass without this if you must, but why would you want to do so if there is an alternative? The mass should be communal worship in which we each join individually.
Good questions. Basically, you cannot participate in the liturgy of the word if you cannot hear or read the word. This is major problem with the silent Low Mass (especially for people who are vision-impared). We have had Mass where there is no music, no audible prayers and no vernacular readings. That is perfectly licit. But there is the problem I mentioned. That Mass can be perceived almost entirely on a visual basis.
We have 5 senses - hearing, tasting, seeing, smelling and touching. In the silent Low Mass (with no vernacular reading) what senses can we use? Again, you can’t hear the priest. Even if you could hear the priest, 95% of the people cannot understand the Latin without a vernacular text. There’s no incense for smelling. Touching is part of the liturgical form (except standing and sitting where you’re touching the pew). There is Holy Communion so that is something that is experienced (like tasting or touching).
But the participation in this kind of Mass is extremely limited. That is why the Church promoted more vocal participation in the Tridentine Mass in the later decades.
Some will say that we participate “interiorly”. Or that we sense the Mass “mystically”. That is really not why Our Lord gave us the sacred liturgy for in the first place though.
There are several forms of prayer, not just interior meditation and the liturgy should provide an opportunity for vocal, communal, public prayer. The only opportunities for Catholics to pray vocally would be outside of the liturgy.
Fortunately, our priests try not to have silent Low Masses on Sundays (there are exceptions though) and we have music and some limited responses to the Latin. That helps quite a lot.