Improving Lector & Priest Speaking?

[retired464]

I have to smile as I go back and read this thread. All of the above are problems in my parish. They seem to be commonplace and never ending.
Our sound system has been worked on again and again. It is a good system, and gets sound directed at the mics to the speakers. The building is so large, however, that there are pockets of echoing that make the words undecipherable.
Most of the readers and the priest don’t know how to use a mic. They refuse to speak into it. They speak too fast. I was a radio announcer for years and if you didn’t come across on the airwaves, you lost your job. Lectors never do.
Cantors are the worst. They are proclaiming the Word, and I want to hear it and have others hear it. No way. Slurring, running phrases together or in strange pieces, mispronounced words, dropping ends of words, fading out at the ends of sentences, bad tempi, off key, etc. Just about every bad thing you can do. I am a singer/musician and can’t stand to listen to them. Plus, you can’t understand the words of the psalm anyway.
Okay. I’ve complained. I have offered my services to coach lectors and cantors. Lip service acceptance, many thanks, but never allowed to do it. I have lectored and cantored to be an example (I hope a good one). The directors and parishioners have always been very complementary and that’s nice, but I can’t do it often. (I once walked into church just before Mass and was handed a folder with the music to be used by the organist and told to cantor. I did, and it was fine. I ad libbed the introductions, sight read the music (knew some of them), and managed.)
Formation? Totally lacking. The congregation has largely given up singing along. We have lost some who have moved to other parishes and who told me that they couldn’t stand the music.
I am just “Waiting in Silence,” a great hymn, BTW. But I don’t like it.

 

[CB_Catholic]

In my parish I don’t believe the readers are the problem–it’s the poor acoustics and sound system. They have tried frequently over the years to remedy this, but you can only do so much to the church structure itself, and some of it depends upon where you are sitting.

Also, in the day chapel, which is attached to, but closed off from the church, the readers are perfectly understandable.

Now my Pastor is a very big man with a very big voice who does not use a microphone because it is too overwhelming, and he is much easier to understand, but he is what I would call “thunderous” when he speaks.

I have noticed though that since Christmas they must have had some work on the sound system again, because things are much clearer. I’m wondering , though, if the new roof has something to do with it.

 

[Phemie]

I’m not certain I understand how a lack of enunciation implies no one is preparing for proclaiming readings. Are you saying that the priest(s) aren’t preparing, too?
re. homily For which, of course, they do prepare.

I’m pretty sure the poster meant that we all should read the readings before coming to Mass but that that won’t help in understanding a homily that isn’t enunciated or delivered in a way to be easily heard by the congregation.

I find that most of the problems stem from readers and preachers speaking too rapidly. Sometimes there is a thick accent that one has to get used to. We have a few readers from other countries whose accent we’ve had to get used to before we could appreciate how beautifully they do read.

It’s very difficult when you are in a parish that doesn’t discriminate when adding people to the reader roster. For years my parish just asked people to sign up. No preparation, no training, nothing. If you put your name on the sheet you were added to the reader roster. As a result we had readers who were less than ideal and no one wanted to tell them that.

Once we started offering training, offering tips, providing workbooks, etc. most of those with difficulty recognized that their services might be put to better use in another ministry and didn’t stay on as readers.