In the local parishes, on weekends, the Mass is drawn out with lots of excess singing. The singing doesn’t SUPPORT the Mass, it seems to become a distraction FROM the Mass.
I have developed respiratory problems and I can’t even sing at all, so I try to make sense of the verses.
If two verses will do the job, I don’t know why we need seven verses AND REFRAINS. The singing interrupts and prolongs the Mass.
If you listen to EWTN Mass, the melodies are so stale, as if there was no other way to sing those standards, like the Kyrie. In the Latin days, there were BEAUTIFUL masses, and it was refreshing to use a different melody and cadence.
The Gloria and Credo were sung, and the priest would go sit down while the choir sung those hymns. Now, it’s STAND for everything.
If you’ve got a priest who likes to tell jokes at the end of Mass, I’d walk out. If the priest is going to announce everything that you can read in the bulletin, I say walk out.
We had a priest from Poland who had a lot of difficulty with homilies. He would tell a joke EVERY TIME before his homily, to indulge himself, to test if people could understand him. That gets old. I could understand only half of what he said. I think jokes at any time are a sacrilege.
There seems to be an unspoken rule, to drag out the Mass so that it’s an hour, for sure. It’s quite conspicuous when this is happening. I don’t walk out, but I see people that do.
In the daily EWTN Mass, there is silly pretentious superficial piety. the altar servers bring the chalice and book stand and prayer book to the altar before the Offertory, and then they remove these after communion. That’s totally unnecessary. The chalice, book, and stand could be pre-staged there beforehand, and left there after communion. There’s no reason for that commotion, except to kill air time, to make the Mass fill the allotted time. Perhaps in her day, Mother Angelica dictated all these details, the way she expected them to be, and so they are to this day. For example, EWTN Masses have little bursts of Latin here and there. MA was really wound up about preserving Latin, but I don’t know of any Masses elsewhere that copy that EWTN Mass choreography.