What matters most typically have a negative impact the readings at Mass?

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I would like for the readers to also state the chapter and verse of the reading … not just “… according to St. Paul”.

I am convinced that the people have no clue that they have access to the readings themselves at their at home bibles … I know that sometimes the parish bulletin has the list of readings.
 
There was one reader who paused after each word.

There. Was. One. Reader. Who. Paused. After. Each. Word. As though each word had a period after it.

The reader was soooo slowwwwww that you kind of lost track of the reading.
 
The priest or pastor needs to provide instructions on how to be a reader.
 
Then there is no question. Priests instruct.
 
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One reader was convinced that his voice was SOOOO powerful that he didn’t need the microphone.

So he pushed it aside.

You couldn’t hear him more than ten feet away.
 
Duesenberg said:
Except when the accent is so heavy that makes it completely unintelligible. Nothing good about that.
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That’s a very flat, matter-of-fact statement, but the fact is that perceptions aren’t objective. This person was able to communicate their desire to be a reader and was trained to do it, so someone must have understood them. People that are close to this person can likely understand their English.
 
I’m tri-lingual (English/German/Spanish.) I went to college in the 1980’s and 1990’s. I had a great many foreign born professors. One learned to understand their often heavy accents, or one did not make it through. Still I’ve heard at least a half dozen priests over the years that couldn’t be understood at all. They were not resident in the US, they were visitors/missionaries. It did no one any good to have them proclaim the Gospel.

Those are situations where the laity should be allowed to proclaim the Gospel at Mass in my opinion – if and only if no other clergy is available. Then again, it would likely become just another abuse if the permission was granted.
 
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Duesenberg said:
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Gingersnaps4:
This is a good point.
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Except when the accent is so heavy that makes it completely unintelligible. Nothing good about that.
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Some people have a harder time with different types of accents. I struggle with East Asian accents and most of the African accents that I have heard. I once knew a priest from Nigeria whom I could barely understand at first. I don’t think his accent improved much over the years, but my ability to understand him certainly did. It just took a lot of practice.
 
MonteRCMS said:
There was one reader who paused after each word.

There. Was. One. Reader. Who. Paused. After. Each. Word. As though each word had a period after it.

The reader was soooo slowwwwww that you kind of lost track of the reading.
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That is perhaps my one pet peeve with readers. I have not seen it a lot, but I remember one monk at my Catholic college who would read very slowly. It was agonizing. Certainly it should be slow enough to be understood, but really, it should sound natural as well
 
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The remaining church in my parish was built in 1901, electrical service may well have been a later improvement and it was considerably before amplifiers could be purchased.

Yet, they still had masses and other liturgical acts, most of which included readings and/or sermons.

What was done then? Why the need for microphones, are we really less than our predecessors who got along fine w/o them.

Your old school churches were built to consider the acoustic situation.
 
Augustinian said:
Your old school churches were built to consider the acoustic situation.
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That’s true to a degree. They had things like elevated pulpits, sounding boards and no wall-to-wall carpeting.

People were also taught how to orate back in the old days as well.

Finally in some cases, one just didn’t hear.
 
Duesenberg said:
They had things like elevated pulpits, sounding boards and no wall-to-wall carpeting.
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An elevated pulpit fitted with a sounding board worked very well, in a church built at that time. I’m old enough to remember the pre-loudspeaker period in churches. I suspect that a present-day priest celebrating mass in a church of that period will now prefer to preach his homily standing at the top of the altar steps, microphone in hand, for reasons that have nothing to do with acoustics but only with fashion. He’s shying away from doing something that might look outdated, antiquated, or old-fashioned, even if in fact it would produce better results.
 
We have a lot of old ladies that read and there is one thing that annoys me a bit, but I don’t think its a biggie. They read super slowly and they pronounce everything like they are going to cry every second or like they are in big pain no matter what the type of reading is. It just seems way out of place or comes off as bragging about how much spirit they put behind the reading.I mean, you came to read the word of God and I came to swallow it alongside you ! It might be because the women are into what I call “fake” spirituality they regularly go to faith healers and other places and emphasize emotion over other things. But this is of course a subjective opinion.
 
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Unless a parish or particular Mass is particularly hard up for readers, what bothers me most is no evidence at all that the reader is chosen because they can actually read well, and/or no evidence that they’ve even practiced the reading before they actually read. This seems to happen a lot. Reading is a ministry; not every one is cut out for it. Good readers learn to have appropriate modulation of voice, projection, expression etc. Not every one should be a reader.
 
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anon90438963 said:
Unless a parish or particular Mass is particularly hard up for readers, what bothers me most is no evidence at all that the reader is chosen because they can actually read well, and/or no evidence that they’ve even practiced the reading before they actually read. This seems to happen a lot. Reading is a ministry; not every one is cut out for it. Good readers learn to have appropriate modulation of voice, projection, expression etc. Not every one should be a reader.
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Amen. We have no shortage of readers (even though we use 2/Mass), yet we are faced with the issues you note. There is also the delicate issue of elderly readers who make a HUGE production (and take a very long time) going up and down the stairs to the sanctuary. It creates four significant breaks in the Mass. It’s bad liturgy.
 
I’m not. There are an abundance of other readers. The painfully slow four entries/exists from the sanctuary breaks the fluidity of the Mass. It refocuses the Mass on the readers. It’s wrong.

The Mass is about worshiping God and being present at Calvary as Jesus Christ is crucified for our sins. It’s not about protecting local liturgical turf.

Sadly, change will finally come when someone falls while struggling to negotiate the sanctuary steps. THEN there will be real reform. But not until then.
 
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Duesenberg said:
Sadly, change will finally come when someone falls while struggling to negotiate the sanctuary steps. THEN there will be real reform. But not until then
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The change that is likely to come will be to make the sanctuary ADA-compliant.
 
Augustinian said:
The change that is likely to come will be to make the sanctuary ADA-compliant
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No. The sanctuary is already ADA compliant. Being a historic building it already suffers aesthetically because of this compliance. However, ADA compliance is not ultimately going to keep people from doing dangerous things due to their own mobility issues. That will one day require a touch of leadership.
 
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