C
Cat
Guest
Forgive me for not being more clear. I was referring to using iphones, etc. to look up and follow along with the Mass readings during Mass. My husband does this all the time. It’s quicker for him than leafing through the missallette.
He also looks up various saints, dates, Bible references, etc. that the priest refers to in his homily; e.g., a few weeks ago, he looked up “Battle of Lepanto” so that he would have a better understanding of what the priest was preaching about. He does this all the time.
Keep in mind that both of us are converts from evangelical Protestantism. We were used to approaching the “sermon” as a teaching time, and taking notes, referring to our Bible, dictionary, and concordance, and even using supplemental materials if the pastor was using these. So neither of us finds any kind of “study aid” distracting during the Mass, although as I mentioned before, I am so used to seeing Catholics just sit there during the homily that I would be momentarily distracted to see someone flipping through a book. However, my main distraction would be to wonder if that person was a fellow convert.
If my husband is on call (system administration), he leaves his phone on vibrate, and leaves the nave if it goes off. I know that a lot of people say that we shouldn’t allow modern responsibilities to encroach upon the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and to a certain extent, I agree. But the world keeps moving on, and many people are forced to move with the world in order to keep their jobs. The times that my husband has been on call are for entire weekends, and he can’t ignore the call even for an hour, as potentially, millions of dollars and hundreds of jobs are at stake.
But he doesn’t text during Mass.
My daughter is a professional stage manager, and she is never, ever without her cell phone (iPhone), and she is constantly “on” one of the many social medias, and texts almost non-stop. It can be rather irritating. But what we all have to keep in mind is that this is her JOB–details, details, and more details. If she fails to communicate, again, jobs and money can be lost. Also, she depends on social media contacts to be able to continue to find jobs–this is the way her profession is done.
However, to my knowledge, she doesn’t text during Mass.
Texting, IMO, is like writing notes to each other during Mass. We used to do this when we were Protestant, but the sermons usually lasted at least a half hour, and that was considered “too short.” (The people would wonder if the pastor had “gone carnal” or “fallen into sin” if he habitually preached for only a half-hour–we expected at least 45 minutes, and preferred a solid hour of preaching!). But it wasn’t respectful for us to write notes to each other during sermons, and it is not respectful during Mass. And I don’t think that texting during Mass IN THE NAVE is appropriate.
IMO, if someone needs to text for a legitimate reason (family, job, etc.), they should exit the nave and go into the lobby to do the texting. I don’t have a problem with that.
And I think people with jobs and lives that require a lot of online interaction should probably sit on the end of the pew and in the back of the nave to minimize distracting others when they keep getting up and leaving.
And I think we all need to get used to technological devices being used during the Mass. The time will come when it will be the norm. I’m guessing that in certain cities that are highly technological (e…g, Raleigh, North Carolina), it IS the norm.
It’s too bad that we can’t get the online people together with the parents of restless children–whenever the online people leave the nave, they could take a few restless children out with them for a few minutes and give the parents a few minutes of peace and quiet during the Mass!
and the priest reads your texts through the service as you send them : I don’t think so. Anything you text as thus can wait because surely the priests are not reading your texts through services or have I completely got the wrong end of the stick.
I do have the free app, Laudaute on my phone. It does have the daily readings, etc, and a place to bookmark prayers I particularly want to say post communion. Also useful during the readings, particularly the psalm antiphon. I usually turn it off before I come into the Church. Just missed today. I do not think the use to follow readings and say prayers is misuse or disrespectful.