The Church of the Holy Spirit in the village of Bovey Tracey, where I worship when at home, has taken the decision to cut down on paper and no longer supplies a printed copy of the readings, psalm and Gospel. Yours truly is in rebellion.
The priest believes that we concentrate better if we have to listen instead of reading along, and that we will hear things which we might otherwise overlook. One must admit he has a point. If somebody had verbally told Maria Sharapova that meldonium was banned instead of merely sending her an email, she might have absorbed the information instead of failing to notice.
However, it is simply a matter of individual difference whether one finds the spoken or written word a better aid to concentration, which is why some students take copious notes in lectures while others just listen. I was ever a note-taker who derived greater benefit from textbooks than from lectures. My priest was almost certainly in the listeners’ category.
The written word is not subject to any variation, whereas some readers drone while others dramatise. Some read irritatingly slowly and some race. Some, especially in big city churches where congregations are diverse, read with heavy accents.
The make-up of the parishioners varies, too. Some hear perfectly and some not so well. Others are distracted by their children – or more often other people’s children – and in that moment, in which they are hushing Johnny, they lose whatever pearls are being cast from the lectern. They cannot then glance back at what they have just missed unless it is written down and in front of them.
As for the psalm, well, let us be honest and admit that if it is sung few can follow it because, unlike Protestants, who belt out their hymns with vigour, we Catholics just can’t cut the mustard and what is emitted is a mumble to music. Sometimes I wonder if the Company of Heaven dons ear muffs while the angels clap their wings over their ears. Generations have enjoyed jokes about children mishearing the Lord’s Prayer as “Harold be thy name”, but trying to follow anything sung gives scores of such opportunities for confusion. Anyway, I am now so busy trying to remember the response that I keep repeating it in my head and missing the bits in between.
Saints excepted, most people lose concentration in church from time to time. They come out of some reverie to realise that the rest of the assembly is on the Agnus Dei and they cannot remember saying the Sanctus. Did I remember to lock the car? Did I leave a window open? What did I do with my offering? I wonder if Gran is OK. Mary’s dropped a crayon. These specs need cleaning. Not having anything written on which to focus opens up myriad opportunities for such distraction.
As for me, I am too easily distracted by the dreadful banality of modern biblical translation. Brought up an Anglican, I still love the Authorised Version and the Book of Common Prayer. To read or hear “dim reflections in a mirror” instead of “through a glass darkly” sets my teeth on edge and sends my thoughts off in all manner of un-Christian reflections on the idiocy of the chap who came up with such pedestrian language and strangled the heavenly beauty of what went before.
The other great plus of the printed sheet is that it is there when not only the readings but the entire Mass is over, and one can then review what one has heard quickly and easily without having to look it up elsewhere.
I know I am in the majority when it comes to needing the written word because there is a sudden outbreak of missals in church as, deprived of the issue of readings and psalms in print, parishioners bring along their own. So the other day I dusted off mine.
It was given to me by Lord Alton, who was a sponsor when I was received into the Church in 1993 and when we were both MPs. It is of course composed of the recently discarded translation of the Mass, but then I don’t need it for the responses, just the readings.
Nevertheless, I prefer the new translation, which interestingly incorporated every single change that I and my co-author, Mark Kochanski, recommended in our much-maligned pamphlet The Mass is a Mess in 2004. It caused an outcry but clearly the Vatican agreed with us. So I think I will buy a new missal anyway.
When I told my parish priest, Fr Guy de Gaynesford, that I would be doing that, he was delighted because he is a leading light in the Catholic Truth Society. Hmmm. Perhaps the withdrawal of our precious copy of the readings, psalm and Gospel was just a plot to up the sales of missals.
Ann Widdecombe is a novelist, broadcaster and former prisons minister
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