Stephen Webb at First Things just posted an article on “Catholic Churches and the Hard of Hearing.”
The church is a sacred space that opens onto the heavens. Churches that aim toward the light, however, often end up burying the human voice. There is plenty of room for incense to waft but also for voices to disperse.
Before and after the Council many Catholic churches were built to experiment with new ways of relating the altar, ambo, priest, and people. But as Webb points out, not all of these new church designs are conducive to the hard of hearing. This is ironic given the instance of the Liturgical Movement on the comprehensibility and accessibility of liturgical texts.
We gather around the pastor, rather than lining up in pews before him, and we can see each other, which reinforces our sense of community. The room is way too wide, however, for a speaker to fill its extended girth. There’s a reason concert halls are rectangular with parallel walls. Fortunately, there is plenty to look at, because I rarely understand more than a few of the words that are spoken.
One could perhaps argue that the Tridentine Mass with its three vocal tones for the priest (as Webb notes) was actually more attentive to audio clarity than many of our contemporary liturgies in which “a certain funereal flatness pervades the verbal tone of the Mass, as if its central mystery were a death without a resurrection.”
The Liturgical Movement worked so hard to make the liturgy’s prayers and scripture readings accessible to everyone. Because of that, it is important that we make sure they truly are accessible to all.
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