From a reader:
One sees the Magnificat missalettes in the hands of lots of folks at daily Mass nowadays. With its beautifully presented (briefer) morning/evening/night prayers from which many (like me) have gone on to the LOH or DO, plus the daily and Sunday Mass readings, and Order of Mass including the Gloria-Credo-Sanctus etc. in Latin and English, it’s arguably one of the more wholesome phenomena of the whole Novus Ordo era.
NOW HERE’S THE QUESTION: At $20/yr download versus $40/yr for the print version, this would pay for a $100 iPhone in 5 years. And in the meantime one could use it not only for morning, evening, night prayer … But also to follow the Gloria, Creed, EP, etc. at daily and Sunday Mass. And since the Magnificat includes the readings, if and when you’re the lector . . .
Would it be liturgically acceptable to can carry your iPhone up to the ambo and proclaim the first reading and responsorial psalm directly from it, rather than from the bulky and inconvenient lectionary.
I have from time to time jokingly prophesied the "liturgical laptop", covered with the color of the day and solemnly carried and incensed, etc., monks in choir stalls in a dark church singing their office over glowing screens.
This will probably one day come. But it hasn’t come yet.
I don’t think the connotation of the screen versus the book has shifted enough so that such a use wouldn’t be … wrong.
Also, I am not sure why a lectionary is inconvenient if it is already on the ambo.
That said, last night during a Solemn High Mass in the Extraordinary Form, in a very traditionally constructed church just off super modern Time Square in Manhattan, during my sermon I used my iPhone to be able to reference a prayer to St. Joseph, because I could find it any other way. There were no books available with the text of the prayer I wanted. I looked it up ahead of time, course, and copied it to my note pad. But – vested in my Roman vestments – I did read from it, during the sermon.
But the readings themselves?
Not yet, I think.
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