I’m confident that pretty much all of us priests have at one point or another after a Mass heard something along this line, generally from one of our treasured senior mass-attending Catholic ladies:
“O Father, thank you for that message. I didn’t understand all of it, but I could hear every word.”
Which brings us to the role of that two-edged sword, the microphone.
I saw a series of tweets (x’s?) today which brought up the installation of a new sound system in cavernous St. Peter’s Basilica, where the human voice had no chance alone to fill the space.
The system was used for the first time on July 23 for a Mass for the World Day of Grandparents and the Elderly, replacing an audio system in the basilica that had been installed almost a quarter-century ago for the Great Jubilee of 2000.https://t.co/zwVwrMBHem
— Crux (@Crux) August 12, 2023
St. Peter’s is a special situation. But there are large old churches in the world. Solutions had to be found for preaching, given that the human voice is only so strong. In those churches you will sometimes see a pulpit, raised and reachable by stairs, half way down the nave to bring down the distance between the preacher and the majority present. Pulpits were raised not only so the preacher could be seen, but more importantly more easily heard.
Moreover, once upon a time priests received training in oratory.
On a personal note, I recall one Christmas Midnight Mass at my home parish in Minnesota, a very large church jammed with sound-dampening people in winter clothes. During the announcements before the sermon the sound system went out and couldn’t be recovered. Having been in theatre for years and being equipped by God and training with a big voice, I stuck my heels into the the floorboards and let’er rip. It was perhaps the most exhilarating experience of preaching I’ve ever had, in that context, in that moment. It was raw and unmediated. I was allowed to give everything to it. I heard from people for a long time about that one. It was as the architecture was intended before any electronic go-between. I was heard clearly – by those who had decent hearing of course – all the way to the back of the choir loft in that massive space, without a microphone. Not all priests can do that, but many could with some voice training and a good ear to hear yourself in your space as you project.
Marshall McLuhan famously wrote an essay about the debilitating effect the introduction of the microphone had on Catholic identity. His well-known tag: “The medium is the message.” The idea is this. Your message, which intuitively is what some little old ladies will call a sermon, is the content which you want people to grasp for the classical effects of moving, persuading, etc. The medium, which conveys the content, also has it’s own subtle indirect content. After the introduction of the Novus Ordo, McLuhan wrote that the introduction of the microphone into every aspect of the Mass to make everything more immediate and accessible (I would say “intrusion”) was the proximate cause of the decline of Latin sacred worship and Mass versus populum (both of which had been slithering in for sometime during the 20th c. Liturgical Movement). Hearing everything lead to seeing everything. The medium (intermediary) of the mic eliminated the effort needed to hear, pay close attention, use a hand-missal with the prayers, etc.
The microphone not only makes the preachers voice artificial, but it changes the amount of effort the preacher has to fill the space and project his “message”. Also, it takes the aural focus someplace else. Father is “up there” but his “voice” is coming from “over there”. A subtle message from the medium is that “places” in church don’t matter. And there is something disproportioned about having a large space, which you know is a large space, and nevertheless hearing the preacher clearly even though he is speaking in a natural conversational level of voice as if you were sitting only a few feet away. There is a break with reality. Father is somehow disembodied in a moment when that which is incarnational and sacramentally mediated is fundamental. Moreover, in making everything immediately accessible, you eliminate the clefts in the apophatic rocks through which people strive for that glimpse of transforming mystery.
In addition, the microphone, in massively reducing the lack of effort the preacher must put into projecting his message to the back of the church, also reduces the obligation to put his whole self into it, thus reducing the subtle message in the medium about the conviction of the one preaching.
The priest’s own energy has its own knock on force on those present. It has always been so. Reading a famous live speech and hearing a recording of a famous live speech and seeing a video of a famous speech and being present when it is being delivered are all different ways of experiencing the message, both in what was on the pages, in the speakers mind and heart, and what came from the context.
Finally, the microphone also permits and amplifies the tendency of some to speak in a prissy “priest voice”, imbued either with self-conscious piety or seriously self-centered effeminacy. Again, the medium is the message: if the medium (style of delivery) is cloying… if the medium sounds effeminate….
Microphones. I am not against microphones across the board. It depends on the context and the moment. But let us understand what is being lost when the medium has its own content.
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Nice little thread on the history of the Vatican and microphones
https://x.com/handmissals/status/1692197676576575702?s=46
In my local community, the microphone has randomly cut out before, on different occasions and with different priests. All FSSP trained priests. Suddenly, the posture changes, the voice grows louder. The unmediated Ars Oratoris is a deeply necessary human thing… a human thing we all have unfortunately lost.
I wish the silly thing was always broken.
Father,
Very interesting discussion about the impact of microphones on the Mass. Regarding versus populum specifically, in addition to your points I have always wondered what influence and impact TV watching has had in habituating people to having everything “presented to them.” Any experience that doesn’t conform to this method of presentation is not only foreign, but substandard and demeaning. That’s a real problem in perception and expectation when it comes to traditional liturgical worship.
During a homily, our priest from India explained, during the formation process the seminarians were required to to read lessons to each other from either end of a soccer field. This was so they could learn to project their voices. He said it took some getting used to and before long they could belt it out and be heard distinctly at distance. He explained it was important where villages were remote and crowds were large, no microphones available.
Mother of God of Priests intercede for all our priests.
Well well Fr. Z, I too was trained in theater. I remember the words…Project and Enunciate!! Also ,
remember the old deaf lady in the back.
In NY City years ago they build a Concert Hall. When they tested the acoustics they found it was dead. They ripped out the carpeting and removed the plush seats. They installed hardwood floors and wooden seats and it still didn’t improve much.
They needed to take a leason from the Masters of European Architecture.
I occasionally work as a steward at dog shows. I find when I call a class into the ring, using a deeper and slower voice makes the sound project farther and more clearly than just being louder. Exhibitors will say to me, “It’s nice to have a steward we can hear.”
The actor Richard Burton trained his voice by declaiming the Bard from the peak of one Welsh mountain to another:
“Theatre microphones were unheard of, and remarkably Richard’s voice was relatively weak, so Philip Burton would take the teenager walking into the mountains and make him shout Shakespearean speeches for hours and hours. It was a residential vocal boot-camp that went on every day for three years.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/bMmjjHMnRknJGv8NcXJhxZ/eight-things-richard-burton-did-to-acquire-that-voice
Ps. Burton as Becket declaiming in a large cathedral, as he hath appeared many times on this blog:
https://youtu.be/NRt2cKvJLlE
The Rev. Jay Sidebotham has a funny cartoon of a priest announcing that “There seems to be something wrong with the sound system,” and his congregation responding “And also with you.” (He’s Episcopalian, but the joke still works with the Catholic “Et cum spiritu tuo/And with your spirit.”)
https://www.sidebothamink.com/cartoons
Television and radio have created an inappropriate expectation of seamless switch between voices, as Ariseyedead points out. But (NO) the reader should still be in his place listening to the Collect, and say Amen, before moving to the ambo, this formality is important, as Anglicans generally understand better than NO Catholics.
Our erstwhile pastor was a stickler for a functional sound system, and I can hardly blame him. A crackling or intermittent or booming sound can really add discomfort to the experience.
I dimly recall that once there was some sort of power outage, or sound outage? And we were “forced” to have Mass the old-fashioned way, and I just loved it, you know?
I’ve always said that microphones are for recordings and hearing aids. PAs make speakers and singers lazy. Learn to project and learn to fill the room. The new sound system in the Basilica actually mimics reality in the microscopic delays and reverberations caused by “real” sound being generated inside it.
I used to sort of guard the mixer and sound system as a choir member. I could basically troubleshoot sound issues or head off problems before they got out of hand. I was often appalled at the way mics were used up there. First we had a grand piano. Now a grand piano’s top is just one giant speaker, and the lid is part of that whole acoustic direction system. You open the lid wide for big sound and the lid reflects into the assembly. But for the longest time, our piano was backwards and the lid reflected all its sound into the wall and our ears. Ouch! They would try to mic the piano with two mics which was just crazy. But we do have a “cry room” that’s separate and so if you don’t mic everything and everyone, the “cry roomers” miss out.
Our choir also used to have “rock star” mics for each and every singer. It was overkill and we didn’t realize it until the upgrade. All our mics were removed and replaced by two well-directed choir mics, and the sound improved a lot. We also received a mixer with far fewer channels (I think the original one was 48) and it fed to amplifiers way way on the other side of church, then the amplifiers fed speakers way way up in the acoustic-tile ceiling (don’t get me started!)
Our church was built in the early 80s, and doubtlessly the architect had a true disdain for acoustics and singing. Our pastor beautified it greatly, but it still has sort of a “rural barn” aesthetic going on.
Thank you, Fr. Z, for this. Public speaking is an art with many elements, and yes, speaking to a large crowd without any amplification requires both muscles and skills that can be developed.
However, I put to you the other side of the coin: how many times in the course of a sermon is it that the points, one after another, build on each other so that a later point rests on an earlier. Well, if any of the earlier points could not be heard, then just to that extent, the whole later edifice collapses.
Again: sometimes in speaking you want to convey something that comes over with volume, effort, impassioned feeling. But sometimes it is just the opposite, you want to convey something through a whisper, a barely-pronounced word, even just a sigh. In movies we see this all the time, the top actor uses the whole range of human voice and expression, to convey a whole range of emotions, feelings, ideas, etc. So, if it is impassioned volume you need for expression, you can stand back from the mic a few feet for a moment, but if it is a whispered word…you better have a mic to even try that at all (in the large crowd). That is: a mic gives you options that you can’t get without, but it leaves you opportunities to use it sparingly when that’s suitable.
I have bad hearing, and use hearing aids, but even so I can usually only hear about 1/3 of most homilies. I suspect that proper enunciation and pacing would do far more for my needs than further amplification. If the advent of mics and amplifiers persuaded seminaries that they didn’t need to teach priests how to speak publicly, they were sadly mistaken. Speaking too fast in most mics will be worse than not having a mic. But when I have gone to large events where there was no mic, AND the speaker was in fact trained to project (e.g. at a play), I get far, far less than the 1/3 that I get from homilies where the priest has a mic.
I have more or less given up trying to make sense of homilies: it is one burden that I will just plain have to carry. But I have to think that there are plenty of people who are on the cusp of being able to hear well enough IF the conditions are pretty good, but NOT if either the mic/speakers are bad or if the priest doesn’t know how to handle speaking with what he’s got. Are we just going to consign those to the same (relative) oblivion that I am in 95% of the time in church? I hope not: I have to think that even in the TLM, there’s a reason the homily is spoken out loud – almost as if it is MEANT to be heard by everyone.
There is one salient point which still has not been mentioned, and that is that the singing of the entire Mass is a sort of “automatic microphone.” Singing, done properly, is not unlike “moderate sustained shouting on pitch,” and it actually works even better than a carefully projected speaking voice because sustained sound carries better. Of course, pacing is of utmost importance, but a well-sung Mass without mikes should always be more successful than mere speaking – and certainly more edifying than in situations where the “mike” is used. I should also add that the lop-sided difference in proportion between the single voice of the priest or deacon followed by the acclamation of the congregation is supposed to be that way. How many are the times when the priest’s “miked” voice (or – GAAH! – the cantor or songleader’s) completely overwhelms and outclasses even a full church!