Online Masses pose new challenges for deaf and hearing impaired

He’s there every day, standing beside Dr. Bonnie Henry and Health Minister Adrian Dix as they update British Columbians on the COVID-19 crisis. Sign language interpreter Nigel Howard for the past few weeks has been signing for B.C.’s deaf community as health officials pass along critical information.

Now imagine yourself as hearing impaired, at a news conference or listening to an update on radio or television. The speaker drops the dramatic word “pandemic.” If that’s all you hear before a fast-paced presentation about the number of deaths, description of the disease, location, and a list of those most vulnerable, you are left with all kinds of questions you can barely articulate.

Now imagine that you know how to read sign language. The news conference playing out on TV makes it possible from that moment on to distance yourself from others regardless of where you meet them.

Take it a step closer to home. You’re at your parish church, relying on the priest to explain why Mass will no longer be celebrated on Sundays, but all you can hear is mumbling from the pulpit.

For the hearing impaired, the coronavirus pandemic dramatically illustrates the challenges of living one’s parish life with hearing problems. Imagine visiting your church and being unable to hear significant parts of the service, or important announcements.

It’s just a further extension of the difficulties experienced every day by those of us with partial or total hearing loss. We are accustomed to having others react negatively when we don’t hear them. They speak louder. They shout. They blame us for not paying attention. They ridicule us because of our disability.

Now, as the COVID-19 pandemic sends parishioners to online Masses, the hearing impaired community’s difficulties of following Mass are compounded as the liturgy moves online with small screens and inferior sound.

The need for some sort of help for the hearing impaired became abundantly clear to me recently when a pastoral letter from Archbishop Miller was read. Except for the occasional word, I heard the sounds but could make out nothing that was said.

Many of my friends and colleagues suffer from some degree of hearing loss. My audiologist describes it as “profound hearing loss,” and the causes can range from exposure to loud noise to health problems. In my case and that of many who served in the military, often without even the most rudimentary forms of hearing protection, hearing loss occurred using a variety of weapons in the army.

Before enlisting, I had never fired anything more lethal than a slingshot. Suddenly I was firing a rifle almost daily, exposed to artillery, and riding inside tanks where I became acutely aware of the explosive violence when its guns fired, all while I sat blithely unaware and without hearing protection. I couldn’t hear for days.

I now wear hearing aids, thanks in large part to my audiologist’s regular, sage advice. She also advised me to write to Veterans Affairs for financial compensation, which I did. (It paid off handsomely.)

My reliance on hearing aids helps me understand most speakers, but I still need people to speak more clearly, open their mouths more to enunciate, and pronounce their words more carefully. I depend on subtitles and closed captioning to enjoy movies, operas, and television. I can once again hear birds singing, my children and grandchildren laughing, and my good wife asking for my help and telling me she loves me.

I can also depend on my missal to follow the Mass. But this does not help me understand the homily.

I miss the homily simply because I expect to hear the relevance of the Scripture readings to my life and circumstances. I want and need to know how the messages apply to me, with my fears, my aspirations, my hopes, and my dreams. I have no doubt that others in my predicament feel much the same.

Hearing impaired persons need a variety of mechanisms to better understand what is being said. Somehow or other, the spoken word must be put into understandable form.

We have at our disposal four methods:

• Others speaking louder
• Sign language
• Lip reading
• The written word

Some of these are more difficult to achieve than others. Microphones and loudspeakers provide some help, but most of the time they only irritate the rest of the congregation without benefiting hearing impaired persons.

Imagine being at a restaurant, where raucous conversations mingle and clash with dishes, cutlery, and order-taking. The problem is not one of hearing, but rather of trying to sift the multiple sounds and conversations and determining who is saying what.

The same holds true for the hearing impaired person trying to understand what is being said while listening to the TV or radio. It becomes necessary to mute the sound and ask for the question to be repeated.

According to Canon 767.2 of the Code of Canon Law, a homily must be given at all Masses on Sunday and holy days of obligation that are celebrated with a congregation, and it cannot be omitted except for a grave excuse.

Apart from shouting, the most common forms of correcting for difficulty hearing are sign language, often referred to ASL or AMESLAN (American Sign Language), lip reading, and the written word. Sign language and lip reading require extensive and expensive training by both the speaker/deliverer and the audience/congregation. As well, these techniques detract and distract those listeners who do not need the assistance.

Which leaves us with the written word.

When I can see the words that are being spoken, I can hear significantly better. The use of hearing aids increases the volume, usually with desirable results, but far too often consonants and vowels become blurred. I can hear the sounds but I cannot make out the words. When I see the words, I can. This leads me to suggest a solution to my real and worrisome dilemma.

Far too often when a layperson gives the first and second reading – and I use the word “give” deliberately because they’re reading but not proclaiming – they bury their face in the lectionary, refuse to face the congregation, mumble the passage, ignore those annoying but precious marks called punctuation, and rush through the reading hoping their job is over as fast as humanly possible.

It is discouraging and irritating that a role as vital to the Mass as reading Scripture is often done by individuals without any training. On the other hand, when I turn to the missal, lo and behold I can understand what is being said. One of the manifestations of my disability is that the printed word helps me understand its spoken equivalent.

Now think of the times when something lengthy and important is being read from the pulpit. It might be the homily, or a letter from the archbishop. There is clearly a need for a supporting form of communication – one in written form.

Just like the news conference about COVID-19, when a priest has something as important as a homily to present, it is patently unfair to do so for part, or even most, of his congregation. He must do so for everyone. If not, the hearing impaired members of the congregation are being cheated of a vital part of the service.

Careful preparation and writing out the homily is central to its delivery. It allows the priest to read or proclaim his homily, which is every bit as important as any of the three readings. If he has prepared properly, he can maintain eye contact with his audience instead of addressing the sheet of paper in front of him.

The development of technology has greatly facilitated speech preparation. Priests have access to computers and tablets that have the ability to listen to speech and transcribe it as readable text.

Try it. Return to what you have recorded, edit the text to get rid of errors, omissions, and an unfortunate turn of phrase. Read it aloud and listen to what we parishioners are going to hear on Sunday. Cleanse it of strangulated vocabulary. Time it, remembering what Pope Francis said: “Ten-minute homilies should be the norm.” Indeed, the Vatican has even produced an app available to teach priests that very skill.

Double space. Use bold face large type. Ensure it is readable from the pulpit. Practise your pronunciation and enunciation so you don’t says sex instead of six, or farther instead of father.

Now for the easy part. Give the typed copy to your secretary or office staff and have copies printed for the congregation – all of them, so you don’t single out any so-called deaf people. And, most important of all, give copies of your homily to people as they walk into the church, not after, when it’s too late.

Include with the homily the number of the Eucharistic Prayer for the Mass and any announcements normally sprung on parishioners in incomprehensible language at the end of Mass.

If you are sufficiently well organized, it will all happen as smooth as silk. If you are not, the hearing impaired will continue to be deprived of the advice and lesson that the homily provides.

Here are some ASL Masses available by livestream:

Saturdays

Fr. Matthew Hysell, OP –  Ministerial Priest for the Archdiocese of Edmonton and Doctoral Candidate for Sacred Theology at Dominican University College in Ottawa. ASL Vigil Mass 4:30 p.m. PT on Facebook Live: facebook.com/icdacanadiansection   

Fr. Seán Loomis – Chaplain and Coordinator for the Philadelphia Deaf Apostolate, Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Sunday ASL Mass will be posted after 3 p.m. PT at facebook.com/DeafCatholicPhilly

Sundays

Fr. Shawn Carey – Director of the Boston Deaf Apostolate, Archdiocese of Boston, Massachusetts. Sunday ASL Mass 6:15 a.m. PT on YouTube Live: youtube.com/user/DeafApostolateBoston. After live-streaming, the video will be available at bostondeafcatholic.org.

Msgr. Glenn Nelson JCL – Director of Rockford Deaf Apostolate and Vicar General, Diocese of Rockford, Ill. Sunday ASL Mass 8 a.m. PT on FaceBook Live: facebook.com/RockfordDeafApostolate

Fr. Mike Depcik – Director of Detroit Catholic Deaf Community, St John’s Deaf Center, Archdiocese of Detroit. Sunday ASL Mass 8:30 a.m. PT on FaceBook Live: facebook.com/deafmass 

Fr. Tom Schweitzer and Deacon Tomas Garcia – Holy Angels Catholic Church of the Deaf, Archdiocese of Los Angeles. 8:30 a.m. PT (ASL and spoken English) & 8:30 PT (ASL and Spanish/Español) youtube.com/user/hacofthedeaf/live

Interpreted Virtual Mass – Fr. Dave Korth with an ASL interpreter – Sacred Heart Church, Diocese of Omaha, Neb. Mass can be viewed at either the church’s website  sacredheartchurchomaha.org or YouTube Channel YouTube.com/SacredHeartChurchOmaha

If you know of Deaf Ministry or others videotaping or live-streaming of Masses, please email Fr. Shawn Carey at [email protected].

Robert Scott is a public speaker and emeritus professor of rhetoric and communications at the University of Calgary. He lives in Sechelt.