Midnight Mass

I used to go with my mother every Sunday to mass. A long, long time ago, my family switched churches because of more convenient mass times. The church we switched to was very progressive. They had a mass on Sunday nights for teens and their families. That mass practically had a rock band as a choir. Everyone involved in the mas except for the priest, ushers and Eucharistic ministers were teenagers. When the Giants were in the Superbowl in the early 90's, the priest had a Watchman (remember those?) with him and he would give updates on the game during the service.

It was during this time that I became more aware that mass seems like a show, put on for entertainment. Everything is scripted, there is a stage (the altar), singing, and as a friend puts it, "Catholic Calisthenics". Their mass was very polished. It was slick. This church was in an affluent community in New Jersey, so they had all the toys, and I noticed. They had a lighting designer come in and adjust the lighting. Their audio was second to none. The Choir area had several hanging microphones, a monitor mix system, and was acoustically isolated. The priests (called celebrants and presenters) were given wireless microphones. PZM boundary microphones were put on the altar so you could hear the pouring of the wine and the breaking of the host clearly. The whole church was taken into account when speakers were hung. Like I said, their services were slick.

Last night I went to Midnight Mass with my parents. They've since moved down to a shore community and things couldn't be any different. (I should also mention that due to my work schedule and the NBA's penchant for playing basketball on Christmas I haven't been home for Christmas in at least 6 years). First off- Midnight Mass down here is at 8pm. I have a problem with that. They even call it Midnight Mass. Shouldn't Midnight Mass be at I don't know, Midnight? Secondly, I'm not sure where all the people were. At my old parish, they have their excellent musical groups start caroling at 11pm. This means if you want a seat for mass you have show up by 10:30pm. If you're not in the church by 11pm, you're standing in the vestibule it's that packed. Last night, we wanted to get there early because their carols started at 7:30pm and with my dad's back wanted to make sure we had a seat. We arrived shortly after 7pm, and their was no problem getting a seat. In fact, the church never got more than 1/4 full at any time during mass.

The church surprisingly has a similar layout to the one I was talking about. Both probably built during the 60's, they are large and wide, not your traditional church layout with only a single aisle down the middle. That's where the similarities ended. The musical group was awful. Granted, I can't sing or play a musical instrument, but I know that. I'm not going to subject others to it. There were a handful of good voices in the choir, but they were drowned out by the organ and the other singers who happened to be in the pick up pattern of the 2 microphones in the front row. Whenever one of the singers with a good voice would go for a solo to one of the microphones, their voice was too powerful for the microphones, and the small PA speakers they had mounted in the walls behind you couldn't reproduce the frequencies they were singing at accurately. There was a lot of distortion and clipping going on. The violin player never was on the same page as the singers or the organist.

With the way they had the speakers laid out, there was a lot of feedback when the priest would talk. The majority of speakers were facing TOWARD the altar. This doesn't take a genius to figure out. From that point it was down hill. Needless to say, I was back at my parents from Midnight Mass at 9:15pm.