Guidelines for Televising Masses Are Proposed

At the Olympics, NBC did not always tell viewers when events were taped.

And West Coast viewers have gotten used to seeing recorded versions of some entertainment and talk shows that broadcast ‘live” to viewers in time zones farther east.

When it comes to televising Masses, however, Mother Church should never fool viewers, Catholic leaders say.

In proposed guidelines for televised Masses, the Committee on the Liturgy of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops recommends not only truth in labeling for recorded shows, but that televised services have a lively and live congregation to give viewers a sense of community from their living room couches.

“Television is a very tempting medium,” said the Rev. James Moroney, director of the Secretariat for the Liturgy for the U.S. Catholic Conference. “It can encourage us sometimes to do things that are unwise because of technological values. We have our own values.”

Despite successful beginnings with the late Archbishop Fulton Sheen, the Catholic Church has not always used television as broadly as many evangelical churches.

One staple of Catholic broadcasting across the country, however, has been the televised Mass. About 50 regional dioceses broadcast Masses, some daily, according to Ellen McCloskey of the Catholic Communication Campaign.

The daily Mass from St. Ann’s Shrine in Scranton, Pa., is one of the highest-rated daily shows on the national cable network Odyssey, formerly the Faith and Values Channel.

Although the new document says the televised Mass should never be a substitute for pastoral visits to the sick and housebound, the proposed guidelines say the Mass can be a source of comfort to people unable to attend church and a way to evangelize inactive members.

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If churches are going to televise the Mass, however, the bishops say efforts should be made to allow viewers to identify with a worshiping community and be moved to expressions of praise and thanksgiving.

That does not mean taping several shows at once in a studio, merely moving members of the congregation from left to right or right to left to give the services a different look, producers of television Masses said.

The ideal is to have live telecasts at local churches, giving viewers the opportunity to be part of the worshiping community as the liturgy is celebrated, the bishops said.

Failing that, the next alternative would be to tape the service the same day it is broadcast, they said. While viewers are separated from the actual celebration, timely broadcasts respect the nature of the liturgical season and do not force people who are part of the production to be in the unnatural position of, say, celebrating Easter during the third week of Lent.

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‘There is a rhythm to the church’s life that is not to be disrupted, that’s to be taken seriously,” said the Rev. James Gardiner, who produces the Mass aired on Odyssey.

Other proposed guidelines, to be voted on by the full bishops’ conference at their mid-November meeting in Washington:

* The liturgy should always be celebrated before a congregation that participates as fully as possible with prayer and song. Preferably, it would be part of a regularly scheduled parish liturgy.

* Although most broadcast stations offer only half-hour slots for Masses, the liturgy should never be edited before it is telecast. And, the bishops said, there should always be a sermon.

* If the Mass is taped, only one service should be recorded a day, and viewers should be notified when the Mass is prerecorded.

The realities of production costs and the limited availability of air time, however, force many dioceses to fall short of the guidelines, church producers say.

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In the Archdiocese of Washington and the Diocese of Arlington, Va., which produce Masses together, two Masses are taped at a time to be aired weeks later.

But in keeping with the spirit of the guidelines, the services, which at one time were taped in a hotel and later at a television studio, are now taped in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception before a congregation “mostly made up of people who love the Mass,” said John Capobianco, coordinator of the services that reach as many as 28,000 viewers on a Sunday morning.

Said Gardiner: “It’s really difficult to balance the two things: what people expect from television and what worship is.”