As music directors, how many of you are continually saying to your choirs "look at me, not at your books"? If that's what books do to a choir - imagine what they do to a congregation

Not an issue for the congregation at my parish. No one ever opens a hymnal.

And ... smoke screens.

That’s a great argument for a large crucifix above the altar, or a beautiful high altar, or placement of the tabernacle. For screens? Not so much.

This morning I read a comment that said something like this: When people in the congregation lift their heads towards the screen, this is an act of the people of God, this is a liturgical action, instead of having their noses in the hymnbook or missals. We form a congregation by lifting our heads everyone at the same time as a Church.

I hope everyone will excuse my phraseology (or whatever the term was in The Music Man), but that is the stupidest tub of modernist rubbish I have read in a while.

Screens are naturally distracting. I think we have enough distractions at Mass without adding more of them.

I've been known to "shudder" at times, but never to "shutter" - except to close something. Maybe one can shutter the screens?

I always avoid ought to correct... shoot...dang computer!

I too have been watching this discussion with interest, and while I am usually a opponent of screens in churches, this comment by CharlesW reminded me of an idea I had once:

The congregations now look at neither the books or a screen. They kill time messing with their phones.

Many in my generation look at their phones during Mass not for distraction but for focus - particularly using various apps in place of handheld missals for the readings and Mass texts. In a previous organist position with a high proportion of students in the congregation, in my frustration at people not taking up the hymn sheet when it came time to sing, I entertained the idea of having the hymn (and other) texts on their phones. This could be accomplished by a webpage, or (in an ideal world) through a collaboration with some of these widely-used liturgical apps like Universalis. Imagine the possibilites of combining all that with Squarenote too! The possibilities could be endless.

Now that we all carry screens in our pockets, I think their domination in this regard is ultimately inevitable. Many have already embraced smartphones for religious use, as described above. Perhaps it's time to look at them as opportunities and not threats.

My current parish has projectors that show on a blank wall. When I was hired 2 years ago, I was completely opposed to them. However, I have seem them used well in the following ways:

1) Projects a digital hymn board from powerpoint.

2) Promoted a significant increase in singing of the sung-through Gloria when I projected the slide: Gloria- page 319 in Gather. I had printed where to find the new Gloria (Carrols) multiple times in the bulletin, I had a line for it on the projected hymn board, but when I projected that slide- people picked up the book and sang. People are funny.

3) I project the words to the psalm response. Plain, large font. Ideally cantors sing clearly. Sometimes they don't.

4) Projecting the music for the Sanctus, Memorial Acclamation, Amen, and Agnus Dei. I don't like the distraction of moving slides during the preface and/or Eucharistic prayer, but people LOOK UP at least where I can see, and sing to the music on the board. People are not going to use their hymnals for these short responses.

5). It did help when our pastor asked us to sing a new Kyrie during Advent.

6)The downside- It is difficult to see from the back of church more than a few lines of music projected and we have a very large wall to use. This makes the use of projecting new songs very impractical. To throw large words up, moving through the song, is not something I am agreeable to. So, mainly our projector is used as a hymn number board, psalm board, and means of showing the bishop's appeal DVDs that come twice a year.

This parish has a history of singing and they do join in. Admitting that the boards can be used well and taking advantage of them strategically has aided the people's response in worship, whether it should be that way or not. I do not believe it will EVER take the place of a hymnal, nor should it. It just can't accomplish what a hymnal can.

Done properly...

, or 'if its done right', etc., etc., are convenient little blurbs that all translate into something (generally a negative) done in the fashion the speaker does that something as being 'the right way to do it'. This can be screens on church walls, it can be accompanying chant, it can be the use of guitars, or a host of other things - but the gist of it is that the speaker's way is the 'right' way to do X, and that if done this 'right way' the negative will actually be a plus. So, let us all do things the 'right way', or 'properly', and a bad, if done 'properly' (in the speaker's eyes), becomes good.

Jackson,

That would be a "no" vote on screens from you, and on Pax's approach to justifying them?

I would say I am strongly opposed to screens but I will say the small screens placed on the pillars at St. Patrick's in New York were not so bad when I experienced them at a crowded Sunday mass. They are "relatively" tasteful and unobtrusive (well as much as they can be).

...the projector on it.

That, Mr Taylor, would, I believe, be a rude screen.
And a crude one at that.

Well, there is at least one notable example of a bare wall that is a foil for something beauteous on Martinmas and Candlemas, in the famed cathedral of Palma de Mallorca - an almost theatrical counterpoint of exhilarating verticality (the central vault is 44 meters high; the inner aisle vaults are 30 meters high), lightness & severity (those are the slenderest piers for a medieval vault of such height and width at 1/12th of the vault width) and brilliance - interestingly, this is an uncommon Spanish cathedral whose nave views are NOT blocked by a choir screen in the middle of the nave:

https://blog.puresaltluxuryhotels.com/the-palma-cathedral-light-show/

And the window that casts that light:

https://tinyurl.com/ury6ygt

AFH

Yes, indeed. - it's just an example of a fairly vast blank wall with a beauteous albeit opportunistic purpose. Your apt comment, of course, is kith and kin to my response when folks praise certain modern Catholic church/cathedral designs as possessing the noble simplicity of medieval Cistercian exempla: be careful of the exempla invoked - where is the chant, solemn liturgy and bonded brotherhood?