There's still room for Mass improvements.

Effective lectors, better preaching, and good music can help improve our Sunday Masses.

MORE THAN A FEW U.S. CATHOLICS ARE RESTIVE about the quality of the Sunday (or weekend) worship they are asked to take part in. Even some bishops. It is obviously risky to generalize about the thousands of such Mass services that are celebrated weekly. The quality of some may be superb; others may be stale, flat, and all but unprofitable. But, it is to be hoped, all are works in progress.

Bishop Thomas Dupre of Springfield, Massachusetts, in a pastoral letter issued last Easter, was insightful and helpful. To wit:

"Quality Sunday worship which is inviting, nourishing, and faith-sustaining does not just happen," Dupre writes. "Through greater understanding, education, and appreciation, Sunday worship may be approached with the conviction that the eucharistic liturgy is indeed the most important act that can be performed by the people of God."

Scripture makes clear "that both the disciples and other members of the early community perceived the Eucharist as central to their faith experience," says Dupre.

"The New Testament bears witness to the importance and centrality of the Eucharist in the life of the early church. In a similar way, it highlights the intention of Jesus to identify himself with the gifts of bread and wine, so that he might nourish his followers and be recognized as remaining with them `in the breaking of the bread.'"

Not satisfied with offering only broad theological insights, Dupre offered practical advice on such matters as Mass lectors and music in worship.

His suggestions for the lector's role and preparation set a high standard, one that won't be easy to live up to but would obviously be desirable. "To be an effective proclaimer of the word of God, the lector must be a person of prayer and a lover of the scriptures. Besides possessing the skills of a good communicator, the lector must take the word of God to heart, understanding that he or she is proclaiming a word of faith to people from whom the Lord desires a response."

Another bishop, Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk of Cincinnati, also addressed himself to Mass quality recently, speaking of a subject that is under-the-skin for many people in the pews.

Is preaching getting better in the church? Pilarczyk thinks it is. "One reason is that people expect more from preaching than they used to. Peoples' lives are more complicated than they used to be. The world they live in is more hostile. Consequently, they seem to know by some intuition of faith that they have greater need for the truth and direction that God's words offer them."

The Cincinnati archbishop offered advice about preaching that is both practical and droll. "Today's parishioners," he says, "have been conditioned to believe (by television, for example) that anything that takes more than 10 minutes to expound cannot be true, and that if it's really important you ought to be able to say it in less than a minute. Given that chaos of sounds and words and pictures, when today's preacher moves to the ambo on Sunday morning, he probably faces stiffer competition than anybody since Saint Paul attempting to address the rioting silversmiths of Ephesus."

But isn't it true that in their sincere efforts to produce worship celebrations that are other than dull, dreary, and eyes-glazing-over, pastors and their associates sometimes succeed only in cluttering?

Perhaps an answer may lie in the fact that no one size fits all. In the relatively few U.S. parishes blessed with more than one priest, an alternative Mass may be more appropriate for Catholics whose thyroids are attuned to the activism of some "big" Masses. This is not to argue for the old time "quiet Masses" with worshipers' noses buried in prayer books or missals. That monolith, it is to be hoped, is part of church history only. But where compromise is possible, couldn't we try it?

Bishop Dupre also plunged fearlessly into the hornet's nest of music in the liturgy. No one can quarrel with his recognition that "from ancient times, music in its various modalities seems to have formed an integral part of all human worship.... Common voices lifted in song can forge a unity of spirit from diversity and disunity. In a similar way, music may add beauty and dignity to acts and gestures which constitute and give rise to worship."

No quarrel there. But with the sound of banal and unsingable all-too-often-heard hymns ringing (repeat ringing) in their ears, some worshipers might be begging for divine inspiration.