For Deaf Catholics, signed Masses foster access – and culture

"This is my culture. I can communicate easily and freely. There are no obstructions."

On a sunny November morning, Mass was being celebrated at St. Ignatius of Loyola parish in Frederick, Maryland.

The priest prayed. Lectors proclaimed the readings. The congregation responded. An interpreter was present to translate for the minority of people who could not understand.

Fr. Michael Depcik signs at a Mass prayed in American Sign Language at St. Ignatius of Loyola Parish. Credit: Laura Loker.

While it may sound like a fairly typical Sunday Mass, it was actually far from ordinary: The priest and parishioners were praying in American Sign Language, while the interpreter spoke aloud for the few hearing congregants who could not sign.

The Deaf community at St. Ignatius of Loyola parish is small. About 40 parishioners gathered in the small country church, located a few miles from the main parish campus in Ijamsville, for the weekly Sunday Mass.

But their community demonstrates the strong social bonds, sense of agency, and cultural flourishing that develop when parish life is not merely made accessible through an interpreter, but conducted entirely in American Sign Language (ASL).

Fr. Michael Depcik, the celebrant of the Mass, is a rarity among priests. Born deaf, to deaf parents and siblings, he was ordained an Oblate of St. Francis in 2000. In 2023, he was assigned the role of Chaplain for Deaf Ministry for the Archdiocese of Baltimore, where he now celebrates Masses in ASL in Frederick, Baltimore, and the nearby Diocese of Arlington, Virginia.

Within St. Ignatius’s Deaf community, “that sense of belonging is there because they feel like they have autonomy,” Depcik told The Pillar. (Depcik signed to an interpreter who spoke to The Pillar via phone.)

“It’s their parish. They’re reading [at Mass]. They can be an usher or a chairperson or host a Christmas party. They have ownership the same way that other people would.”

Sue Smith, president of the Deaf parish council at St. Ignatius, is one such parishioner.

“This is my world,” she told The Pillar. “This is my culture. I can communicate easily and freely. There are no obstructions, no blocking access at all.”

But in today’s parishes, even interpreted Masses are rare. In a 2024 survey on disability practices by Georgetown’s Center for Applied Research and Apostolate, only 4% of responding parishes indicated that they had ASL at Masses.

Not every deaf or hard-of-hearing person identifies with the Deaf community (denoted with a capital “D,” as opposed to lowercase “d” referring to the physical condition itself.) Some lose hearing later in life; some who have residual hearing choose auditory aids and forgo sign language; others lack exposure to Deaf culture.

But for Depcik — whose native language is ASL — and the community at St. Ignatius, being Deaf is an essential part of who they are.

“We want people to call us Deaf, D-E-A-F, because we are proud to be deaf. We do not think of it as a disability,” he shared. “We don’t like people to call us ‘hearing impaired.’ I’m not impaired. We are deaf, and that’s okay.”

‘Not just English on the hands’

Of the common misconceptions about the Deaf community, one is that ASL is merely a visual representation of English.

“[ASL] is not just English on the hands — it has its own different grammar and syntax and structure,” explained Katherine Resendez, a freelance ASL interpreter who assists at the Masses Depcik celebrates in northern Virginia. Resendez first began learning ASL when she was in elementary school so she could communicate with a deaf friend.

“Like any language, you have to learn the vocabulary and the grammar, and it takes practice, and if you don’t use it, you lose it. And the best way to learn a language is immersion. So actually signing and hanging out with deaf people.”

“It’s way beyond the hands,” Eileen Ladino, who worked in deaf education in a northern Virginia public school system, told The Pillar. Like Resendez, Ladino is hearing.

“To think of sign language as being a set of gestures is like thinking about oral communication as being just a set of words,” she continued.

“In oral communication, we have the fluctuation, we have the facial expression, we have the cadence, the pauses, etc. And sign language is just like that, and it includes lots of facial expression, positioning of the torso, speed and emphasis within the signs. So it’s just as versatile as spoken communication.”

Depcik applauds churches that offer interpreted Masses, but he noted that it is not equivalent to a Mass celebrated in ASL.

“Honestly, I would say [the interpreted Mass is] too ‘hearing.’ It’s very auditory-based. There’s a lot of music,” he shared.

Furthermore, the quality of the interpretation can vary based on the interpreter’s fluency and familiarity with translation in a Catholic setting.

Ladino first attended a Deaf Mass when she was a graduate student at Gallaudet University. Even though she is hearing, attending Mass in ASL enriched her faith.

“I found that I was better able to understand some of the vocabulary being used in the Mass because I had a visual representation of the concept in addition to the word,” she said.

A visual liturgy

In 1965, just after the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI approved the use of sign languages in Mass when pastorally appropriate, though still requiring the celebrant to speak while signing. The decree also stated that sign language could be used only for the vernacular, which was not yet the entire Mass.

The ordination of deaf men to active priestly ministry began in the following years; the first deaf American priest, Fr. Thomas Coughlin, was ordained in 1977. But in the absence of further official recognition of sign languages, some Catholics wonder (and scholars have considered) whether certain prayers of the Mass, such as the consecration, must be spoken to be considered valid.

Canon lawyer Edward Peters, who has studied the topic at length, has argued that concerns about validity typically underestimate the capabilities of sign languages as a mode of communication.

“One must be aware that what is crucial is not the language the minister uses, but rather the ability of that language to express or communicate the divinely-willed sense of the sacramental form,” Peters argued in an article for canon law journal Studia Canonica.

“Recognizing that sign languages are fully human languages, today we can say that what is required for sacramental form is the direct expression or communication of the form, not its ‘orality,’ and that discoveries regarding the linguistic capacity of sign languages leave no doubt as to their fundamental ability to express or communicate the form of the sacraments and sacramentals.”

“ASL is a language,” Depcik expressed more directly. “It doesn’t matter if [the prayers of the Mass are] in spoken language or in a visual language.”

But the issue of language and liturgy has not been fully resolved by the Apostolic See, leaving open questions about the subject which experts say need to be addressed.

National Catholic Office for the Deaf president Minette Sternke told The Pillar that there is a desire, particularly among Deaf priests who sometimes encounter skepticism about the validity of signed Masses, for explicit recognition of ASL as a sacramentally valid language. Such a step for a spoken language would require an approved written translation.

Sternke and the National Catholic Office for the Deaf are in the “very early stages” of discussing how best to approach the issue, she told the The Pillar via email.

From text to signs

So how does a priest celebrate the entire Mass in ASL, particularly when he has no notated translation?

Msgr. Glenn Nelson is the director of the Deaf Apostolate of the Diocese of Rockford, Illinois and a board member of the National Catholic Office for the Deaf. First exposed to ASL as a college student through a deaf classmate — Nelson is hearing — he studied and worked in deaf education prior to his ordination.

Every summer, he leads Religious American Sign Language Week. The full-immersion program is intended for priests, seminarians, lectors and interpreters who want to learn to sign the Mass and lectionary readings.

Translating the prayers and readings of the Mass requires a particular liturgical vocabulary, as well as theological and historical background, Nelson told The Pillar.

For example: When the text of the Mass reads “Lord” or “you,” which person of the Trinity is it addressing? And how does the priest indicate that?

“You have to be able to identify Father, Son and Spirit in the Trinity of persons, while yet maintaining the integrity and the close proximity of space to maintain the visual of one God and not three separate gods. You see the delicateness of that,” Nelson explained. “And that’s a spatial thing.”

When students ask him if they can film him signing, said Nelson, he tells them, “Absolutely not.”

“I’m not here as the one official person that speaks on behalf of every sign language interpreter in the world… What I’m doing is: I want you to be aware of how you’re signing,” he explained.

“Believe it or not, the class is not just, ‘Copy me,’ but we give a whole lot of the history. ‘Why do we sign it this way? Well, because this is what the Church teaches.’”

Though Nelson does not use video as a teaching aid, such resources do exist. The National Catholic Office for the Deaf links to several dioceses’ proposed translations posted after the release of the 2011 Roman Missal text.

An additional translation is available to NCOD members, Sternke told The Pillar. (Other resources, such as Ascension Press’ Hands of Grace glossary, are available to help with Catholic vocabulary.)

But there is no current effort, at least from NCOD, to develop a “uniform” translation for the U.S., Sternke told The Pillar

“Much like English accents in different locations around the U.S., ASL has different regional ‘dialects’ or ‘signs’ where different signs are used for a particular word based on the local usage and history,” Sternke explained.

Other variations may be spatial, depending on where in relation to his body a priest situates the persons of the Trinity, for example. And among deaf people born to hearing families, some learned to sign following English word order, which a priest may accommodate depending on his community’s needs.

Nelson pointed out that while two priests may vary in how they sign, they are both still working from the same text — text that has been retranslated even in living memory.

“Translations are natural. Language is alive, right?” he said. “The Church continues to adapt to living people and needs.”

‘Come and see’

The Deaf Catholic community is getting more connected. In April, Depcik led the first Deaf Eucharistic Congress, which drew over 200 people from all over the country. Both Nelson and Depcik are among signing priests who livestream Mass or post video reflections online.

But without more interpreters and priests who can sign, many Deaf Catholics will continue to struggle with access to the sacraments and parish life.

It’s a “vicious cycle,” Depcik explained: Funding for Deaf ministry gets cut, and even fewer deaf people go to church. In their absence, parishes cut funding even more.

“We will always be a small group of people compared to other minority groups, but still, we are part of the flock,” he added.

After decades without a signing priest, the St. Ignatius community was “very happy” when Depcik arrived, lector Chris McQuaid told The Pillar.

Now the Deaf and hearing communities even worship together sometimes in the parish’s larger church. The quarterly Masses require two interpreters: one to voice signs for the hearing congregation, and one to sign from English for the Deaf community. Much like other bilingual Masses, one reading is proclaimed in ASL and the other in English. Before Mass, the interpreters teach a few of the signed responses (like “amen” and “alleluia”) to hearing parishioners.

Depcik always gives the homily, Fr. Brian Nolan, St. Ignatius’s pastor, told The Pillar. Nolan, who typically concelebrates, said that the Mass packs the main church with anywhere from 450 to 600 parishioners in attendance (with 30 to 50 from the Deaf community). The parish has also hosted joint events, like a talk and panel discussion with the starring actor of “JESUS: a Deaf Missions film.”

“Our parishioners love it,” said Nolan. “It just really opens our eyes to the Deaf community.”

When asked what the bilingual Masses are like, McQuaid grinned.

“You’ve got to come and see for yourself!”