Anna Wade often sits in a church pew on Sunday and “kind of spaces out a little bit” until it’s time for communion, and then, she said, “that’s it.”
Wade’s lack of attention, though, has nothing to do with the Mass itself. It’s because she’s deaf, and the church she attends doesn’t have an American Sign Language interpreter – a problem she said exists throughout the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, where she lives, and a problem that others say exists in dioceses and churches across the country.
“I feel frustrated because I need spiritual support, but it’s not there,” Wade told Crux. “At the church, it just doesn’t give me any inspiration or anything. I just feel like it’s a decline of my feeling and my connection with the church because of that.”