On not paying attention at mass

It’s a question of filtering.  Readers murder the language, chanter squeaks and over-dramatizes, choir delivers warmed-over pop stuff, people behind you chat, presider (celebrant, mass-sayer, whatever) gives into quirks, offering his own rendition of the words of the mass. 

Somehow have your own private mass, ignoring the minister when necessary, trusting in ex opere operato, that is, the work worked, what makes the mass the mass, rather than opera operantis (the work of the one working), that is, what the priest brings personally to the opus, that is, the mass itself.

Clear as mud?  OK, ignore the nonessentials that bug you, concentrate on what matters.  Amen, brother and sister.