"We have discovered with online streaming, live streaming of Masses, that we get enormous congregations sometimes," says Archbishop Malcolm McMahon of Liverpool, the vice-president of the national bishops' conference.

McMahon says that as a result of digital effort during the long COVID lockdown, the bishops plan to increase their digital footprint on the Internet and branch out to other more diverse media platforms.

The 71-year-old Dominican archbishop said participants at the Holy Week services were higher this year than at Liverpool's cathedral due to the live streaming.

Thanking all those who give time to keep churches open and as havens of peace and prayer, the challenge is to bring faith to a "still greater expression and strength", the bishops' say in a statement "The Day of the Lord".

The bishops' say that ‘vibrant' is a word that seems to have characterised so many of the parishes throughout the pandemic and they are keen to build on it.

They are full of praise for families, parish communities and those who have worked to face challenges of "ill-health, grief and isolation".

However, the bishops say the pace of emerging from the pandemic "remains unclear" but they remain focussed on the challenge to bring faith communities and the practice of the faith to a still greater expression and strength.

In terms of moving forward post-Covid, the bishops have identified three groups requiring different mission responses.

• The fearful and weary who are anxious about coming into enclosed spaces and who have lost the habit of coming to church and for whom personal contact and sensitive reassurance is needed.
• Those who have reassessed their life pattern and priorities, and who now have widened the gap between the spiritual quest and a communal expression of that journey. The bishops say this group represents a particular focus for outreach.
• The Covid curious; those who have come into contact with the Church through its presence on the Internet and it is the hope that Church will be able to have a continued presence among them through a range of diverse media platforms.

The last two groups represent different and particular challenges and they say they are looking forward to outreachinh using the strengths of the "veritable treasures" of the Church.

They conclude their statement reflecting on the "rightful" place of the Eucharist as being central to the Christian community calling Sunday 'a weekly gift from God to his people' and the 'soul of the week', and the Eucharist as the food for the unique mission with which all Catholics have been endowed.

Sources

• La-Croix International
• Bishops of England and Wales (PDF)

As in many countries, churches and other places of worship in the Irish Republic have significant restrictions. Priests are required to say mass in empty or near-empty churches.

To reach parishioners, masses have been broadcast online since restrictions on attendance were put in place to combat the pandemic.

The Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) said the expectation among parishioners that mass will be said online had produced a slew of comments and reviews.

This was putting its members under pressure to perform and causing a form of digital stage fright.

Father Tim Hazelwood, a spokesman for the ACP, said a lot of priests had felt "forced" into putting their services online. A number had subsequently stopped because of "judgment" from viewers.

"And there is a group of 'mass hoppers' who go from mass to mass, and unfortunately some of them pass comments that are very hurtful."

Fr Gerry O'Conner from the Scala Community in Cork city said priests can see how many views they have received and comparisons are being made.

"We are aware that people have their favourite online liturgies. They think some are better than others. There are reviews and analyses and comparisons being made," he said explaining why priests are abandoning online masses.

"Like anyone else, priests can be sensitive."

While the idea of priests suffering digital stage fright may sound like a Covid-compliant plotline from the television comedy Father Ted, the ACP said its members were dealing with multiple pressures caused by the pandemic.

The average age for a priest in Ireland is 72. Many live alone as the Catholic Church copes with dwindling congregation sizes and an ageing priesthood.

Father Hazelwood said his colleagues were facing issues such as reductions in church income of up to 60 per cent while also having to adjust to old age.

He told the AGM: "Our energy levels are falling. Our health and our fitness isn't as good as it was. We have to recognise that what we could do before, we can't be expected to do now."

Sources

iNews

Irish Examiner

We tried very hard to continue our weekly ritual of prayer and worship.

Like many families, we created a small home altar. We lit a candle. We set out a statue of Mary. We stood. We knelt. We sang. We tried.

Our parishes tried, too.

Priests who never heard of Facebook Live quickly learned how to livestream. They bought tripods and tried different camera angles. Some relied on their parishioners to lend expertise on video production. Everyone tried their best in a difficult time.

I know quite a few priests, so my Facebook feed was inundated with livestream Masses in the early days of the pandemic.

Every day, I would scroll through and see priest after priest celebrating Mass in an empty church. I would watch them receive Communion, give a small teaching, and do all the rituals associated with the prayer.

They were doing their best.

As the weeks went on, the experience of watching Mass got more difficult for my family.

I would often miss the readings or homily because I was wrangling our toddler.

In the end, Mass was more of a spectator sport than worship experience.

What became clear to us after weeks of watching online Mass was that it boiled down to watching someone else pray.

We who sat in our living room weren't experiencing a sacrament.

We were watching someone else experience it.

And, at least for us, that was frustrating more than it was uplifting.

So, we stopped watching virtual Mass and we haven't watched a Mass for months.

After further reflection, I've come to realize my problem was not with live-streamed Mass.

I know many who love the experience, and it has served as a lifeline for their faith.

I think it's an important ministry and it should continue.

My problem with virtual Mass was that it was the only form of ministry I was experiencing from my parish. And because it was the only form of ministry — it was wholly inadequate.

I have witnessed creativity and ingenuity in ministry during this difficult time.

I saw parishes and priests who hosted a daily evening prayer, a weekly rosary, or weekly virtual Bible study.

I've seen parishes offering virtual lectures and other learning opportunities.

I know of priests and deacons who call their homebound parishioners to check in.

I think that is a good start to the new kind of community parishes are building. Because, we are, in fact, in the process of building a new kind of community.

There will not be a return to the way things were.

How could there be?

The world has changed and so have we.

And moving forward, that kind of ingenuity and creativity is what I'm asking of our priests and parishes. In short, how can I pray with you?

Because, I'm tired of watching you pray.

We know this pandemic is far from over and there are many, like my family, who will not see the inside of a church for many more months.

Many are scared to go back, too at-risk, and it's precisely those people who need their parish more than ever.

So, our parishes must consider how to create virtual and in-person worship experiences that are communal and meaningful.

What resources can we send to our parishioners to support their prayer at home?

How can we support young families, our elders, our homebound in their experience of faith at home?

What do we have to do to make human connections in a time when those things are in short supply? Continue reading

His concern is that detached from the church, God's people and the Sacraments, the COVID-19 lockdown may cause people to live the faith only for themselves.

After dedicating Sunday's Mass to expectant mothers, whose needs are in his prayers during the pandemic, Francis focused his homily on faith and the Church during this time of isolation.

Online Masses and spiritual communion are available, the Church is "in a difficult situation that the Lord is allowing," he noted.

"But the ideal of the church is always with the people and with the sacraments — always."

Although a number of faith-based initiatives, Masses and prayers are available online, and the faithful have been encouraged to make an act of spiritual Communion, "this is not the church," Francis said.

One's relationship with Jesus "is intimate, it is personal, but it is in a community," he stressed.

As the Gospels show, Jesus' disciples always lived their relationship with the Lord as a community.

They gathered "at the table, a sign of community. It was always with the sacrament, with bread."

"I am saying this because someone made me reflect on the danger of this moment we are living, this pandemic that has made all of us communicate, even in a religious sense, through the media."

As an example, he said even though when he broadcasts his morning Mass people are in communio, they are not "together".

Spiritual Communion at Mass "is not the church".

Francis said a bishop had "scolded him" and made him think more deeply about the danger of celebrating Mass without the presence and participation of the general public.

Rather than celebrate Easter Mass at an "empty" St. Peter's Basilica, the bishop asked Francis why.

When "St. Peter's is so big, why not put 30 people at least so people can be seen" in the congregation, he wondered?

Francis said at first he didn't understand what the bishop was saying.

He and the bishop spoke together and the bishop explained to Francis he should be careful not make the church, the sacraments and the people of God something that is only experienced or distributed online.

"The church, the sacraments and the people of God are concrete," Francis realised.

Our relationship with God must also stay concrete, as the apostles lived it.

We need to experience that relationship as a community and with the people of God, not lived in a selfish way as individuals. Nor should we live it in a "viral" way that is spread only online.

"May the Lord teach us this intimacy with him, this familiarity with him, but in the church, with the sacraments, with the holy faithful people of God," Francis concluded.

Source

• Catholic News Service
• Image: YouTube

That's how our eight-year old daughter reacted last Sunday when we gathered to watch the celebration of Mass at home, where we've been self-quarantined since last week.

From the mouths of babes…

Our daughter is used to seeing me as an extraordinary minister of the Eucharist at our parish where she's preparing to make her first communion. That ceremony, by the way, will most likely be postponed.

She really misses not being able to attend Mass right now.

Our parish priest usually has lay ministers lead a special biblical catechesis for the children during the Liturgy of the Word, which she, her little brother and their classmates attend.

Just like us, she is going through a difficult moment. But, even at her young age, she's grasped the theological point.

Lockdown, social distancing and being Church

The situation of protracted total lockdown and social distancing is pushing all of us - and in a rather unexpected and abrupt fashion - to explore new ways of being Church.

No one should romanticize what is happening.

Given the lockdown, not only the celebration of Mass, but also the Church's pastoral activity has almost totally stopped.

This is a serious problem.

One Italian bishop from the Lombardy region (ground zero of the pandemic in Italy) told me that they are very worried.

"This is like a crash course in Church and the media for us," he said. "We can use the media as a substitute for our on-the-ground pastoral activity, but only up to a certain point."

Many bishops are expressing this same anxiety on social media. But some are advocating for "business as usual."

They don't seem to fully understand how dangerous it is - not just for priests, but for the entire community - to push the limits of the sacrosanct social distancing that now is required of us.

A stat of emergency that challenges our theology

The coronavirus emergency is forcing all of us to re-conceptualize our religion. Not just intellectually, but also visually, emotionally and anthropologically in all of us.

This is a formidable test for our theology: liturgy and sacramental life, ecclesiology, and the relations between Church and State.

It is particularly challenging to our moral theology.

Epidemics and pandemic tend to awake brutal survival instincts in all of us. They can also provoke other reactions and behaviour that contradict the message of the Gospel.

If the Church is to be a presence in all of this, it must be so in ways that are different from its normal default position - the celebration of Mass.

The current pandemic is testing the capability of the institutional Church - including the papacy and the Vatican - to be present, almost invisibly, without being able to rely on the apparatus of the visible Church.

Pope Francis' pastoral response to anti-coronavirus measures

It's also a difficult test for Pope Francis' theology. The pontificate has to walk an extraordinarily fine line between the need to follow the government's anti-virus measures for the sake of the people and the need for the Church to be the Church.

Historians talk about the "institutional loneliness" of the papacy. That's true in normal time. But a pope is even lonelier in times of crisis. Francis is being forced to interpret his job as a lonely actor on the now almost totally empty stage of Rome, in an almost Becket-like performance.

The 83-year-old Jesuit pope looks more comfortable navigating the public and political side of the issue (the relations with the state) with his appearances, than in dealing theologically with the meaning of this emergency for an all-ministerial church.

Judging from what he has said up to know in his homilies at daily Mass and his reflections at the Sunday Angelus, his emphasis has been more about what the priests can and must do, rather than on what every Christian called to holiness is able to do.

His reference last Sunday to Don Abbondio, the cowardly priest in Alessandro Manzoni's The Betrothed, the famous novel staged in plague-stricken 17th-century Milan, was a nice literary touch. But it reflected a rather priest-centered Church.

Like fish out of water

There is so much of Christian spirituality that can be rediscovered at this extraordinary time, without going back to a theology of the priesthood that is no longer sound and even less safe in time of a pandemic.

I was listening on Saturday, via internet, to the sound of the bells warming the air of Rome's totally empty streets. It was like the beginning of Grand Silence for a community where all differences are now relativized.

It reminded me of a monastery and he saying of one Abba Antony, one of the Desert Fathers: "Just as fish die if they stay too long out of water, so the monks who loiter outside their cells."

Many of us are going to have to live inside for quite some time, and it's not clear for how long.

Catholics need the sacraments, but our body is already the temple of the Holy Spirit. In Christian life there is a sacramentality that does not depend on the sacraments per se.

Liturgy of the Hours and 'lectio divina'

Watching Mass online is really no substitute for physically participating in the celebration of the Eucharist. And during this time of pandemic we should be focusing less on live-streamed Masses, "spiritual communion" and private devotions.

The hierarchy (Pope Francis included) should be encouraging Catholics to explore the Liturgy of the Hours, "lectio divina" and family celebrations of the Word.

There is enormous potential in this. It's not just a matter, in some countries especially, of offering a viable alternative to the hyper-clerical fare that some Catholic media like EWTN dishes up. It's also about providing real spiritual nourishment in ways that are theologically richer and technologically just as simple.

Catholics in many countries will find themselves in this lockdown situation for the next several weeks, if not months. In this time of emergency our Church - that includes all of us, not just the hierarchy - is showing how difficult it is to truly actuate the vision of spiritual renewal that was launched by the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) and has been so energetically re-proposed in this pontificate.

For instance, the post-Vatican II liturgical reform was not just the "new Mass" - the turning around of the altar, use the vernacular and active participation of the faithful. It was also a way of understanding liturgy in the context of a non-hierarchical ecclesiology and of a theology of Revelation that ushered in a new approach to Sacred Scripture.

This is a moment to experience solidarity with others, especially with the most fragile, as we fulfill our Christian and civic duties.

Apart from some intellectuals and clerics, most Catholics do not seem particularly troubled by this extraordinary and temporary emergency measure of suspending communal liturgical celebrations. But the pope and the bishops must tell those who are that that they should not be.

Public liturgies halted, our liturgical spirit continues

Catholics will continue to believe. We will continue to keep our faith community united through social network, offering support to each other as we anticipate the day we can resume our normal liturgical life.

In many countries the Church has already suspended Mass and other liturgies with the participation of the people. This will happen in other countries, too.

But our liturgical spirit has not been halted. There is something liturgical in the spontaneous, but coordinated singing from Italian balconies (as bad as that singing may be at times!).

We support each other in a thousand ways, in the one human family, in our common humanity and in faith. Certainly this difficult period of dealing with COVID-19, however long it shall last, will have consequences for faith and the Church.

But this is a time to trust the sensus fideiof the people and find ways that are both creative, but also very traditional (the liturgy of the hours, lectio divina, family celebrations of the Word) to sustain us as we cross this desert.

Otherwise, all the recent talk about the urgent need to end clericalism will be revealed to have been just another mask - one we certainly don't need at this time.

• Massimo Faggioli. First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission