It's not just interactions with friends and families that are getting cut.

Routine yet beneficial interactions with people at fitness and child care centres and volunteer organizations are also being eliminated.

Social distancing is vital to combating COVID-19. But is it unravelling the social bonds that keep society together?

Social capital adds up

As a sociologist of religion and education, I study how Americans develop social ties, and how these social ties influence people's lives.

Scholars refer to relationships that exist between and among people as "social capital." When people interact, even briefly, they start to trust one another and feel comfortable asking each other for help. But for that trust to develop, people need to physically interact with one another.

Social capital is highly valuable during times of crisis.

During Hurricane Ida, for example, people waded through rising water to save neighbours.

A similar thing happened during Chicago's 1995 heatwave when hundreds of people who lived alone without air conditioning were rescued by neighbours and acquaintances.

Having trusting relationships with people ahead of crises is key - and building those relationships requires people to spend time together.

While isolating at home in spring 2020, I started to wonder: Does the need to social distance affect how social capital gets activated during a pandemic?

From August to October 2020, I interviewed 36 middle- and low-income Jewish parents in the greater Philadelphia area who had school-aged children. There was a range among parents in how involved they were in Jewish communities and organizations. Some were regular synagogue-goers. Others rarely went to services but actively volunteered for Jewish organizations. And some rarely participated in any religious or social dimensions of Jewish life.

How does a study of Jews help us understand the flow of social capital during a pandemic?

Both Jews and non-Jews can develop social capital by participating in religious organizations. It's not religious rituals that cultivate social capital - it's all those social interactions that occur outside of religious rituals.

Relationships pay off

When COVID-19 hit, millions of Americans needed to avoid social contact and couldn't participate in religious services.

That also meant they couldn't participate in the social dimensions of religious life - they couldn't help people mourn their dead, volunteer in soup kitchens or gather with people for meals during holidays and the Sabbath.

For Jews, limiting social interaction was especially difficult because many rituals require a minyan - a quorum - of 10 people.

My interviews revealed two key phenomena. First, social capital gets activated differently during a pandemic than it does during weather-related disasters.

During hurricanes and heat waves, social capital manifests itself in people physically helping their acquaintances get out of dangerous situations.

But during a pandemic, the physical help itself is what's dangerous.

Working parents couldn't turn to their neighbours or friends for child care help without putting their acquaintances, as well as their own children, at risk of contracting COVID-19.

Since physical interaction was off-limits, the role of social capital transformed. Jewish parents were able to use their social connections in Jewish organizations to get supermarket gift cards, groceries and even lump sums of cash to offset lost income. For these economically fragile families, the immediate resources helped them feel secure and cared for in a time of profound uncertainty.

Parents were more likely to get these resources if they had been actively engaged in the social life of the Jewish community before COVID-19. Parents who weren't embedded in Jewish communities didn't even know that they could ask for help.

At the same time, rabbis who had received funds through larger Jewish organizations to help their congregants and community members knew whom to distribute funds to only if they had relationships with them ahead of the pandemic - relationships that were developed through social interactions outside of formal religious rituals like prayer.

Reciprocity required

The second major finding is that extended periods of social distancing threaten the flow of social capital.

Parents who received material resources from Jewish organizations or rabbis were often those who contributed in some capacity to the system prior to COVID-19. Some served as greeters or as security guards during synagogue events; others organized meal trains; and some volunteered for their local chevra kadisha, or Jewish burial society.

The key point is that social capital requires reciprocity - people need to give in order to receive. Physical and reciprocal acts of generosity are crucial for maintaining the social bonds of society.

But what happens to our social bonds when social distancing limits our ability to physically help each other?

While individuals can still contribute money, there is little opportunity for people to give their time and join in physical communal efforts.

If human interactions are hindered for long periods of time, social capital could break down.

This could profoundly unravel the social ties that bind communities together and motivate them to transcend their self-interests to help others.

Communities may survive the pandemic, but will they have anyone left to turn to the next time they need support?

• Ilana Horwitz, Assistant Professor, Fields-Rayant Chair in Contemporary Jewish Life, Tulane University.
• First published in The Conversation. Republished with permission.

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• Parishioners of all ages are crowded into a confined space,
• they hug or shake hands,
• they receive bread on the tongue or in the hand from a minister whose hands are not gloved,
• they share a cup of wine and
• they crowd together at the church entrance before and after Mass.

But just as everyone wants to get America back to work, pastors want to reopen churches to their congregations as soon as possible. But public health experts tell us that the country is not ready.

Before people can safely congregate in churches, movie theatres, bars, sports events and other crowded places, Americans will need to be vaccinated against the coronavirus.

Even the most optimistic guesses put a vaccine 12 to 18 months away.

Some believe that the country could be gradually reopened if it had a rigorous program of testing, contact tracing followed by isolating those who are sick and quarantining those who have been in contact with the sick.

Again, we are nowhere near having that in place.

Even if we were, meeting in large crowds would still be discouraged until a vaccine is available.

Opening churches before a vaccine is available will be very risky, especially for the elderly and those with compromised immune systems.

Risky, but possible?

Could churches reopen while practicing social distancing during the time prior to a vaccine?

It is possible, but it would be a logistical nightmare with rules that would have to be enforced with absolute rigour.

• First, the pastor would have to examine the church and calculate how many people it could accommodate while observing social distancing.
• Each location would have to be marked so congregants would know where to sit.
• Parishioners would not have the freedom to choose where to sit.
• Congregants would be directed to and from their seats by an usher.
• Each location would have to be sterilized before the next service.

If the church could safely hold 50, that number would be divided into the number of people who come to church on a typical Sunday.

Thus, if 500 people normally came, the pastor would have to hold 10 services to accommodate all the parish.

These services need not all occur on Sunday. They could be anytime on the weekend or even during the rest of the week.

Next, the parishioners would have to be organized so that everyone knows which service they should attend.

Tickets might be needed to deter gate-crashers.

The space around the entrance to the church would also need to be marked at 6-foot intervals so that people did not crowd the door and break social distance.

No lingering would be allowed in front of the church or in the parking lot.

Strict enforcement

All these rules would have to be enforced strictly. Anyone breaking the rules would be banned from future services.

Safety will require that the congregation take orders like parochial school children used to take orders from Mother Superior.

No questions; no talking back.

Eucharist

Eucharistic services will face special problems.

At the last public Mass I celebrated, I encouraged the congregation to receive in the hand and told them that if I accidentally touched someone's tongue, I would have to stop until I sterilized my fingers. No one received on the tongue.

But Communion in the hand is not safe either.

You cannot distribute Communion while keeping social distance.

In addition, the priest or Communion minister touches every host. If a minister is infected but asymptomatic, scores could be infected.

In addition, it is almost impossible to give Communion without touching some hands. If a minister touches a hand while distributing Communion, all those later in line are at risk.

One solution would be using gloves to put an unconsecrated host at every location in the church where a congregant would sit.

The priest would make the intention of consecrating all the hosts in the church, which would then be consumed by the congregation at Communion.

Another advantage of this approach would be to eliminate the Communion line, where keeping social distance would be a problem.

Churchgoers and rules

At least, in theory, churches could be reopened if they observed such strict protocols, but humans, even churchgoers, are not good at following rules.

Someone would have to scrupulously enforce the rules with great severity.

At least in this regard, liberals who believe that the pandemic will lead to a less clerical, less authoritarian church are mistaken.

Absolute obedience will be required if the congregation is to be protected from infection.

There is no such thing as a minor infraction.

Not only the recalcitrant but also the inattentive and sloppy will have to be banned from church.

Will people be willing to attend such a church?

The age of priests

On the other hand, given the age and the low number of priests in the Catholic Church, it will be impossible for priests to do all the services required by social distancing.

Most services will have to be led by laypersons, most of whom will be women. These Communion services will use hosts consecrated earlier at Masses celebrated by priests.

At the Amazon synod last year, there was much talk about a lack of priests and the leadership role of women in local communities.

In the pandemic, American Catholics are experiencing the Eucharistic famine that much of the rest of the world has known for generations.

The pandemic may make the local church more sympathetic to the changes desired by the Amazonian church, and allow women to share their gifts with the church in a way previously not seen in the States.

• Thomas Reese SJ is a senior analyst at Religion News Service, and a former columnist at National Catholic Reporter, and a former editor-in-chief of the weekly Catholic magazine America. First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

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During the parish's normal 11:30-noon weekday confession times, penitents on their lunch breaks line up, often 20 people or more deep, for absolution and sacramental grace, before returning to work, or before attending the 12:10 p.m. Mass.

"It's a big ministry," Fr. Douglas Dietrich, the pastor of St. Mary's, told CNA.

"And then we have a lot of people who come by the door and call up and just want to go to confession; that's great."

"I always joked about how I should just put up a walk-up confessional" available outside his rectory office window, Dietrich told CNA.

These days, the usual daily confession lines would violate new state and federal coronavirus guidelines, which dictate that no more than 10 people should be gathered in any space.

To further complicate matters, the Diocese of Lincoln announced on Monday that public Masses would be suspended until further notice, also in an effort to combat coronavirus.

But Fr. Dietrich is not deterred.

What started out as a joke has now become a reality, in an effort to keep the sacraments available to Nebraska's Catholics during this uncharted time of restrictions on public gatherings.

"When we got the word that they were suspending all public liturgies and the churches were basically shut down, that was my first concern was - what about people who have to get to confession?"

Starting just one day after the new restrictions, Fr. Dietrich set up shop at his office window, and advertised the new set-up to his parishioners.

The line was a little shorter than usual, but Dietrich said he heard confessions until a little past noon.

Dietrich is not the only priest getting creative at this time of unprecedented closures of liturgies and churches in the United States and beyond.

Over the weekend, a photo circulated on social media of Fr. Scott Holmer of St. Edward the Confessor Catholic Church in Bowie, Md., offering drive-up confessions.

Holmer sat on a chair outside in the church parking lot, a safe six feet away from cars, which lined up behind traffic cones for the sacrament.

In a note on his parish website, Holmer said that while it was a "great sorrow" to be unable to offer public Mass, the "drive-through confessional" was one way he could offer sacraments to the people at this time. Continue reading