O'Loughlin suggests that the arrangement of space is often overlooked, but we constantly refer to it.

It plays a pivotal role in our lives, he writes.

"We want ‘round table talks' and do not want to be put in the back row.

"They are taking my space.

"This place is homely.

"We need to de-clutter" - are all examples the Emeritus Professor of Historical Theology at the University of Nottingham uses to make his point.

O'Loughlin observes that buildings in every society have been used to project power, regulate society and reflect group identity. However, their role in religious worship is profound, and he notes that every religion and Christian denomination has utilised buildings as integral parts of their worship.

"In every society, buildings have been used to project power and authority, to regulate society and to project an image of how that group sees itself," he writes.

Bringing together a diverse group of nineteen Christians including liturgists, pastors, architects and artists from around the globe, the book seeks to answer the pressing question of how space affects the act of worship.

Among the contributors are three prominent New Zealanders: Dr Joe Grayland, a liturgist and Parish Priest from Palmerston North; Judith Courtney, former Auckland diocese liturgy coordinator; and Peter Murphy, a Papakura Parish Priest and former spiritual director at Holy Cross seminary.

The book offers a global perspective, with insights from New Zealand, Japan, Australia, France, the UK, Ireland and the US, and sheds light on how, in different cultural settings, the environment and ritual practices together shape the liturgical experience.

Richard Vosko, a US theologian and architectural consultant, contributes a thought-provoking piece suggesting that religious buildings, from churches to mosques, serve as societal symbols.

They reflect the relationship between the worshipping group and the broader society.

However he warns of a growing disconnect, with churches becoming less relational.

This shift, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and societal challenges like 'politically partisan pastors and administrative corruption', has led to a decline in church participation.

Vosko calls for a reimagining of liturgical spaces to be more egalitarian.

Grayland's contribution focuses on the call for active participation in worship, as highlighted in Sacrosanctum Concilium.

He discusses the evolving demands on liturgical practice, especially post-pandemic, and underscores the need for a new kind of ritual environment.

His insights suggest that New Zealanders are seeking dynamic, inclusive liturgical experiences.

Meanwhile, Courtney and Murphy discuss the challenges and roadblocks inherent in liturgical change.

They highlight that, while community needs have evolved, many churches built in recent years in the Auckland diocese still adhere to a traditional design.

As the world grapples with rapid change, the conversation around the role of space in shaping our spiritual experiences remains more pertinent than ever.

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His earlier book is Discipleship and Society in the Early Churches.
• His latest book is "Shaping the Assembly: How Our Buildings form us in Worship".

The enthusiasm of some for the Synodal Way is one side of the way all human societies make deliberate change. Likewise, the fears of Cardinal Walter Kasper and some other bishops are exactly what we should expect.

If we could see the future clearly, then it would be different - but no one has a crystal ball. The future always contains surprises. Some of these will be more wonderful than anyone has imagined; other will be worse than our greatest fears. That is simply the way it is!

One might imagine that it would be different with the Church - the Body of the Christ animated by the Spirit - and it has been the illusion of some Christians in every age that because they "had the faith" or "the Bible" or the "gift of magisterium" that their steps into the future were guaranteed!

Alas, we are always engaged in a process of discernment: we pray for the light of the Holy Spirit and we then try to glimpse the way forward. We walk forward by faith. The Church's prayer is always that "by the light of the Spirit we may be truly wise and enjoy his consolation" (da nobis in … Spiritu recta sapere, et de eius semper consolation gaudere).

Wrong signals

If we cannot now know the outcomes of our decisions, what we might suspect, with Cardinal Kasper, will be a disaster. But it may turn out completely the opposite - and vice versa - so we can exercise some foreknowledge with regard to the signals our actions send out in the present.

Right now, I can know that something is being wrongly interpreted or wrongly used. What will happen tomorrow is, in an absolute sense, unknown; but what is faulty now can be known through an examination of evidence that has been building up for some time and is available to us. This is where we can take definite action for the better.

This is such a basic element of our thinking that we tend to ignore it and spend our time in more distant - and so imprecise - speculation.

We can easily illustrate this: will there be a fire in the house or will it be OK? I simply do not know, and I hedge my bets by having house insurance. Contrast that with the definite event that I smell smoke and hear the fire alarm now, right now. In this case, I do not speculate but act: I call the fire brigade.

Liturgy is not costume drama

We see this same decision process in the Church.

Some weeks ago, Pope Francis did not speculate that some clergy might or might not really want to take the reforms of Vatican II to heart. Rather, he saw that their actual activity now - wearing lace and birettas - sent out a signal that they did not like modernity.

This was not a "might be" or "might happen" but a definite signal to people by those priests that they preferred a former time. So the pope sent a clear and definite signal to them!

In effect, he told them that helping the People of God celebrate their liturgy - it belongs to all the baptized because when we assemble we are "wholly celebrant" - is what their ministry is about. It is not costume drama in which they, as clergy, have the leading roles and take the bows!

The view out of a Roman window: the view from outside, looking in, is very different!

But there are many other areas where the Church, or clergy, are right now sending out signals that indicate an actual problem - a fire that needs fighting urgently. And if these are not tackled, then it will make the whole synodal process, for both the fearful and the hopeful, little more than hot air.

Seen to be transparent

Long trained to discretion, indeed secrecy, most clergy are happier dealing with anything "scandalous" far from the public view. Hence, one episcopal conference after another has been found to have been involved in cover-ups! It would be interesting to know just how many bishops have had to resign in the last 25 years because they were seen "to have swept matters under the carpet".

But this attitude - quite apart from the fact that it is morally unjust (criminals were allowed to create more suffering and went un-punished) and ecclesiologically inept (every member of the Church is as much a member as anyone else) - also failed to appreciate our cultural situation.

Lace inside the head

Many years ago I heard praise of a new bishop - arrived from a job in Rome - by some of the canons of his chapter: "He is the soul of discretion - his Vatican training is in his every move!"

I hope that would not be a vote of approbation by those priests today if they got a new bishop. Anyone who is so naturalized to secrecy, even to holding up the so-called "pontifical secret", is actually unfit for a job in the Roman Curia, much less in a diocese.

Such a man is an inhabitant of a world that is long past. Such a man is wearing lace inside his head.

A world that craves transparency

Whenever we find examples of people doing things in a "smoke-filled room" or "behind closed doors" or without full reporting, we become suspicious. Sad experience has taught us that such "back room" procedures are usually the fore-runner of greater problems.

So, for example, we are not surprised to hear that there is a crackdown on a free press and open discussion in Vladimir Putin's Russia. What might be labelled "judicious discretion" among two bishops in purple cassocks seems little different from "suppression" and "repression" when done by a military junta.

But time and again we see a minimalist approach to transparency from bishops. It is simply the wrong signal: it creates the impression that they cannot be trusted. Then it generates the question: why do they want to keep things back? Then: what have they to hide?

The breakdown of trust in the Church - which just might be generating those attitudes which cause the fears expressed by Cardinal Kasper - is a fact right now. Once people spontaneously generate that wonderful expression, the hermeneutic of suspicion, then there is a rupture in the magisterium.

This rupture is not a possible fruit of a mistaken approach to synodality (i.e. the equivalent of "will the house go on fire?" or "will there be a sea-battle tomorrow?"), but a simple fact for many of the baptized - they do not trust the official statements of bishops as anything more than statements intended to preserve power and prevent necessary change.

This level of suspicion of bishops has probably not been seen over wide areas of the Western Church since the sixteenth century.

An interesting slogan

Among disadvantaged groups this very significant statement is often repeated: Nothing about us, without us, is for us.

It is worth thinking carefully about the implications of this maxim.

It speaks of suspicion, the desire for transparency, and the desire for real - not token - consultation.

It also speaks about the experience of women who hear statements made about them and their bodies by men.

It speaks about married people hearing about the demands of the Christian life from celibates who have never had to worry about being out of work, never had to cope with the pressures of providing food or shelter or repaying a mortgage each month, nor dealing with the worries that are part of every relationship and family.

It speaks about hearing of "child protection measures" from men who do not have children but have profound professional identification with clerical abusers.

And the list goes on ….

Signs of the times

Let's not worry about tomorrow's potential problems, we have enough actuals that need urgent attention.

"So don't worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today's trouble is enough for today" (Mt 6:34).

Time is short! Some things are urgent! Transparency is a 'sign of this time'

Time is short! Some things are urgent! Transparency is a 'sign of this time'

We need to take heed of the signs of the times - and stop sending out the wrong signals.

You might say, "But transparency is not that important, and certainly not part of our moment! Let's just ignore it!"

Well, some people in the Vatican have already seen that it is part of our historical moment - hence the accounts for Peter's Pence have just been published for the first time. This is the transparency that is appropriate to a community such as the Church.

Anything that is less than full transparency - and being transparent about transparency - is a skandalon (a stumbling block) to evangelization.

• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.
• Thomas O'Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Discipleship and Society in the Early Churches.

Indeed, the reverse is the case: bishops and presbyters around the world have said that it is merely a matter of words. After all, women have been reading for years at the liturgy - so calling them ‘lectors' is just a needless formality!

Women have been presenting the gifts for just as long, altar servers are less important now than when they had to ‘answer' the Latin uttered by the presider, and the other few jobs like holding the book or swinging the thurible have been done by women for decades!

So why all the fuss?

It seems that the pope and the people in the Vatican must have little work if they want to now have a rite of installation so that men and women can do these things ‘officially.'

In short, for most people, Spiritus Domini is non-news.

I beg to differ.

Spiritus Domini is news, and the fact of the lukewarm reactions is also news.

Let me deal with the apparent dismissal of Spiritus Domini first.

The fact that we think of liturgical ministries as just ‘the jobs' that were shared out by servers is a litmus test of how little we have internalised the vision of the liturgy that was put forth in Sacrosanctum Concilium in 1963.

That is a vision of the whole people ministering to one another in differing ways.

We are to be ‘wholly celebrant.'

Likewise, it shows how little the vision of the Church as the holy people of God - as distinct from the officers and ‘other ranks' model in use before then - found in Lumen Gentium has actually embedded itself in the ways we behave.

I hear many people who say ‘Vatican II has gone too far'; but when I look around I notice how shallow is the realisation of Vatican II in the lives of so many Catholics.

Spiritus Domini is a concrete expression of the change from the inherited mindset to that which was / is envisaged in the Council.

We are not just consumers of a sacred product that is in the keeping of the clergy.

We are a people, a family of sisters and brothers in baptism, who have been given a variety of gifts by the Spirit of the Lord so that we might become more fully the Church.

Or, as Pope Francis put it in the document's opening words: ‘The Spirit of the Lord Jesus, the perennial source of the Church's life and mission, distributes to the members of the People of God the gifts that enable each one, in a different way, to contribute to the edification of the Church and to the proclamation of the Gospel.'

Acolyte vs. Altar Server

Now to the main question: how is an ‘acolyte' different from an ‘altar server'?

The confusion is a deep one for Latin Christians because it is founded in over 1000 years of ignoring the issue.

Once the standard form of Eucharistic celebration in the western churches became that of a priest standing alone at an altar and celebrating in Latin, a major gulf emerged between those who were ‘in attendance' - but actually had nothing to do in the liturgy as such - and the priest who said the Mass.

The priest was the one who was active, the others were passive.

The priest said the Mass, the congregation listened, watched, and prayed their own prayers.

It mattered little if there was just one person in the building or several hundred or, indeed, several thousand.

However, there had to be at least one person there!

This person - always a male and usually a boy - was needed to serve the priest.

If the priest said ‘Dominus vobiscum' - we shall pass over the irony that this is a plural: the Lord be with you, even if he said it in a building with only the server present - then someone had to answer: ‘Et cum spiritu tuo.'

Put another way: it took two to tango!

The server was there to serve the priest.

The priest needed this service and it did not matter what was happening with other people who were present.

Indeed, it was assumed that the server probably did not know what the words he uttered meant - so long as they were uttered in response, the law was fulfilled, and the priest could say his Mass.

Least we forget

The important thing was that the priest could offer Mass, and the server was only a practical requirement somewhat in the way that vestments, books, and vessels were needed for the lawful celebration.

But did not the altar servers have a duty to the community?

The simple answer is: no!

On the few occasions each year (before 1903) when communion was given to the congregation, the server held a plate under the chins of the recipients (in some places).

Indeed, since communion for anyone but the priest was an additional element to the standard form of the Mass, it would have been rare that the server even received communion at the Mass he served.

The whole task was to help the priest.

Indeed, in an emergency, the answering could be done by a woman who knelt at the altar rails (but could not go inside ‘the sanctuary' to bring up and down the cruets or wash the priest's fingers).

Acolyte serves the whole community

The rite of Vatican II assumes that the community is celebrating with the presbyter presiding: it is an act of the assembled church and now the acolyte is there to help and serve the whole community.

The acolyte is one ministry in a church of mutual service.

It is not a job but a form of service that builds up the whole people of God - and this is its dignity and why it needs to be taken seriously and needs to be instituted.

The altar server served the priest in the priest's work before God.

The acolyte serves the community in the whole community's work before God.

The world of the alter server is that of the two-tier world of cleric / lay; minister / ministered; master / servant - a one-way transaction.

The world of the acolyte is that of a community, equal in dignity, serving one another, all are ministers and ministered to - and a sharing of energy and skill rather than a transaction.

In the first case, all that was needed was a voice that could recite Latin by rote.

Today, we have one Christian serving her / his sisters and brothers in a common work which they, collectively, see as the centre and summit of their lives as Christians.

One was a task which just had to be got through so that the priest said Mass.

The other is a celebration that affirms who we are as people who serve each other in different ways.

So what is the importance of Spiritus Domini?

• We are undoing a 1000-year old clericalist liturgy.
• We are affirming the dignity of our baptism which has made us a priestly people.
• We are learning that we must all be servants of one another at the liturgy.
• We are moving from seeing actions in our worship as ‘things needing doing' to assisting we one another as disciples.
• We are embedding - after more than half a century - the vision of the Second Vatican Council.

In a nutshell

• We are not changing our rubrics, we are changing our mind-sets.
• We are not changing technical names, we are changing our theology and our practice.

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton, emeritus professor of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK) and director of the Centre of Applied Theology, UK.
• He is an organising contributor to the online conversation Flashes of Insight and his latest book is Eating Together, Becoming One: Taking Up Pope Francis's Call to Theologians.

The comments are from Thomas O'Loughlin, emeritus professor of Historical Theology at the University of Nottingham and Director of Studia Traditionis Theologiae.

"There are some things Zoom and YouTube just won't do because real experiences are whole human experiences," O'Loughlin said.

"Can you send an apple by email?" he asked.

He says he will accept doing Mass online when people give up going out to dine with others and when people dine alone at home with pre-packaged food and say it is as rich an experience as it is eating and drinking with friends.

People wanting to have Mass on their TV or computer at home and priests supplying it sounds a warning about the real nature of the community, he said.

"Eucharist makes little sense without a community."

Challenging the meeting, O'Loughlin posed the question as to whether the Church had stopped being a real community and is being reduced to religious ideology.

He sounded a warning that we may be reducing the Eucharist to just getting communion, almost makes it a commodity!

O'Loughlin said the Church has a wealth of spirituality it can call on during COVID-19 lockdown and questioned why we opted for the "summit" experience.

He says he agrees that Mass is the summit of Christian prayer but suggested perhaps the Church has forgotten the hinterland.

O'Loughlin said that the Liturgy of the Hours, shared prayer, Lectio Divina, prayer together and scripture study we just some of the examples from the Church's spiritual tradition that respects the characteristics of the liturgy and that are easily adapted to a virtual environment.

"Why did we pick on something so physical such as eating and drinking?" O'Loughlin asked.

Spiritual Communion

Questioned on whether it was appropriate to use the readings of the day and make a "spiritual communion," O'Loughlin sounded a stern warning.

He observed that spiritual communion came from the time when only priests received communion and was developed by the heretical Jansenists to a point were nuns were not seen as worthy of physically receiving communion.

Spiritual communion "is tied up with notions of unworthiness and impurity" and it is a part of a moral theology we left long ago, he said.

Flashes of Insight

O'Loughlin made the comments in an international conversation hosted by CathNews on Zoom and as part of its "Flashes of Insight" series produced in association with La-Croix International.

Host of the conversation, Dr Joseph Grayland, Director of Liturgy in the Palmerston North Diocese, New Zealand, says the idea for "Let's Talk Liturgy" came about due to the disruption to worship brought about through the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Grayland says the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted laity and clergy alike.

"For many people, the online Mass, viewed from the living room was sufficient, they didn't have to go out and it fulfilled the need for Sunday Mass."

"The priests also liked doing this because it was readily identifiable as part of their mission".

Labelling online video Mass as a form of clericalism, Grayland says there are real concerns around the passive, observer approach and the personal nature of the "priest's Mass."

Flashes of Insight - Let's Talk Liturgy is, therefore, an opportunity for people to discuss and consider the nature of liturgy in an international context.

Over 80 people from the UK, Australia, the Pacific are involved in the conversation.

The second round of conversations continued last evening and at least one more round is planned.

Watch "Can you send an apple by email".

But what would such a revisiting look like?

It raises several fundamental questions and might be far more undermining of the status quo than the few changes in the Code of Canon Law that are envisaged by those bishops who are willing to even consider the matter.

Where are we now?

Meet any group of Catholics today and within minutes someone will mention that their diocese or local area is undergoing a "re-organization".

Parishes are being combined, the ordained ministers being spread more thinly around communities and the access to gathering for Eucharistic activity being curtailed.

The process is sometimes given an elegant name derived from analogies with businesses that are "down-sizing", but this does not hide the reality that this is driven by two key factors: fewer and ageing presbyters.

Moreover, there is little prospect that this situation - even with the addition of presbyters from Africa and India - will change any time soon.

In answer to this, we need to reflect on the basics of ministry and not merely imagine that what has been the paradigm of ministry in the Roman Catholic Church since the early seventeenth-century is either set in stone or in any way ideal.

Rather than being an ideal, it was instead a pragmatic response to the Reformation. In terms of Trent's vision of "the priesthood" (a sacerdotium), it was perceived as an officer-led rebellion that was to be prevented from recurring.

Liturgical ministry

Every religion, and every Christian denomination, has religious leaders, and these take the leading roles at its rituals.

Moreover, ritual requires expertise, and the amount of expertise required is usually a direct function of the length of the group's remembered tradition.

But there is a binary model at work here: a sole minister or small ministry-group that acts, leads and preaches/speaks/teaches on one side and, opposite them, a much larger group that attends/listens/and receives ministry. We see this model in a nutshell in the statement, "the clergy administer the sacraments".

This is a valuable and widely appreciated model because it fits well beside other expert service providers in society (e.g. medics providing healthcare to the rest of the community, or accountants providing financial services).

So full-time "ministers of religion" are aligned by society, and often by themselves, with those other experts. Because society needs a "chaplaincy" service, we have a justification for the clergy and their liturgical ministry within society.

Discipleship as community service

In stark contrast to such highly structured notions of ministry or priesthoods, Jesus was not a Levite; his ministry barely engaged with the formal religious expert systems, and when those structures are recalled (e.g. Lk 10, 31-32; Jn 4, 21), they are the objects of criticism or presented as transient.

Moreover, while Jesus was presented as appointing messengers/preachers (apostles), there is no suggestion that these were thought of as ritual experts.

Leaders emerged in the various early Churches with a variety of names. For example, there were "elders" (presbuteroi) or "overseer-servants" (episkopoikaidiakonoi), originally a double name for a single person that, later on, would divide into two ranks - "bishop" and "deacon".

But it took generations (until the later second-century - in contradiction of older textbooks we know now that Ignatius of Antioch wrote after AD 160 at the earliest) for those patterns to be harmonized between communities and then systematized into authority structures.

There is no suggestion in the first-century documents that leadership at the two key community events, baptism and Eucharist, was restricted in any way or the preserve of those who were community leaders, much less a specially authorized group.

The link between (a) leadership of the community and (b) presidency at the Eucharistic meal (a linkage that would drive much later thinking on ministry and even today is a major source of Christian division) would not be forged until the third-century. And only later again would "the history of its institution" by Jesus be constructed.

The Church within society

It has long been an illusion of the various Christian denominations that a study of history - particularly the first couple of centuries and the texts from those times that they held to belong to the New Testament canon - could provide either a blueprint for ministry (e.g. "the three-fold structure of order": bishop, presbyter, deacon) or a conclusive answer to issues relating to ministry that have arisen in later situations (such as, at the time of the Reformation, what "power" can be seen to come from Christ to the priest, or whether a woman can preside at the Eucharist today).

This is an illusory quest, for it falls victim to the anachronism inherent in all appeals to a perfect original moment, a much-imagined period in the past when all was revealed (at least in nuce).

It also assumes that ministry, as it later developed, was not itself the outcome of multiple, often conflicting, forces in particular societies, as well as adaptations by Christians to well-known inherited religious structures.

So, for example, the clerical system, within which was/is located liturgical ministry, for much of Christian history-related originally to the political needs of the Church as a public body within the Roman Empire.

Given that there was no "original" plan for liturgical ministry in the Church and, as a result of centuries of disputes, there are many conflicting views about what constitutes someone within ministry, so it is quite impossible—except within the mythic spaces of particular denominations—to produce a systematic basis for liturgical ministry.

However, given that ministry occurs and is needed, one can set out some criteria that can help individuals and communities to develop a pragmatic theology of liturgical ministry.

Criteria for ministry

Firstly, every specific ministry is a particular variation of the ministry of all the baptized, and in baptism there is a radical equality. "There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor free; there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal 3, 28).

This radical equality is a characteristic of the new creation brought about in Christ.

Therefore, any subsequent distinctions, such that particular ministries are not potentially open to every baptized person, are tantamount to a defective theology of baptism by which all ministry is brought into being.

So, making further demands for "signs" of particular divine election (e.g. being able to speak in tongues or handle snakes) as indications of suitability for ministry flies in the face of the incarnational dispensation seen in baptism.

Likewise, regulations that restrict ministry to particular states of life (e.g. demanding celibacy as a condition for the presbyterate) have to be seen as an undue concern with the status of certain ministries.

They imply that baptism is merely some basic entry requirement for Christianity rather than that which creates the new person who can minister, and in that new creation no such distinctions exist.

Similarly, the notion that women, as such, can be excluded from ministry on the basis of some pragmatic historical appeal (e.g. "Jesus did not ordain women!" — assuming such a pre-critical view of "history" has any value), fails to take account of the fundamental role of baptism in all Christian existence and action.

And secondly, we must also respect the awareness that all action and ministry by Christians is Christ-ian in nature.

Christians form a people, a priestly people. We all too often, and too easily, lose sight of the fact that Christians must think of their liturgy in a way that is radically opposed to that commonly found in other religions of a "religious service" due to God or the gods.

In that paradigm, the divine is the opposite of the world in which we live and to which something is owed, presented or transferred, and this constitutes a mode of contact with the divine realm, which might constitute a debt of loyalty/praise/petition or appeasement.

Making this connection, whether by an individual or a group, assumes a technical knowledge and some sacred skill—usually the work of a special priesthood—such that the divine recognizes that the action performed is the appropriate sacred deed.

Christians, contrariwise, conceive their worship on the basis that their priest has come to them and is with them as a community.

Therefore, where two or three are gathered in the name of Jesus, he is with them (Mt 18:20), and so their actions together—such as celebrating a meal—take place in presence of the Father, because Christ, present among them, is always their High Priest.

This theological vision has important implications for individual Christians who find themselves performing specific acts, ministries, within the Church.

Within Christianity, the ministry is that of the whole community.

Language and priestly ministry

It is also worth remembering that language plays us false in understanding "priestly ministry" in particular.

The Old Testament cohen(which we render by the word "priest") performed special tasks on behalf of the rest of Israel (see Leviticus and Numbers).

This was rendered in the Septuagint by the word hiereus- a word commonly used for pagan temple officials - and then, later, into Latin by sacerdos, which was a generic word covering all the various special temple "priesthoods" such as flamenes and pontifices.

The early Christians did not use these words for their leaders: hiereus/sacerdos belonged to Jesus alone in the heavenly temple. Christian leaders were designated by their relationship to the community: as the ones who oversaw, led or served it.

Later, the hiereus/sacerdos language was absorbed and became the basis of Christians' perceptions of their presbyters. So our word "priest" is etymologically from the word "presbyter", but conceptually it relates to the sacerdotal functions.

Once this had occurred they had to ask what made them different and what special religious quality they had others did not possess.

The answer came with the notion of a power "to consecrate", and then this power (itself the subject of rhetorical inflation) became the basis of "ontological difference" between them and "ordinary Christians" whose ministry is to "pray, pay and obey".

After more than a millennium and a half of these confusions in Christianity, in both the East and West, it is very hard for many who see themselves as "ministers" in a Church—especially those with elaborate sacerdotal liturgies—to break free of this baggage.

Tradition can be like a great oil tanker turning at sea: it takes a long time to overcome inertia and for the ship to answer the helm!

Where do we start?

In every community, there are those who have the skills that have brought that group together and given it an identity. The task is to recognize these actual ministers and to facilitate them to make that ministry more effective and fruitful.

Some will have the gifts of evangelizing and welcoming; others the skills of leading in prayer and the offering of the thanksgiving sacrifice of praise; others the gifts of teaching; others of reconciling; others for the mission of each community to the building up of the kingdom of justice and peace; and some will have management skills. None is greater and none is less!

In every discussion of ministry we need to have the advice of Paul to the Church in Corinth around 58 CE echoing in our heads as he presents ministry as the working out of the presence of the Spirit in the assembly:

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.

To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another, the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another, gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another, various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.

All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.

For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit (1 Cor 12, 4-13).

If these statements were to reverberate through our discussions today we might need to talk less about "closing churches" and "combining parishes" and could then move on to the more fruitful task of discovering the wealth of vocations that are all around us.

But there is only one [merely logical] certainty: the future will not be like the past. And when the present seeks to recede into its past, it is untrue to its own moment.

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest award-winning book is Eating Together, Becoming One: Taking Up Pope Francis's Call to Theologians (Liturgical Press, 2019).
• A fuller exploration of the theme of this article can be found in "Facing a Liturgy-Starved Church: Do We Need to Rethink the Basics of Ministry?" (New Blackfriars 100 (2019) pp. 171-83).

No one had seen churches locked before, few had ever thought of "streamed" liturgies and, across the world, there have been liturgical experiments that were unthinkable just weeks ago.

Now the churches are opening up - slowly - but the legacy of the virus experience may be much longer lived.

We will have an immediate sense of "getting back to normal", but we should not be fooled: things will not be the same.

More importantly, many slow social processes of change have been accelerated and this must prompt us to ask some basic - and awkward - questions.

Who is responsible for what and to whom?

In every situation of social responsibility - and the duty of presiding at the liturgy is one such - a key question to be asked is who is responsible for what and to whom.

While any answer is never clear-cut or wholly defined, in a successful group activity there is normally considerable agreement among all parties about the various regions and directions of responsibility. On the other hand, when this question cannot be answered, chaos follows.

While in those areas where there are major divergences between the various individuals or groups each with a stake in a situation, the result is stress, poor cohesion, and often strife between parties.

This sort of problem seems so much the stuff of industrial relations that it is not usually discussed in works on liturgy or in liturgy training. The result is that many priests are bewildered by what is demanded of them by their congregations.

Furthermore, many are aware that somehow the whole situation where questions of responsibility are raised seems "wrong". While from the congregation's side there are very often feelings of deep dissatisfaction with the performance of their priests.

Indeed, there seems to be a profound crisis in Catholic liturgy. We have well-documented statistics for steadily falling numbers at our celebrations - and this trend may be accelerated by the virus.

Such an obvious "sign" that things are not working is demoralizing.

And added to this are

1. the tensions of closing churches in the developed world;
2. the increased strains for the clergy of getting to more places over Saturday/Sunday; and
3. congregations ever more ready to criticize a priest's perceived poor performance.

This has been happening slowly for decades, but "streaming" has massively contributed to people seeing themselves as consumers of a liturgical product. The effect is that already tired and stressed men become more disheartened and disempowered by being unable to respond creatively.

However, this aspect of ministry receives almost no attention at meetings of clergy among themselves, at diocesan level meetings, or in the literature.

My purpose is to draw attention to the problem to stimulate discussion among clergy themselves, and then between them and their congregations when they meet to discuss parish matters.

A rough comparison

Let us try to see where we are now by noting where we have come from. While we are now 50 years since the arrival of the reformed Roman Rite and more than 50 years since local languages were introduced, many priests active today were formed in the mindset of the pre-conciliar liturgy.

The attitudes and culture of that liturgy did not disappear overnight on the First Sunday of Advent in 1969. Some are only now changing as generations have grown up, and have come with their children to Mass, for whom the pre-conciliar rite is "history".

So, while new attitudes are increasingly found among the key groups for handing on faith within a community, many priests are still having to change attitudes often formed before they entered a seminary.

The recent reversion to the justification of the "private Mas"' and the justifications used by many episcopal conferences, straight out of Tridentine-era manuals, are evidence of how the older culture survives beneath the reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65).

Compare two groups in 1960: a Catholic parish and Congregationalist church.

The Catholics expected that the priest alone was responsible for liturgy above the factual needs.

He

1. provided public Mass at pre-announced times in sufficient number - in accord with his legal abilities to binate - for parishioners "to fulfill their duties" on Sundays;
2. provided an opportunity for any Catholic who might wish to receive Communion; and
3. preached on specified days.

Parish priests had the additional personal duty of offering the Missa pro populo.

While many priests may have seen themselves as having other obligations, those tasks were supererogatory. The minimum standard was clearly defined and known.

For their part the Catholic congregation had the duty - clearly spelled out - to "hear Mass" on Sundays and other appointed days, as well to fulfill the Easter Duty.

Hearing Mass was further defined as to duration and minimal presence. Everything above that minimum was voluntary, and unnecessary.

The priest's major responsibilities were not to the congregation as they were for virtually every Mass (i.e. Low Mass), an optional extra to the actual celebration, but to the law (on major issues), the rubrics (on performance issues) and to God (in terms of his own fitness to celebrate).

Should any of these fail, there was a fall back position of "valid, but illicit" celebration, which could still ensure that "the job was done" (opus operandum operatum), all clearly defined in the Missal.

This concern with the ritual was an individual responsibility to an abstraction - the whole corpus of ritual law. While this sometimes caused stress to priests suffering from scrupulosity, there were no ritual police ensuring ritual details were being observed.

Many priests learning that the rubrics would not permit this or that, simply put the law to the test by saying, "Watch me". When the heavens did not fall, they knew that every law - unless backed up by physical force - has only that binding force that people accord to it.

So, the priest had two wholly distinct sets of responsibilities. In terms of quantity, responsibility to people was minimal, while responsibility to the law was maximal. Both were clearly separate, and in each case, were well defined.

Moreover, everyone knew these boundaries. Hence, priests were interchangeable at a moment's notice, at least, in terms of saying Mass.

For example, an English parish might not have liked having an Irishman as their "PP", but that did not affect the actual celebration of Mass.

While a visiting French priest who wanted to "say Mass" was just slipped in to celebrate a public Mass without further ado if that allowed the local priest to avoid bination and to get his breakfast sooner!

The Congregationalist church situation could not be more dissimilar. The group would have seen itself as being there by choice and personal decision, not out of obligation to law. It was their assembly; they collectively were responsible for the service; and would have shunned the idea of being part of a ritual.

The minister was one of them, although acknowledging his/her skills due to training. There was no automatic right to preside due to a status independent of the congregation.

The congregation, indeed, was the minister's employer. They had interviewed him/her and checked to see if they liked the style.

The prospective minister would have been initially invited to come and preach - the process called "preaching with a view" - because preaching was seen as the minister's personal bit in any service, and preaching performance was a key indicator of suitability. The rest was a free form made up and changed to suit the congregation.

While this might often have been decided upon by the minister, it was clear that the congregation's wishes were paramount.

Moreover, there were mechanisms to hold a minister to account, and, if necessary, dismiss him/her. S/he was "minister to them", i.e. the servant of the congregation and only for so long as they wanted and on their terms.

Despite the differences with the Catholic parish, there was an equal, and probably more explicit, awareness of liturgical responsibility. The congregation was responsible collectively for their worship, "their" minister facilitated this.

There might be an awareness of maintaining patterns of worship with the larger denomination, but that was little more than an awareness that certain practices were "too Romish" to be considered. The minister was wholly responsible for his (and, by 1960, her) particular part in the liturgy to the group.

Personal responsibility before God was a wholly private affair, and the key tasks upon which the minister had to perform were to communicate through the sermon, to co-ordinate the various groups through negotiation and, to an extent, have a winning style that neither frightened the horses nor bored too many too often.

The parallel situation of the visiting French priest would have seen a pastor from Zürich simply sitting as a visiting member of the congregation.

There would be no need for any special consideration for him/her, and any idea of leading the service ratione personae would have been absurd.

Many priests today are stressed by being caught between these extremes: pulled in both directions with insufficient training, and often being unable to articulate this problem that has crept up upon them.

Obeying the rubrics!

There is still the tension with regard to obedience to the general law and the rubrics. The liturgy is not a free form; it must be in accord with the permitted limits of adaptation.

Rome has repeatedly pointed out the rights of people to have "the authentic liturgy". It has criticized "abuses", and has encouraged local ordinaries to police the celebrations in their charge.

In effect, any departure from the rubrics, no matter how worthily demanded by a situation, can be considered an abuse.

However, there are three other complexities, unknown when the rites were in Latin and when, the odd lay expert apart, they could not be followed by the congregation.

The first is the rising phenomenon of unpaid and self-appointed liturgical informants - sometimes jokingly referred to as "the temple police". The priest has broken the rubrics; therefore, he should be reported.

Every community seems to have one or two of these and they are functionally similar to biblical fundamentalists: the liturgy is given, frozen by text, it is approached by rejecting modern scholarship, and the one always approaches those who work with it on the suspicious assumption that they are "not sound".

Fundamentalism is a fact in all forms of modern Christianity and is especially virulent in the Anglophone world. It is often reduced to its most plentiful form (biblical fundamentalism) but it is, in fact, far more diffuse.

Among Catholics one of its forms is liturgical fundamentalism: "Father has been given a book, he should stick to it."

The simple answer is that the liturgy is worship, not a book; and that the books are only elaborate aids to the memory.

But because Catholicism has patrolled the liturgy since 1570 through insistence on printed uniformity, this reply excites the fundamentalists' worst fears that the "old time religion" is being sold out!

Second, often priests, when "following the book", find their actions are rejected by parts of their congregations as if he were acting on a personal whim.

Recently, a zealous bishop took the position that only men should "normally" be asked to be "special Eucharistic ministers". He saw this as reflecting the fact that the priest had to be male and imagined that a woman performing this role might contribute to "gender theory".

Leaving aside the factors that led to this dubious position, let us simply note that experience shows that this was not a good idea in regions where Catholic women assume their equality with men in the congregation.

A priest following the zealous bishop's instruction is then torn between his duty to his ordinary and pastoral common sense. Some priests just proclaim loudly: "Blame the bishop!" Others, unwilling to "pass the buck", are blamed personally for not being "willing to listen". Others are just bewildered that people are annoyed.

These tensions derive from an adherence to responsibility to the law whose boundaries within the groups it affects are unclear.

Third, the focus of most training is still competence to perform the liturgy as a given. It is not as a set of skills on how to preside at the liturgy, an activity that assumes there is more free form in the liturgy than is commonly seen.

So, every departure from the training creates a tension over loyalty, as well as uncertainty about what is best.

However, given the richness of our liturgy, seminaries must concentrate on technical mastery in training.

What the liturgy demands!

There is the tension that results for many priests through a sense of responsibility to "ideal ritual form".

The restored liturgy of Vatican II presented an ideal of Eucharistic liturgy more excellent than anything seen before. This was because of more than a century of scholarship and well-resourced piety going back to the time of Prosper Guéranger OSB (d. 1875).

The result has been that many priests have worked to renew the liturgy in their communities. Often there is incomprehension, disinterest and, at worse, open opposition - and this too is a factor in stress and low morale.

Here is a case of someone recognizing their basic responsibility as liturgical leader and teacher, but where there is often a rejection of responsibility by others in the community; primarily by those who perform functions in the liturgy such as sacristans and musicians, but this refusal to take responsibility as a genuine participant in a participation-based liturgy is a major failing among Catholic laity today.

The resulting dissonance of expectations between the liturgy's president and the other participants often makes a shamble of the whole liturgy.

Whose celebration is it anyway?

There are the stresses that result over unclear boundaries between the role of the priest and that of the congregation.

In the pre-1969 liturgy a priest had few matters on which he needed to consult anyone in the community about the Eucharistic liturgy. Now he is expected to be listening to the needs of the community and responding to their needs as a basic element of his functioning.

The priest in a vernacular liturgy must also be a skilled communicator. He stands judged by the congregation on this point against a benchmark of professional communicators. A priest who "bores me" or, even worse, "bores my children" is, in the eyes of many, fit only for the clerical scrapheap.

That the Eucharist cannot be celebrated without him is seen as secondary. Many think that if he cannot communicate and meet "my needs" then either he or I must go.

The key responsibility here is seen to be in meeting the needs of those who see themselves in a quasi-employer role. The priest is expected to be the listener.

With this goes the further stress of coordinating the various liturgical interest groups, and arbitrating between them. Often in these processes no one is clear to whom they have responsibility except to their own role.

That they might all have responsibility to the community - or the effective worship of the community or "the Church's liturgy" or the virtue of religion - is not part of their decision frame.

In such situations, because the priest is one individual and the focus of the listening and coordinating process, he is in a lose-lose situation.

It is little wonder, therefore, that many priests have given up on the agenda of the renewed liturgy; which, in turn, exacerbates the fundamental problem of people seeing the liturgy as irrelevant.

Finally, we must not see this new line of responsibility for "performance" to the congregation as a transient pathology.

Within a vernacular and participative liturgy, as Vatican II recognized the Eucharistic liturgy should be, this line of responsibility of the president to the assembly is at least as important as his, or the group's responsibility to the demands of the liturgy as expressed in our liturgical books.

Discussion

The effects of changes that began more than 50 years ago are only now being felt. Celebrating liturgy is now more demanding that ever.

It is informative to look back over the pre-1960s manuals on how to say Mass. They saw it as an individual's action needing technical skill and practice, but the tasks are clear and the lines of responsibility crisp.

Today the skill-set needed is far more diverse, but often under-acknowledged. That there are new attitudes towards, and new lines of responsibility within, liturgy is something we tend to ignore, but should be discussing openly and widely.Moreover, since presidency at the Eucharist is something that is very closely linked with the whole notion of the identity of the ordained priest, that discussion will have ramifications well beyond the liturgical sphere.

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is
  Eating Together, Becoming One Taking Up Pope Francis's Call to Theologians (Liturgical Press, 2019).

Another said, "The first week I stood when I should, the second week I felt comfortable knitting and in the third week I live-paused Mass and went and made a cup of coffee".

COVID-19 impacted just about every aspect of our living from feeding ourselves, going to the doctor, meeting with friends, work, student education and how we interact with services and businesses.

And as Catholics, it impacted our faith lives.

COVID-19 has filled many people full of the fear of infection and leaving some Catholics preferring the virtual to the real.

Unable to physically gather as communities, Catholics in New Zealand gathered "virtually" to foster their faith.

The suggestion has been repeated that the Church must change and the post-pandemic Catholic Church will be very different from the one that went into this global health crisis.

CathNews NZ along with La Croix International engaged with three liturgists from around the world, from secular and religious cultures.

• Dr Carmel Pilcher lives in Suva, Fiji and teaches at the seminary.
• Dr Joe Grayland is dean and parish priest of the cathedral in Palmerston North.
• Professor Thomas O'Loughlin is professor of historical theology at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom.

They began by answering the question: so what's the problem with a virtual Mass anyway?

But after some discussion, a solidly based argument (not based on dubious notions of ritual purity) is presented: how could these married men learn all that a presbyter needs to know in a short time?

Then it is decided that, no, the problem is too big to be overcome and so it is best to shelve that whole idea. TINA rules - There Is No Alternative to the status quo!

Even those bishops who are prepared to grant that it would be pastorally beneficial to change the Latin Church's discipline of mandatory celibacy and ordain "up-right married men" (viri probati), seem stunned into silence by "the insuperable problem" of training such men.

Ordaining viri probati might solve a practical shortage, but could they be trained?

The Catholic priest, so the argument goes, is a highly trained professional - and well-matched to the laity's needs. So, first of all, how could one get the equivalent without taking the vir probatus away from his family and work for six or seven years of training in a seminary?

Secondly, it is argued that prior to the Tridentine seminary we had a poorly educated clergy and this led to abuses, and, eventually, the Reformation. So, by contrast, a long "formation" ensures avoiding abuses, ecclesial contentment and orthodoxy.

And, thirdly, the re-emergence of permanent deacons has often been unsuccessful, and this is usually seen as resulting from poor training: presbyters would pose even greater problems.

Reality Check

One assumption in these arguments is that the 6-7 year seminary model is not only fit for purpose, but is a measure for all other ministerial training.

Does our experience bear this out?

First, the fact that dioceses struggle to provide on-going formation to priests is an admission that the seminary is not the be-all-and-end-all. There is also a growing awareness that the demands of preaching and presiding call for skills never imagined in a world of "getting Mass" and "Father knows best".

Any group of Catholics will bear this out: the role of preacher/teacher is seen as one where many clergy fail. Coupled with this is the demand to provide ministry in complex situations that cannot be foreseen in seminary: thus, learning new skills is an on-going and necessary process.

Second, in any practical situation the amount of training that can be given before actual engagement is very limited. You only know what you need to know after you are on the job.

Seminaries seek to address this with pastoral experiences, but many priests only find out that they should have studied more Old Testament, for instance, when it comes home to them that people hear these readings, ask questions, and they have not "bothered" with what then seemed irrelevant.

This is exacerbated when seminarians are mainly ordination-focused and view their training (particularly the "academic" part) merely as the obstacle course prior to the bishop laying his hands on their heads. As I have often heard: "When you have a stole on you, none of this will matter!"

Thirdly, while there has been some re-thinking about seminaries since the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), the traditional length of training was determined simply by the need to keep young men in college until ordination age.

While the years of "philosophy" used to be seen as offering a broad intellectual training (it included natural philosophy: i.e. science), they now focus on philosophy as an adjunct to theology.

The seminary, moreover, emerged within the Renaissance model of the mind as an empty vessel to be filled: control the inputs, and one might produce the perfect actor. It is an idea seen in the very name seminarium (L. seed plot). But reality, as we continue to learn painfully, is a little more complex than that!

Lastly, given that entry to a seminary involves willingness to become a celibate presbyter, there is a limited pool of candidates.

If they would take on "the demands of the priesthood", then intellectual curiosity, the ability to learn and willingness to engage in professional training often took second place.

Seminaries are not ideal. They are just one solution, in one situation. And they produce very mixed results.

An educated clergy

Seminaries are excellent for forming a group with a clear corporate sense and esprit de corps: a clergy.

It has often been noted that while universities speak of "education" (focusing on developing the individual's talent), seminaries - along with military academies - speak of "formation": learning to think with the group, act together and become familiar with the group's standard procedures and goals.

There is a direct link between seminaries and clericalism - and, as such, we have been badly served by the current system. Indeed, seminaries allow students to imagine that serving the group to which they belong - the clergy - is equivalent to serving the Church.

Faced with constant references to "seminary experience" or "deep formation" that one hears as objections to the viri probati solution, one wonders if there is not some deep-seated fear that such non-seminary training might undermine the "club experience" of the clerical world.

There is often a refusal to admit that the much-vaunted seminary system has left so many clergy poorly formed and professionally under-skilled. One wonders if it is a smokescreen from a deeper, perhaps unconscious, attachment to 'the corps' that pushes the notion of the minister (one who is there to serve his sisters and brothers) into the background.

Experiential learning

One of the quiet educational revolutions of the past fifty years has been our growing understanding of how adults learn: andragogy as distinct from pedagogy.

With this has come a range of teaching techniques that are appropriate for those who have learned how to learn, who learn within the context of their lives and learn because they know why they want to learn.

To engage in a learning experience with adults, aged 30 and over, is very different from lecturing young people whose brains (up to roughly age 25) are still developing and for whom "life" is still a future adventure. The volunteer adult learner knows how he or she learns, owns the learning and is aware that learning does not stop when the course is completed.

Because teaching adults is a distinct activity, we have evolved the knowhow to do this without long periods of institutional residence. Just observe the success of variations of the Open University around the world. Adults may not absorb "formation", but that may result simply in being less recognizable as clergy rather than deficient as ministers.

"I am among you as one who serves" (Lk 22, 27). This needs to be our guide, rather than the idea of the sacerdotal professional who possesses sacral powers.

If an aspect of the probatio of these married men is that they have learned to learn, and know that learning is a life-long challenge, then the biggest hurdle in their training is already overcome. Such men may be less docile as clerics within Church structures but may be more flexible as focal points among the People of God as we make our pilgrim way to unknown futures.

We do not know if the Catholic Church will finally grasp this problem. In the aftermath of this coronavirus crisis, many new pastoral strategies will have to be explored.

But we do know that following the Amazon Synod there was a retreat from the obvious - that is, opting for viri probati.

However, we already have the knowhow to skill such men for service.

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Eating Together, Becoming One: Taking Up Pope Francis's Call to Theologians (Liturgical Press, 2019).

Clergy are streaming live coverage of themselves celebrating the Eucharist and inviting others to join in by watching.

As lockdown eases in some places, the latest desire is to have a system - similar to that used for social distancing in shops - so that people can "receive Communion".

One group of clergy have gone so far as to issue rubrics on when the presider is to wear or not wear a face mask!

Meanwhile, many Catholics have expressed their sadness, now bordering on anger in some cases, that they cannot participate in liturgy.

Except that is not what they are saying: the form of their complaint is that if the church is closed they cannot have access to adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.

If they can only have streamed Mass, they cannot receive Holy Communion - and they want this because it is receiving the actual body of the Lord.

And, from their point of view, they are glad that there are many presbyters, and even a few bishops, who are supporting their demands to the civil authorities: they want the right to be able to go into their churches and do what they want.

They want churches in which to pray, so this demand should be fulfilled.

It seems no more standard Catholic practice. What could be more basic that "hearing Mass" and "receiving Communion"?

It also seems to be a matter of civil rights. They see themselves as being deprived, indeed oppressed. Is not freedom of worship mentioned in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?

What's not to like?

Other Catholics, clerical and lay, are less bothered by not be able to be physically present at the liturgy.

After all, one can hear all the words, listen to the readings, hear the sermon, hear the priest saying the Eucharistic Prayer and see what he does (sometimes even more clearly than in the church)… So what's not to like?

It is true that one cannot receive actual communion, but there is "spiritual communion" that provides one with grace even if the wafer is not eaten. Isn't the end result the same?

Some say they listen more carefully sitting in their own living rooms than when they're in the distracting building. In privacy in front of the computer or TV, one can be quiet, private and prayerful. Did not Jesus recommend as much?

You see, you hear and you learn, all that is to be learned!

"The worship mall"

Moreover, most Catholics - though they do not admit it in the way members of other Christian denominations do - have the attitude that American liturgist Bryan Spinks calls "the worship mall": you pick the kind of worship you like.

I hear of people "shopping around" - note the phrase - "on the web" for the Mass they like best. One person I know goes on a web search every morning and samples "streamed Masses" until she finds one she fancies, and it adds spice to life to find another the next day.

Some have found "very good Masses" that just suit them. There is a priest in Ireland who has long had a local reputation for a "quick Mass" and for one-liner sermons on Sundays.

Barely 11 minutes most days and he makes a point of no Old Testament readings! If you like your religion fast and without frills, now that there's web access, he's your man!

Many people have become very discerning liturgical customers. Before the lockdown, when they were going to the nearby church, they never realized one could have so many tailored variations!

The web is an individualist's utopia!

Catholics of the same place or parish now have a choice. Each can go to his or her own space, even simultaneously, choosing the streamed Mass each one wants.

No need to argue here about whether or not there should be badly sung Latin chant or drippy 1970s folk hymns! There is an armistice in the liturgical culture war.

Chacun à son goût. Or, perhaps, de gustibus non disputandum est. Your choice!

New rituals

When one says in a secular context that human beings construct their universe through shared rituals, many sneer and think that is just a theologian trying to smuggle religion back into the public space.

Yes, people used to have rituals, but that was in an older world of pomp and circumstance, now we just "cut to the chase"!

But the virus has seen rituals re-emerge within lockdown. Here in Britain most of us go outside every Thursday at 8 pm and clap our hands as an expression of thanks to our medical workers - I hope for those in care homes also - who are on the front line in coping with the virus.

It seemed to me a bit corny when I heard of it happening in Spanish cities - but now it has spread, literally, to my front door.

The TV channels announce that the common moment is approaching and cover it with scenes from around the country, firemen in one place, a street scene somewhere else, and outside my neighbours have improvised drums from saucepans and wooden spoons.

We are together - but correctly distanced - and we are acting spontaneously, expressing thanks and interdependence. We are being joyful in a vale of tears and expressing that we are a community, not just loners.

It is an attempt - as we say - "to give something back".

Ritual is conveying that which we could not otherwise convey. It is expressing our situation and we are going out of ourselves to be a thankful community.

There are umpteen little rituals like this that are emerging.

Just take the farewell: "stay safe!" It is a cross between the Gaelic word for "goodbye" which is slán leat(literally: may health be with you') and the Latin vale (may things go well for you).

It expresses not just "that's over" (as in "bye bye now"), but says that I am concerned for you in this time and I not only hope you will be well, but want us both to do all that we need to do to maintain that state.

It is a social pleasantry, a wish, but also an instruction about action. It is a ritual boundary marker more similar to the old "Let us move forward in peace" (Procedamus in pace) than to the banal "Cheerio! See ye!" we would have used several weeks ago.

Transactions

We live in a world of transactions. I do something for you; and you, in return, do something for me. It is the very nature of all commerce. I have something you want, and vice versa, so we exchange to suit our needs and desires.

We should not criticize this process. This is what has built our world. It creates links and fosters peaceful co-operation.

It can, of course, get out of hand when someone corners the market and abuses fair-trading.

People cashing in on the sale of Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) or using medical kit as political leverage during this crisis are examples of the transactional nature of human life running amok. But we try to spot robber barons and control them.

However, the transactional nature of our lives - which is the rationale underpinning every shop and every wage packet - can get out of kilter in other ways.

An obvious one is consumerism: I am only alive to the extent that I consume. I am what I buy.

Now the ability to trade becomes an obsession. I reduce everything to its ability to satisfy my needs and "devil take the hindmost" so long as my wants, desires, "needs" (i.e. not what I need such as food, shelter, relationships but "what I really, really want") are satisfied.

I am the center of the world; it flows into me and is only recognized insofar as it suits me. And so long as you have the money flowing in the opposite direction, there are many out there who want to confirm you in your consumerism (for exorbitant prices, of course).

One giant "free meal"

But there is another danger of transactionalism that can only be understood by those who belong to the great monotheistic faiths (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) and believe that the Creator freely chooses to create and so the whole universe is a divine gift.

It is one giant "free meal" that contradicts the transactional wisdom of "there's no such thing as a free lunch"!

Knowing this - that God is generosity and love - we discover two recurring human errors.

The first is that we think that transactions are all that there is in the universe - this is the theory of the selfish gene. We seek to explain everything in terms of exchanging needs/assets.

For example, love is just an illusion that dresses up a trade-off in romantic terms. No human being is capable of pure "gift love" - to use a beautiful term coined by C.S. Lewis - because only God is without needs.

We humans also know that there is a profound difference between genuine human love and someone who only performing a job.

One has just to look at that kind of love that makes someone who is poorly paid go on caring right now in a care home - and one sees that love is more than trading.

Extracting what I want

But there is a second error we continually fall into as monotheists. We imagine the relationship with God in terms of transactions.

This was fine in the polytheism of the Roman Empire where it was summed up in three words: do ut des. We could render it thusly: "I give to you, some god or other praise and sacrifice so that you give me what I want."

Sadly, the attitude was carried on into Christianity. The result was to "get Masses said" for particular needs and to make vows in order to obtain something!

Transactionalism not only perverts the Christian vision of the God of infinite generosity - love itself - into a stingy Supreme Overlord from whom we try to extract favours, it destroys our relationship with God.

It is no longer love and praise, in union with the whole people to whom I belong. Rather, it is extracting what I want. And, as befits a transaction, I want the best value going. I want the most for the least cost.

The current crisis has brought us, on the one hand, a very genuine liturgy of a community celebrating thankfulness together. One could say that we are being Eucharistic towards health workers.

But, on the other hand, it has brought us a lot of transactionalism: "I want to receive communion"; "I want my time before a tabernacle"; or "I want my kind of liturgy."

Two visions: consumers or celebrants?

We see the ritual of liturgy being streamed and we see the ritual on our doorsteps: which is more in line with, and more prophetic of our vision of the universe?

The coronavirus crisis has brought before us many who think liturgy is a matter of what the rubrics allow or what is "permissible". It has also brought out many people imagining that liturgy is something you get, or which clerics provide.

Perhaps this was inevitable. We have a long history of treating God as "the man upstairs" whose favour we try to corner, or as the policeman who checks off that we have done what he told us to do.

Moreover, much of our popular piety, inherited from a time when the piety of ordinary people rarely touched the official liturgy of the clerics, is deeply transactional and individualistic - and the crisis has made this visible.

And, of course, we know what we like. And we often demand what we like without asking any deeper questions.

But think about that woman who told me - just last Sunday - that she liked "shopping around for Mass". I suspect it reveals a deeper theological confusion than when she surfs between Amazon and Book Depository to see which has the best deal on a book!

In liturgy we are not consumers, but celebrants. Yes: each of us is a celebrant and not just the cleric who is leading the gathering.

It is we - as a people, not just a bunch of individuals - who are celebrating God's love.

Think again of the Thursday night ritual. We are all celebrating, we are all celebrants. We are certainly not out there, with our saucepans and wooden spoons, as consumers.

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Eating Together, Becoming One: Taking Up Pope Francis's Call to Theologians (Liturgical Press, 2019).

Even in a pandemic, religions see a world where "the facts are friendly".

Christians, along with Jews and Muslims, see the Creator as infinitely - and quite literally so - greater than the creation. The whole creation, even the virus, is the Creator's handiwork.

Christians often think that the phrase creatio ex nihilo is just a tag to annoy young theologians. But, in fact, it's awkward shorthand for creation's complete dependence on the Creator who is always greater.

This means that the Abrahamic faiths do not wallow in nostalgic longing to return to a golden age when all was lovely. The world that we all pray for in variants of "thy kingdom come" is yet to be!

We Christians see the Christ's victory over death as a further basis for a life of hope. So no matter how bad the situation, the eyes of faith can see the upside, some benefit and some lessons being learned. And we know it is worth soldiering on!

The present crisis is no exception. In many places parish clergy - now streaming an image of themselves as they celebrate the Eucharist - note that more people tune in to watch a celebration than turn up to actually celebrate on a normal Sunday.

They immediately reach for St Augustine's "our hearts are restless until they rest in you" and see the pandemic as a call back to faith.

Hurray! It will be all OK! Soon there will be full churches and the virus will have taught everyone a lesson!

Now let's step back a moment.

First of all, there are more people virtually there than probably there have been in living memory.

Good.

And it is good that the People of God are bringing joy and hope into the lives of those around us - this is a basic part of our mission as Christians being the means by which we bring comfort to those who mourn and are afflicted (see Mt 5:4 for example).

But - reality check time - in every moment of shock there is a run to religion. We all know the stock phrase: "there are no atheists in foxholes!'"

However, experience tells us that this wears off rather quickly.

While a shock out of complacency can awaken a new vision of reality, it can also produce a vision of a god who trades on fear - and that vision has little to do with the God who is the loving Father of Jesus.

"Mission by fear" - and every Christian denomination has used it at times - betrays the very nature of the God we preach.

In a crisis we all do strange things. And people turn just as quickly to superstition, magic, conspiracy theories and pseudo-medicine from the internet, as much as they turn to faith.

This virus is not going to be a substitute for the hard, slow work of evangelization and education.

"But people are so receptive to our message!"

It is worth reflecting that for everyone for whom a discovery of faith or a return to faith is a silver lining of this crisis, there is another for whom it is piece of evidence that the universe is just a random string of events.

That a medical worker dies while seeking to treat another suffering human is simply too much suffering for someone to reconcile with a loving God!

This reaction may not do justice to our classic theology. We do not know what we mean by "g - o - d", but we have preached so much pious piffle and encouraged so much of a trading mentality with the divine that we preachers should just put our hands up and admit that we are responsible for a great deal of these silly ideas.

But people want Mass!

One more specific claim that can be heard widely is that people are "consoled" by "having the Mass streamed". This is curious, because in many parishes Mass is the only service that has been streamed.

But those who have set up prayer groups on Zoom or who celebrate the Liturgy of the Hours have noticed that, given that people have time at the moment, this has been a new discovery of a part of the Church's life that was unknown to them.

But can one really stream a Mass?

One can stream an image of a celebration, but the core of this particular kind of gathering is doing as Jesus asked us: taking a loaf and a cup, blessing God, breaking and sharing, passing and drinking. One cannot celebrate by watching: it takes more than that!

Moreover, it is not just "the priest" and "the congregation". All, whatever their role in the Church, are the gathering, the congregation. And all are guests at the table. On can no more share this table event on a screen that one can go to a restaurant on screen.

But surely Catholics have a long tradition of "going to Mass" but not communion? Indeed, in many cultures we still separate them: we speak of "Mass and communion".

Yes - we did for centuries. Indeed, from at least 900 to 1900 it was exceptional for a layperson to go to communion, except when they had to (i.e. normally once a year as decreed by Lateran IV in 1215).

But let us not forget that this was an abuse and that, since the time of Pope St Pius X, we have been working to correct it.

An abuse, no matter how ancient can never be used as a justification!

What was bad theology then - and seen to be so by every pope for over a hundred years - does not become an acceptable theology because we cannot gather in a church building.

You can't send an apple by email!

Some things are ideal for the internet. For anything that requires the transfer of lots of data, it is just the thing. Information travels well in cyberspace. That why it is called the 'information revolution' - the clue is in the name!

And our faith does require a lot of information transfer - that is why we have catechisms, formation programs, Sunday schools, evening classes and theologians writing books! But we must never confuse the reality of life - life that is so much more than information - with data.

It is very easy to think of Jesus as simply a communication conduit with God and to imagine that he came to give us a special download of knowledge. This has been a temptation (labelled Gnosticism) since the second century. The Word 'has pitched his tent among us' (Jn 1:14). He shared the whole of our humanity.

Just as you cannot send an apple by email - and the same is true of all we eat and drink and need to live - so you cannot share the loaf and cup on email. A real gathering of real people needs real contact.

If we peddle the illusion that there is a streamed surrogate (and many of those who are streaming images of a cleric celebrating his Eucharistic act are saying something like this), we may not only confuse people at a practical level, but also be leading sisters and brothers astray: giving the illusion that celebration is a matter of info sharing!

That may seem a silver lining to some, but long experience calls it Gnosticism.

I first saw the slogan "you can't send an apple by email" on a HGV (heavy goods vehicle) on a French motorway and realized it conveyed a deep human truth in a digital age.

We are more than our data. Our celebrations are more than assent or assimilation of information. If we forget that we have lost something precious.

We can only be genuinely Eucharistic when we celebrate around the Lord's Table, sharing a real loaf and drinking from a common cup.

This cannot be done right now, but let's not confuse the real thing with streamed images of others (even if they be bishops) doing this.

Recalling the gritty material reality of being really Eucharistic is itself a silver lining!

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Eating Together, Becoming One: Taking Up Pope Francis's Call to Theologians (Liturgical Press, 2019).
• First published in La Croix International, republished with permission of the author.