Religions are inherently optimistic. That is why, despite the mess in the world, they proclaim an order, and celebrate it with repeated rituals.
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.
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