Where these practices became the default of bishops, the potential failure of the synodal process is high because these practices were made possible by sidelining the laity. What is the potential for bishops to listen to the laity when they have excluded them from their liturgical participation?

Some will argue that liturgy is not the centre of the Church's life or that bishops used online formats out of compassion and care in a pandemic. Nevertheless, if the Church leaders can exclude the laity liturgically, what's the point of including them in another ecclesial conversation?

My point is this: where the liturgical practice is not seen as ecclesial, it is not seen.

The Church is the kyriakon (belonging to the Lord) ekklesia (assembly) of Christ. The liturgy celebrates and makes this manifest. Liturgy, worship, thanksgiving—whatever word you wish to use—stands at the centre of the Church's being and purpose. Without the liturgy, the Church is just another club or social welfare system.

Not just about in liturgical style

Often, liturgical divisions are treated as differences in style when one person prefers Bach to Led Zeppelin. At this shallow level, arguments of style and preference dominate, but these are only a starting point.

Liturgy, at its deepest level, articulates humanity's primary and perennial quest: "Who is God, who am I, and is my life eternal?" This quest is taken up sacramentally and expressed liturgically.

How individuals and groups perform liturgical rituals is instructive of much more than just a style preference.

Liturgical rituals articulate an individual's or a group's understanding and beliefs of the relationships between God and the Church, the priesthood, sacramental living and ecclesial authority. Ritual enactment illustrates a much deeper, formative religious culture of belief.

This culture is formed, informed and reformed through ecclesial life, sacramental mediation and theological thinking.

During the liturgical lockdown of 2020-2021, the increased use of online Masses was made possible for four main reasons -

• the performative nature of the Mass's ritual structure,
• the functional nature of priesthood,
• the presumption that the function of the Mass is essentially clerical, and
• that the presence of the laity at liturgy is not constitutive.

While many lay recipients of online Mass reported that they found the experience "comforting," many also reported that it was too priest-centric and ultimately dissatisfying. By contrast, many priests saw the increased online numbers as validation of their ministry.

The critical problem of the absence of the laity was never fully addressed. The success of online Masses can only be praised by avoiding questions of authentic liturgical presence as a physical presence.

Why would any layperson entertain a dialogue about Church life after being systematically excluded by their God-given leaders from their rightful participation in their own liturgical life?

Synodal, liturgical practice

An authentic approach to the synodal process requires that we review the liturgical responses during the lockdown.

One's liturgical practice is essentially ecclesiological. Where the liturgy (Mass) is considered a ritualised, institutional form that functions independently of all other Church business—we go to Mass, we don't live Mass—synodality has already failed because the essential link between the Church's mission and action has been discounted.

The institutional structures and doctrines (God, priesthood, baptism, ministry and ecclesial authority) that Johann Adam Moehler (1796-1838) - in Die Einheit in der Kirche called Gemeinschaft and Romano Guardini in Vom Sinn der Kirche - described as essential to spiritual or mystical communion in Christ, find their authentic expression in liturgical practice.

Liturgical practice is ecclesiology in action.

Liturgical ecclesiology

A robust liturgical ecclesiology contributes to the development of synodal ecclesiology through the examination of actual liturgical practice and culture. It offers a window into the strong, often submerged cultures of belief, dogma and identity that drive individual and group practice because it requires participants to consider their practice first.

For example, when a person agrees that authentic liturgical practice belongs primarily to the priest/bishop by ordination, and not to the laity by baptism, there is little need to discuss inclusive governance. The liturgical default setting has already defined the ecclesial outlook.

Equally, a person who approaches liturgical practice as transformative will look for transformation through the synodal process. They will probably say that worship is predicated on baptism and not see liturgy as essentially performative or functional.

If the synodal process is not transformative, this person will turn away, disappointed.

Lockdown and Synod

Covid's liturgical lockdown practices are not incidental to the synodal process and vision, neither were they the product of Covid. The lockdown practices already existed deep in the psyche of the Church because they are the default setting of a much deeper ecclesial culture.

The online Mass, with its passive, observer layperson and its performative, functional priest, is the clearest example of the synodal process's challenge.

If we cannot hear one another at worship, what is the point of engaging with each other at the level of governance? Will a change in governance change our approach to liturgy, or must our liturgy change first?

Suppose your participation in a process is not a constitutive element of your organisation's practice. Would you participate based on this presumption?

Liturgical practice reveals the ecclesial culture that synodality needs to address but probably will not.

Joe Grayland is a theologian and a priest of the Diocese of Palmerston North. "Liturgical Lockdown: A New Zealand Perspective" is available from Amazon.com

• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with the author's permission.

Add to them, the lengths some have gone to, to continue some form of liturgical practice, and then there is the absence of those who have yet to return to Church.

"Globally, the coronavirus is probably the most disruptive event impacting liturgy since the Second Vatican Council", Dr Joe Grayland told CathNews.

"In New Zealand and around the globe we were unable to celebrate the end of Lent, Holy Week, the Paschal Triduum, and most of Eastertide and it continues to disrupt".

The impact of Vatican II has lasted fifty years, but in some places, it took up to ten years to implement. Even the recent translation of the liturgy into English was implemented over a period of years, he said.

"By comparison, the global impact of the Coronavirus was almost instant", he said.

"It only takes one community outbreak somewhere in New Zealand and the lifetime faith practises of many are once again disrupted".

Click to take part in Learning from liturgical disruption survey.

Grayland, a Doctor of Theology in liturgical science, says liturgical disruption came as part of the experience of social disruption and physical distancing and he is looking to see if there is anything the Church can learn from it.

He is inviting readers of CathNews in New Zealand and around the world to complete a survey which is part of his ongoing research into New Zealand's liturgical life.

The survey asks questions about your experience during levels three and four; when either church attendance numbers were severely restricted or people were prevented from going to Church.

He is keen for you to assess the impacts of the liturgical disruption on your parish and your personal prayer life during, and since then.

The survey covers topics such as online worship and your experience of it, the impact of restrictions on church services, diocesan and parish communication during the lockdown and ensuing disruption the impact on parish life and how you might see the future.

It asks whether you think the decision to close churches was the right one and asks if you think the contemporary parish structure can withstand this change.

Grayland says all responses are anonymous and the survey should take between 8 and 10 minutes to complete.

It can be taken either on a computer or mobile device.

Christensen explains that successful companies are those that can meet not only their customers' current needs but anticipate their future ones too.

Disruptive innovators - disruptors - are more likely to displace established companies, even when they are small and have relatively fewer resources.

According to Christensen, a disruptor often begins by either attracting the dominant businesses' less-demanding customers or by creating an entirely new market.

Disruption creates both a new market and a new "value network".

"Innovation" describes the ways companies find to enhance their customer's experience, so the customer knows they are valued and cared for.

The customer experiences the value of belonging to the "family" of the company and the experiential value of belonging to the "community of customers" keeps them faithful and attracts others.

The business world speaks well of leaders who are "movers and shakers", disruptors because they achieve what others cannot - change.

In church circles, change leaders are often vilified because they challenge the established, sacred cows.

The application of disruptive-innovation to our current experience of liturgical practice helps us see why the fundamental presumption of liturgy as a communitarian event, where the ritual elements of a priest, people, Sunday, church, music, eucharistic prayer and communion that once made sense, no longer do.

The disruption to the concept of community has created innovative forms of worship; forms that no longer presume the use of all or most of the ritual elements of catholic worship.

Liturgical disruption: What it looks like

Let's consider what liturgical disruption is by looking at the world around us.

In the world of taxis, Uber is described as a disruptor, but this might not be entirely accurate. While Uber has challenged the taxi business it hasn't moved the concept of personal transport in a radically new direction.

When we look at the movie industry and Netflix, we see a different effect.

I first discovered Netflix while living in the United States when DVDs were delivered to our homes. I remember thinking why would I do this when I can walk to the local video shop?

Now, I watch streamed movies and news programmes in a variety of languages from across the world.

Initially, Netflix didn't disrupt the supply of movies - video shops continued to exist.

However, Netflix capitalised on the advent of the internet and disrupted the fundamental behaviours of movie watching people around the world.

The disruption of customer behaviours matched with innovations in customer services has seen the growth of the Netflix community (customer base) and the death of the local video shop's customer base.

The death of video shops and the morphing of cinema's into bars and cafes with movies attached, to survive, is indicative of the disruption-innovation needed to survive significant behavioural change.

Applying these considerations, I suggest that the proliferation of online masses is not the key disruptor - it is more Uber than Netflix.

Online masses predate COVID and the sheer volume of them now should not distract us. The volume is not the key disruptor because it has not brought a change in foundational behaviours.

The transference of the mass' performance-based ritual from the sanctuary to the screen did not disrupt already existing liturgical behaviours; priests did what they normally do - perform the rituals - and believers did what they normally do - watch the rituals being performed.

Thus, the ritual behaviours didn't change because the already dominant operative, behaviours were not disrupted.

The behavioural disruption came with the inability to recreate the physical presence of the community and physical participation in the shared eucharistic meal - even to the point where concelebrating presbyters uses separate chalices and individually consecrated host rather than sharing these elements.

If anything, the online mass has unwittingly contributed to the liturgical disruption of the physical liturgical community by taking the viewer from the pew to the couch.

The disruption-innovation of the liturgical community

Liturgical life during COVID offers three considerations of disruption-innovation:

First, habitual worshipping practices have been disrupted and behaviours that have been central to liturgical and parish life have radically changed.

With safety defining liturgical behaviours believers are more prepared to stay away from church gatherings, to pray at home, or even celebrate a "lay Eucharist" with family instead of going to Mass.

Second, online masses and worship groups have innovated choice; as a colleague suggested online ‘worship has become promiscuous.'

The dynamic of choice is not new - for example, in my experience people move between parish masses based on a variety of reasons such as a convenience, the liturgical style of the mass, or the music.

Now the choice includes legitimately worshipping at home.

While the church (corner video shop) is the place to find "spiritual communion" our attention is now turning to the innovation of the "domestic church" and home worship as the new locus of authentic liturgical prayer.

Third, and most importantly, the behaviours of the physical liturgical community have been radically disrupted and innovated. Community is a threat (disruption) as well as something we want (innovation).

While believers can search the web for a community, they can feel safe in, this is not always the case for physical community.

Profound disruption to liturgical behaviour has come through social and physical distancing, wearing masks, communion from behind a screen, prohibitions on singing, restricted numbers, and closed churches.

These have altered our behaviours and changed the way we experience the liturgical community; they have changed our shared understandings of the community itself.

When we stand in the car park, chatting after mass, we realise implicitly that our physical behaviours inside the church say; "worship and church community are dangerous and it's safer not to participate".

The foundational disruption to the physical community has changed our liturgical behaviours, and, therefore, our experience of prayer itself, which the phrase lex orandi, lex credendi summaries: we pray (orandi) what we believe (credendi).

Because we are a community who pray what we believe and who bring our belief to prayer, the disruption of prayer will have an impact on the belief.

When we pray online and reduce Mass to spiritual communion for the viewer the potential danger is to extenuate the clerical aspect of Mass and formalise visual participation as "sufficient" for belief.

When a family prays a "lay eucharist" at home they exclude the presbyterial ministry. In both instances, the disruption to the community has changed our behaviours and along with it our presumptions of authentic liturgical prayer and ministry.

The foundational disruption to the communitarian aspect of lex orandi/lex credendi will show itself in accommodations to "liturgical masks" and "liturgical distancing".

Such accommodations have the potential to move the physical celebration of liturgy from "we" to "I", thereby returning worship to a privatised, or self-isolated ritual action.

Thus, the most significant disruption to liturgy is the disruption of the physical community and the most important innovation to the liturgy are the new ways of being a liturgical community.

I suggest, the disruption-innovation to communal prayer (lex orandi), will likely impact not only the church's communitarian framework but also its presumptions of authentic ministry.

Liturgical innovation - future changes

The disruption-innovation of the COVID-liturgical period can only be sketched.

Liturgical history shows that naming disruptors is not easy because liturgy evolves over a longer timeframe and generally does not anticipate social and cultural shifts, it reflects them.

However, liturgy's formal struggles with adaptation and innovation are always related to changes in behaviours and theological contexts.

If we are to benefit from the disruption-innovation to the community we are creating, I suggest understanding this current change will require a more sophisticated concept of the church as people in God and worship as people in God at prayer.

It will require a higher level of ecclesial leadership and a much higher calibre of liturgical leadership and insight than we have seen recently from Vatican departments.

The disruption to the physical community is greater than online, virtual worship and the effects on who we worship with, who we are as Christian people and, ultimately where we belong, remain to be considered.

• Joe Grayland is a theologian and a priest of the Diocese of Palmerston North. His latest book is titled: Catholics. Prayer, Belief and Diversity in a Secular Context (Te Hepara Pai, 2020).
• Article first published in La Croix International. Republished with the author's permission.

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".