When this is over...
On the other side of this pandemic, most every priest may well be a church planter.
We will have congregations on the other side of the coronavirus, of this I have no doubt. The question is: what will the congregation look like? How large? How formed will they be by the ‘new normal’, the practices and routines forged by stay-at-home orders for weeks or months?
From the beginning, I’ve been anxious about worship moving online. Not against, mind you, but anxious. For all the deficiencies found in live-streaming and/or pre-recorded liturgies (I do both), I think it is far worse to offer nothing. What have we learned one month in?
Using myself as an example, and one that has watched many, many online liturgies, I can count on select fingers on one hand how many I’ve watched from start to finish. The digits are fewer when I try to count how many liturgies I watched without distraction. We’ve always known that people tune out at various times during the liturgy. We know some don’t care to sing and eyes glaze over during parts (or all!) of the homily. Now, YouTube and Facebook will tell us for certain when people, literally, tune out. A friend recently sent me a screenshot of live-stream’s analytics that showed a series of peaks and valleys. The peaks occurred during music and the valleys during spoken parts. Of the hundreds or thousands of views we might have on our videos, before we start celebrating the next great awakening, we need to look further. Most of those are 3 to 10 second views. My hunch is that the number of those who consistently tune in at the time of the initial broadcast will decrease. Why get up and watch at 10:30am, when I can watch at 4pm? If they haven’t already, priests will discover this, and it will influence how they produce the online liturgy.
This is an observation, not a criticism. When I’ve asked these questions on social media, some members of my parish, the ones who do watch from beginning to end, are defensive. When we focus, appropriately, on the centrality of the Holy Eucharist as the source and summit of our life, it should be no surprise that people aren’t tuning in at record numbers It’s not the same thing. That, I pray, is the result of sound catechesis. I am, however, suggesting that when we all come back, we will be, to some extent, church planters. This is not a bad thing. But we need to remember our spiritual history, and the challenges and temptations, as we start to build.
There are many stories of the Church and Plague with the luminous examples of St Charles Borromeo, Constance and her companions, and the Sisters of Mercy in Plymouth England during the cholera outbreak. What is different now is that we are producing and offering a different experience of the Church. Yes. St Borromeo erected stone columns with crosses on top so people could have a connection with the masses and devotions that were going on throughout the city, but that was a visual connection across distance and not a virtual connection across Wi-Fi. When the plague was over, people went back to church. When our pandemic is over, what will happen?
The books of Ezra and Nehemiah have been on my mind and I wonder if that is the closest parallel for us at this moment. Even though these books address the complications regarding a return from captivity and not coronavirus, the questions raised are important. How do you reconstitute a community that has been dispersed? How do you reinstitute a sacrificial (or for us, sacramental) cult? What happens when the people have become accustomed to a new normal?
First, the good. While the exiles returned to rebuild the Temple, the focus was more on the recovery of the Law. Catechesis was key. In Nehemiah 8, Ezra (who was a priest) reads Torah to the people, in what may be the first recorded public reading of Torah. Not only did Ezra read Torah to the people, but the task was delegated to other priests to help interpret the Law. These priests also read the Law, “clearly, and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading” (Nehemiah 8.8).
The silver lining in this Covid Cloud has been a dramatic increase in catechesis. Clergy are looking for any and every way possible to teach. Zoom, Facebook, podcast, whoever will listen. In all my life, I’ve never seen more teaching. While there is no substitute for in-person Bible study, we are reaching more people through these new methods. Not everyone can come to the 10:30am Wednesday study or the Wednesday night 6pm class. But they can download the podcast on their morning run. They can join a Zoom call at 9pm after the children are in bed.
So much of formation occurs organically, almost through osmosis. On an afternoon walk, my daughter was telling me how she doesn’t feel as if she knows the Bible as well as an evangelical author she’d been reading. I asked her to recount the events of the Triduum Sacrum. I asked her to recall the words to various liturgies and devotions. “Honey, that’s Scripture, through and through.” You do know it. But you know it more from Amen and sign-of-the-cross than chapter and verse. Removed from that context, the osmosis can’t happen. Now, we have to teach everywhere and often.
The bad. In Ezra, as the foundation of the Second Temple was laid, “many of the priests and Levites and heads of fathers’ houses, old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid, though many shouted for joy” (Ezra 3.12). The weeping, as Ezra intimates, was not of joy, but of great sadness. Why? Shouldn’t they join their voices with the others and rejoice? One would assume that rebuilding the Temple, even if it’s not the same as the first, would be better than not rebuilding at all. Maybe not. Margaret Barker makes a compelling argument that the old religion of the Jews suffered two major blows. The first being the reforms of Josiah and the second being the rebuilding of the Temple. The old priests, who remembered, were gutted.
Clearly the sacrificial system continued with the Second Temple, but it was different. Exactly how, we are left to guess. Barker makes an argument that it was built on a different site as the first. In addition, the orientation of prayer (formerly east, now west) had changed and even the inclusion of oil for anointing the Messiah and his throne was omitted.
How will our “exile” change our sacramental orientation? I think it is fair to say that our Eucharistic theology has been stressed during this time. Questions and arguments for virtual communion have emerged. Practices such as consecrating, but not consuming the Body and Blood, and also been elevated and in some cases, encouraged. Strong debates, both here and the UK, about the private masses, solitary masses, and fasting from communion have elicited both likes and blocks in the virtual Areopagus, which is social media.
Attempts to communicate the sacraments which, by its very nature, is a physical encounter into a virtual one, is a very uncertain enterprise and one we should be very, very cautious about. The attempts need to be made, but with great jealously over the integrity of the nature and purpose of the sacramental system. We have a heritage that teaches us the Holy Eucharist is a sacrifice and a sacrament. Even if we can’t all receive, the sacrifice must be offered.
This is a broad generalization, I know, but for a long time Anglo-Catholics have been mocked for being stuck in the past with traditions and practices that are outdated and irrelevant. This pandemic has proved quite the opposite. There are little things, like the scrupulous way in which catholic celebrants guard their fingers, the use of the lavabo, the wiping of the corporal, and the fastidious way in which they touch nothing but the Host is now quite relevant. Our understand of Spiritual Communion has been a real pastoral balm to our people unable to attend mass. Our familiarity with masses celebrated with tiny daily congregations makes live-streaming less awkward, because, in a real way, nothing has changed. We know what to do. This is a real gift to the wider Church who, heretofore, may not have been as interested into our practices and theology. Our catholic tradition has sustained the Church through plague, war, and everything in between. We should embody this tradition with quiet confidence and encourage others to trust as well. The well-intentioned theological missteps that I have noticed by our leaders have almost all come because they did not appear to trust the stability that the foundation of our tradition provides.
The time will come, when all of this is over. Cyrus (Dr. Fauci) will release the exiles. Assuming things will continue without interruption is naïve. We will need to rebuild. And this, I think is a great opportunity. We need to be missionaries. We need to be catechists. But as we rebuild the temple, which is our parish, let us not forget the original foundation, so that those who have gone before in war and pestilences will see our efforts, and weep.
Bishop Weston, in concluding his address to the first Anglo-Catholic Congress, said, “There then, as I conceive it, is your present duty; and I beg you, brethren, as you love the Lord Jesus, consider that it is at least possible that this is the new light that the Congress was to bring to us. You have got your Mass, you have got your Altar, you have begun to get your Tabernacle. Now go out into the highways and hedges where not even the Bishops will try to hinder you. Go out and look for Jesus in the ragged, in the naked, in the oppressed and sweated, in those who have lost hope, in those who are struggling to make good. Look for Jesus. And when you see him, gird yourselves with his towel and try to wash their feet.”
When this is over, we must be church planters.