A Response to “Unchurching”

“If the Eucharist is not central to Catholic life, what makes me a Catholic?" 

 If we look at the evidence of the Third World, e.g. the Amazon, very obviously we can have vibrant Catholic communities in which the Eucharist is celebrated less than monthly. In the Amazon these communities are kept together by women leaders in the absence of the priest. So apparently the presence of priests (and frequent Eucharist) is not as necessary for being Catholic as most American Catholics think they are.

Msgr. Barr is very worried about Catholics watching Mass on YouTube. .And rightly so. The Youtube Masses from the parishes which I attended are pathetic!.  

At first they consisted of only the priest doing everything, in the case of the bigger parish three priests doing everything. Hardly a lay person in sight except there was someone behind the camera. Both parishes had vibrant music ministries with choirs. Choirs are gone and cantors are still very, very limited. The videos are even more pathetic now that we have masked people mumbling prayers.

Masses without the full active participation of the People of God are not worth taking the risk of getting the virus. They are not even worth watching. And this could go on for years.  Fortunately there are some places that have still have a community celebration such as Saint Meinrad in Indiana that are worth viewing.  The Masses broadcast from the Vatican during the Italian lockdown were a model of being a icon of community even though they were billed as being "without a congregation"

"A Baptist can exist marooned on an island with his Bible. A Catholic? Not so much. We need each other."

The people in the Amazon do have each other, and therefore remained Catholic.  What the virus is teaching us is that American parish communities centered on the Mass and priests were not nearly as vibrant as they appeared to be. Like in the Amazon a lot of their vitality was maintained by the women of the parish but mostly off camera. They did the religious education, the RCIA preparation, the funeral, baptism, marriage preparation, etc; they more than the men were central to the choirs. The women with the help of a some laymen made the liturgies seem worthwhile. Now that we are left with just the priests not so much. As Newman once remarked, the church without the laity looks pretty silly. That is what we are seeing on played out on Youtube.

So the real question is how do we do parish communities now that many of us elderly must live in social isolation. How do we build a virtual world that connects us to each other rather than just opportunities to see priests and deacons or lay employees of the parish?  We are going to have to do this for ourselves. .

The research behind the book American Grace showed that all the benefits of church-going (i.e health, happiness, and giving time, talent and money to others) occurred only for those who  had religious social networks of family, friends, or small groups.  

Going to church without these produced nothing. There was no relationship of these benefits to any beliefs. It did not matter if the religious social networks consisted of members of one’s own denomination. Religious means the people are interested in religious experience.

So we all need to maintain and develop our religious social networks during the pandemic without going to church.