Fr. Roger Landry has an excellent and much-needed piece on the “Eucharistic Revival” in the context of the past two (+) years:
As the Church in the United States enters more deeply into the Eucharistic Revival, it is important to assess with candor and courage the way pandemic decisions have impacted Eucharistic life and faith. For some, shutting off access to Mass and the Holy Eucharist only increased their hunger for Holy Communion, gratitude for the Mass and appreciation for the gift of the priesthood that makes the Eucharistic Lord available. For many others, however, perhaps especially for those whose Eucharistic faith may have been weaker, the decision to suspend the public celebration of Mass attenuated or eliminated that hunger.
It’s easier to tear down than to build. It’s impossible to deny that the decision to shut down access to the Mass, made hurriedly and under duress, has had disastrous consequences. It’s important for Church leaders and faithful to admit that a mistake was made and to learn from it and resolve not to repeat it. Pandemic decision-making did not communicate courage but fear. It did not show that we are the spiritual descendants of the Martyrs of Abitene, Gorkum and Casamari; of Sts. Tarcisius, Oscar Romero and Pedro Maldonado, and other Eucharistic martyrs and saints. It did not confirm that the Eucharist is the source and summit, root and center of the Christian life, but seemed to prioritize the health of the body over the health of the soul.
That does not mean we should have disregarded the pandemic, its dangers and legitimate precautions. The obligation to attend Mass should have been suspended so that those at high risk, who care for those at high risk, who were uncomfortable putting themselves at risk, or who work in health care and similar professions, could with clean conscience make the decision to stay away. Stopping the distribution of the Precious Blood was obvious for epidemiological reasons. Following the best advice of medical professionals with regard to social distancing, masks and handwashing — as well as legitimate governmental restrictions regarding indoor crowd size — was prudent.
But while doing all of that, it was still possible to maintain access to Mass and Holy Communion, whether that meant celebrating outdoors in parking lots and fields, celebrating indoors with successive crowds of small, socially-distanced people, celebrating via livestream and then allowing people to come for Holy Communion, or many of the other temporary solutions that creative priests, when given the permission, devised while respecting legitimate civil and ecclesiastical regulations. Such efforts testified to the importance of the Holy Eucharist in the life of faith, especially in the most trying times. …
..Diligent priests became better and lazy priests became lazier, and the level of fatherly concern had an impact on the rate of return of the faithful. Some priests did everything possible to reach their people and help them grow in faith, with outdoor and livestreamed Masses, Eucharistic processions in flatbed trucks, confessions in parking lots, anointings in hazmat suits, regular phone calls, emails, videos, interactive Zooms and more. Other priests did very little, not offering confessions, not telephoning parishioners, not even celebrating private Masses in their churches because of a pseudo-theological hang-up about Masses without a congregation. Out of fear or indolence, they hid the talent the Lord had given them in the ground (Matthew 25:25).
There’s more. I’m grateful to Fr. Landry for his honesty here.
Will Catholic leaders do as he suggests? It’s doubtful. We’d be more likely to get a lot of “We all did our best” instead.
I wrote about this at the time – here’s a post from April 2020 in which I shared some creative ways parishes in the Diocese of Birmingham were reaching out.
So my oldest landed in his former town of Atlanta this morning and tried to go to Mass.
Good luck with that.
He called me while sitting on the front steps. “Well,” he said, “At least I can hear the music.”
No entrance without a ticket, and even then you had to be there forty-five minutes early.
Garbage. Complete and utter garbage.
The Church’s response to the pandemic has been about 80% terrible – the 20% being the ministers, ordained and lay, who have heroically visited the sick in hospital, care facilities, and homes, and the parishes that have remained open – in some way – continuing to communicate the truth that yes, we all need Jesus and Jesus is Here, in this place, in this world.
But that 80%?
Are you even ready?
Do you even remember that it’s Christmas, and even in normal years, your numbers multiply to the point at which you’ve got to double up Masses and hold them all over the property? That this is the time of year in which the lost, the disaffected, the questioning, the broken, turn up?
Because they’ve heard this rumor that there is actually an answer to their questions, a reason for their being, a meaning to their suffering and One Who Loves? And maybe that One who lay in a manger in Bethlehem dwells among us still and the place to meet him again is in this place with a cross on top, light streaming from windows, doors….open?
And that this year, a year of confusion, displacement, suffering, fear and death…that pull might be even…stronger?
Are folks involved with these matters aware that even in a normal year, practicing Protestants regularly show up to Christmas Mass, especially Midnight Mass, because their own churches don’t do much for Christmas, especially if it’s not on a Sunday? And this year, far more Protestant churches have gone completely virtual and remain so, and so those hungering for flesh and blood religion, for fellowship, to be fed…might hear that the Catholic church down the road still seems to be in business and might be a place to try to experience that?
And so what are you going to do about it?
What are the ticket-taking, pew-roping, reservation-demanding Catholics powers-that-be that be going to do about it?
Are you going to find a way to actually be welcoming and get these folks through the doors at which they’ve gathered so they can be touched and moved by the Lord they are sincerely seeking?
Or are you going to position your
sour-faced ushersMinisters of Hospitality at the door, arms crossed, offering not much more than “Sorry. Tickets required. Had to get here early. Merry Christmas. Stay safe.” Clubby, insular, satisfied and yes, using the word of the year…safe.
The state restrictions regarding gatherings did not go on for very long in Alabama, although masking did. The civilly (state and/or county) mandated gathering restrictions really only lasted a couple of months, so we could be back to Mass by late spring for the most part, albeit, in most places with pew distancing and so on. I didn’t hear of a single parish down here that did reservations or that nonsense.
But I did see and hear for myself how contentious the question was among Catholics. I had one fascinating evening where I went from one parish-related event to another and heard two completely different takes on the situation – one set of conversations assuming that the parish in question was moving too fast towards “normality” and as a consequence, these people would be attending another parish where there were more restrictions in place – and then an hour later, another conversation among many people from the same parish who were happy with minimal restrictions and would prefer none at all.
So yes, there were varied views – and strong ones. It, plus the legal situation, was indeed challenging to navigate.
But Fr. Landry is absolutely correct here: we should not be surprised if the general takeaway from the generalized Catholic response to all of this would be: Well, your actions indicated that the Eucharist really doesn’t matter. So I guess it doesn’t. Who’s up for brunch?
As I wrote here, in a blog post about the Eucharistic Revival and how catechesis and practice has led to indifference:
- And then finally: shutting out the faithful from churches, depriving them of the Eucharist – this super-special-Eucharist – for months or longer. What were you guys telling us when you unquestionably complied and locked those doors and made so few creative efforts to bring the Eucharistic Christ outside, to a hurting world?
If the Eucharist wasn’t necessary then ….is it really ever necessary?
More from me from the spring of 2020 on the religious response to Covid and Covid restrictions:
1918, Sisters and Church Closings
Birmingham priest Fr. Coyle and the 1918 Spanish Flu
“The Orations did not stop…” St. Charles Borromeo, Milan and the Plague:
More on Eucharistic Revival:
Charlotte was Both 